What’s on your desk?
M. Alger brings up his “Desk books”, the ones he likes to have at hand all the time, and it makes me think. There Are but a few books that are either always at my hand, either on my desk or at my bedside table. The desk ones are simple: an Oxford Desk bible with Apocrypha (I’m looking to replace this with something a bit less ragged) Rossetti’s “Complete works of Shakespeare” Mann’s “The Bullet’s Flight from Powder to Target”, the “Farmer’s Shop Book” by Louis M Roehl.
My copy of “After Big Game in Central Africa” never leaves the nightstand.
What’s on your desk? What books do you refer to, or look at, every day of your life?
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Pheasants of the Mind by Datus Proper.
1) Either a standard red-letter KJV, or an NIV with annotations, study helps and articles on Reformation theology (I don’t totally subscribe to any one dogma, but it’s a good jumping-off point. Plus I’m just a sucker for reference books.) Both were gifts from my parents.
2) Oswald Chambers’ “My Utmost For His Highest”. Very good for reminders that it’s not about you, it’s about Him.
In my office nothing stays on my desk, nothing is referenced daily. At least not a published book. 650+ books if I turn around in my chair: http://northwest1524.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-on-your-book-shelf.html
The book that is at my desk and used every day is my engineering note book.
Google.
Nothing else matters.
All of my reference books have been sent to boxes in the basement and are stuffed full of obsolete stuff like how to calculate linear optimization by stubby pencil.
I haven’t even botherd to keep up with the latest MS office references. If I ever need VBA again, I will jsut start from scratch.
I do have the Hornady reloading manual on my workbench, but I only refer to it every time I reload to confirm my loads.
KJV with notes.
Jamison Fawcett and Brown.
Printer paper, address book, bill folder and whichever novel I’m currently reading. The monster reference shelf is about 3 feet away.
Bible, a gift from my aunt, the nun.
Fowler’s Usage.
One volume Lord of the Rings.
Read daily: Daily Office (Evening and Night Prayer sections), Pro-Life Meditations For Every Day, The Divine Favors Granted to St. Joseph (Pere Binet), and THE BOOK that I have with me everywhere: Several copies of it, in fact–The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a’ Kempis.
On my desk, just a Roget’s 1973 Thesaurus and an old copy of The Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (1975).
Retired now, but the most used book for me was the Grainger catalog. There was also post card sized drill bit conversion chart with some other stuff on it that got looked at pretty often.
As Professor Hale said, Google put the books on the shelf.
At work,
NEC of the most recent edition
Square D digest
Lithonia lighting catalog
My own book of notes and tables.
At home,
Whatever my gorls have left there.
The notes and background material of the book I’m trying not very hard to write.
“OL Shinkaron” volume 2.
…I don’t keep paper books on my desk. There isn’t room.
To clarify, I have an entire wall of shelves directly behind me when I sit at my desk. My desk itself is a hostile environment for books, what with cats and coffee and such.
My most-used references include a Webster’s 3d Unabridged in 3 volumes with the 7-language vocabulary in the back, a Bartlett’s Roget’s, an oversized atlas, and a bunch of books on mythology.
M
SQL Server 2008 bible.
Apache Server reference.
XSLT reference.
XML Reference.
Data Model Resources.
Data Warehouse Lifecycle toolkit.
T-SQL Fundamentals.
Do a bunch of e-books on my laptop count?
A stack of USPS 2976-A customs forms for some care packages bound for FOB Zangabad. Best part of my day.
Engineering Formulas 5th Edition,
Modern Elementary Statistics,
Advanced Engineering Mathematics,
Master Handbook of Acoustics,
American Historical Documents
– Harvard Classics,
The Boy Scout Handbook,
Vibration and Noise Control Products,
Tales of Beedle the Bard,
Engineer Field Data,
Ranger Handbook,
Glover’s Pocket Reference,
Pratt and Whitney’s Vest Pocket Handbook,
The Book of Common Prayer,
The King James Bible,
The Pursuit of Victory(Roger Knight),
The Singularity is Near(Kurzweil),
Lindeberg EIT Reference Manual,
Lindeberg Mechanical Engineer Reference Manual,
and two phone books.
And this is just my desk, not my book cases
Sad to say, the only book I refer to on a daily basis is the List of Lodges Masonic.
There was a period in my life when The REXX Language: A practical approach to programming, Second Edition was a daily reference. I cracked it about three weeks ago when I was fixing an old script. Probably hadn’t looked at it in two years.
There are Bibles and other references handy in the office, but generally I’ll look up anything I need on the net. I have the same cats/coffee/etc on desk problem that Alger mentions.
There is also a Bersa Thunder 9 UC sitting here. The 1911 is in the bedroom. Always good references in certain types of arguments.
No books on the desk, but the seven shelf bookcase directly behind me is filled with reference books that I go to from time to time.
REXX!
That is a language I forgot I once knew.
Right now I’m re-reading Bill Whittle’s “Silent America”.
Every year or so when the fucktardedness of my fellow Americans starts dragging me down I read Whittle and get a recharge.
My desk is so small the latest novel from David Baldacci [Zero Day] is on top of the printer.
But, as I sit with my back to the front door, The Kimber is to hand.
At the desk, right next to VFTP Command Central:
A couple recent Blue Books.
“Standard Catalogs” of S&W, Colt, Firearms, Military Firearms.
Mowbray & Puleo’s Military Rifle Disassembly & Reassembly and Bolt Action Military Rifles of the World.
Mauser Military Rifles
Stuff like that.
“Routing With TCP/IP, Volume I” Second Edition and Volume II by Jeff Doyle.
Russ