Another Book Announcement and More!

I've just published another book!  Yes! I know exactly what you're thinking:  "What the...? Why do they let him keep doing this?!  Have they no mercy upon our eyeballs?!"

Well, in the interests of science, humanity, environment and the ever-pressing need to keep gasoline in the tank of my car, I've decided it was time to pull together as many of the mindless stories I could from my old-as-dirt years working in the world of IT.  That was a very long run-on sentence.  My high school English teachers are probably rolling over in their graves right now.

There's also quite a lot of blabber about how I got into the world of IT and how I swam through the sea of CAD into the ocean of Infrastructure Management and Software Development. It really is fascinating.  Not how I got into IT, but the fact that I could construct a sentence that almost sounded coherent.  Wow!

What's this New Book All About?

The new book is called "You're Only as Good as Your Last Mistake".  Sub-titled "25 Years of Boneheaded Reflection and Stupid IT Stories to Dull your Senses".  It's a blending of a little biographical nonsense, some seriously pretentious pontification, some articles adapted from my blog (this blog), and stories about things going bump in the electronic night. I suppose it could be called a BioTechieHumorFailDisasterFest.  Uhhh.  Yeah.

It's available on the Amazon Kindle store in every country where Amazon can sell books (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Spain, Canada and Brazil, as far as I know).

Here's the GOOD NEWS!

• It's only $2.99 (USD) and whatever that translates to in other currency
• Don't have a Kindle?  No problem.  You can download a FREE Kindle Reader app for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Windows XP/Vista/7/8, Mac OS, and ...
• You can read Kindle books online in almost any web browser using the Kindle Cloud Reader!
• If you are an Amazon Prime member, you can "borrow" eBooks, including all of my eBooks, for FREE!

What's the Catch?

• I only ask a small favor:  It's a BIG favor for me, and a small effort on your part, but I really would appreciate honest reviews of my books.  If you've purchased, or borrowed, any of my eBooks and actually read them (without pausing in the middle to stab yourself in the eyeballs with a fork), please go to the Amazon web site for the book(s) you've read and submit your opinion on them?
• You can start at my Author Profile page to make it easy.
• Thank you!

Sample: "Where it All Began: From Doritos to Digital Ships"

"Chronologically it's weird, because some of those jobs were in parallel with others.  For example, in that maze of titles I managed to fit in roughly five good years of rock and jazz band, but whatever. I also weaved in about ten years of artwork (painting, drawing, squishing clay stuff around, and so on) which never earned me more than "Hey man, that's cool!"  I remember responding a few times with "Cool enough to buy?", and the response to that being something like "Yeah! By somebody.", but somehow "somebody" could never be found. 

Sometime in early 1984, Mark, one of my brothers stoned friends, walked into our kitchen while I was maniacally inhaling a bowl of Fruit Loops (my favorite cereal at the time).He stopped at the doorway to exclaim "I got a job, dude!" to which we all replied with stunned silence.  I decided to inquire, saying something intelligent like "Oh yeah? What?"  

He explained that he was hired as a "Naval Designer" at a local Naval engineering firm, and went on to indulge us in this magically mysterious thing called "benefits", and something even more interesting, called a "salary". If I hadn't grown up in a Navy town (okay, a Navy "region"), I would have assumed a "Naval Engineer" designed belly-button replacements or something. 

Most of what Mark said was really fascinating, even though I could barely hear his muttering over my own cereal-chewing noise.  The best way to describe him is to think of someone who looks, sounds, and acts a lot like Jeff Spiccolli (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), only not as funny, has a mustache and wears glasses, coming in and telling you he was hired at an engineering firm.  You get the idea. 

Somewhere towards the end of my bowl of cereal Mark said something that perked my ears up.  I think it was something he mentioned about there being more positions needing to be filled, and that they paid pretty well. As it turned out, there were roughly twenty openings for "Drafting Apprentice" jobs, so I ran down and applied.  After a short interview ("Can you hold a pencil, boy? Alrighty! You is hired!"). 

I was finger-printed, scanned, questioned, photographed, probed and stamped with a badge and told to show up at 7:30 AM the following Monday.  That led to five or six years of my work as a Drafter/Designer in the U.S. Naval engineering field." 

Sample above (C)2013 David M. Stein, All Rights Reserved. May not be reproduced or copied, transmitted, in whole or in part, for any purposes or derivative use, without explicit written consent of the author (me). And let's face it: If you're so desperate that you'd consider copying this literary fast food schlock, well, you may need some serious medication already.