* * * * *

                                It lured me in

Sigh.

I should know better than to walk into a bookstore with a wallet full of
money.

Especially a really good used/new book store (BookWise) [1] near a college
campus (Florida Atlantic University) [2].

Fortunately for my wallet, I went after work, giving me less than an hour
before the store closed. That tends to limit the amount of monetary damage
that I can sustain.

But since the place does sell used books, there are some good deals to be had
if you don't mind digging, and I don't mind digging. One of the books I
picked up (used) was _The Connection Machine_ [3] by Danny Hillis [4],
creator of the massively parallel computer [5] from the mid-80s. Sure, the
architecture is twenty years old and the company that made it, Thinking
Machines Corporation [6], is now defunct, but just wait, another few years
and you'll start seeing the home computer become more and more parallel. It's
a common theme in Computer Science—stuff done two or three decades past in
super computers works its way to the home computer (multitasking? 60s. GUI
(Graphical User Interface)s? 70s. Networks? 80s. Microsoft just repackages
these things as “innovations”).

And speaking of architecture, I also picked up _Norm Abram's New House_ [7]
by Norm Abram [8], and _House-Dreams_ [9] by Hugh Howard, fueling my interest
in building architecture of the more homely type. I've had this interest in
architecture for some time now, and back when we had cable HGTV (Home &
Garden Television) [10] was one of the regular stops on the TV (Television)
dial (hey, they were used books! They were cheap!).

Fortunately for me, the store was closing so I only ended up with those three
books.

Now only if I can avoid going by there tomorrow evening …

[1] http://www.switchboard.com/Book_Stores-Used_and_Rare/Boca_Raton/FL/102071677-53/Boca_Raton_FL_Used_Books/Merchant.html
[2] http://www.fau.edu/
[3] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262580977/conmanlaborat-20
[4] http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/hillis.html
[5] http://mission.base.com/tamiko/cm/cm-image.html
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_Machines
[7] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316004103/conmanlaborat-20
[8] http://www.newyankee.com/about2.shtml
[9] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565122933/conmanlaborat-20
[10] http://www.hgtv.com/

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