books I actually own

[topaz]

"Structured COBOL", Philippakis and Kazmier
"ALGOL in Brief: A Short Practical Guide", Ractliffe
"The Unicode Standard, Version 1.0", The Unicode Consortium

I don't know which is worse:

• that I'm not getting rid of them;
• or that these are surely not the most embarrassing or pointless books in my library.

Comments

[bitty.livejournal.com]

hey! what's wrong with cobol!

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Nothing that a fifth of tequila and a straight razor can't fix.

[harimad.livejournal.com]

In this crowd it takes more than COBOL to be in the running for most pointless book. (I'm afraid to find out what would be.)

[d3l1r1um.livejournal.com]

My mother programmed in COBOL for a living. Are you trying to insult my mother??!

[enf.livejournal.com]

I think I have that COBOL book somewhere too.

I have a vivid memory of buying the Unicode 1.0 book. It was the start of 1996 and I was back in Chicago for a few days, and there was a used copy upstairs at that bookstore on Michigan Avenue near the Auditorium. I had to have it, even though it meant lugging it around in a backpack everywhere I went. And yet here now I haven't been bought the fifth edition yet.

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

I was actually able to sell a DECSystem-10 COBOL book on EBay.

[noeltheone.livejournal.com]

I still have the "Windows 95 Resource Kit" (and the Windoes 98 and Windows NT Resource kits).

Funny, I was just thinking those were recycle fodder.