Yeah, Stephenson can be an exhausting read at times. I wish I had gotten more into Cryptonomicon. I started it but just couldn't get past the beginning. Anymore the only reading I do is either technical or SciFi/Fantasy. And I haven't read a fantasy book in a couple of months. I've got a couple of autobiographies of musicians I want to get through but my list of books is just never ending...
Yea I know what you mean. I started Mongoliad once and just couldn't get into it. I loved Cryptonomicon but there were still large sections that could have been cut out. I think GRRM ruined fantasy books for me now and I would have a hard time reading anything similar. I occasionally take a look around for something with the same caliber but nothing really hits me. Biographies are good, I enjoyed Master of the Senate by Robert Caro much more than I should have. He really got into Johnsons life and the amount of detail was amazing.
If you're looking for good fantasy, there's a series called "Tyrants and Kings". It's kind of SciFi fantasy. But the world is great and the characters are fairly interesting. I read the first book when I was a freshman in high school. I read the second book at some point but never bought the last book. They're also on my list to reread sometime this summer.
Same, I've been reading some books on linux system administration and I've been perusing a powershell book. It's powershell 2.0 though. So far I've not learned much that I didn't know from experience powershell wise.
Interesting, i use powershell every day but not for sysadmin, i have a bunch of scripts to simplify build processes and run unit tests etc. I use it in some open source stuff too. I bought powershell in action and its pretty good but usually i end up googling for commands a lot as its not always obvious what you need to do. Goodreads profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6634319
If there's anything I've learned about powershell it's how messy the documentation is. How is that Lean Architecture book? My degree is actually in computer science but I've always done either sysadmin jobs or electronics repair. So I've always been interested in different methods of agile software development. I'm pretty sure SCRUM is still pretty popular but I honestly have no idea how it works...
Yea we are going through a large transition to Agile in my company right now, its exciting and painful all at the same time. Lots of talk, whether it works is another story. I like Agiles core concepts but the snake oil salesmen have set up camp and it gets promoted as a solution to all problems. It cannot fix bad code/people/processes for you... The Lean Architecture book is a recent purchase, not sure about it yet really. I bought it without seeing the rather mixed reviews which has soured me on it a little.