Matt Paliulis is the KaiNexus Chief Technology Officer. Over the years, he has worked for Price Waterhouse, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and IBM as a data warehousing and business intelligence consultant, where he bridged the gap between business process and IT.  Matt has been a part of numerous successful projects at Fortune 500 companies in the financial services sector, creating and integrating software to solve business problems. We asked him to share what he’s been reading this week. Enjoy!

As the CTO of KaiNexus, most of my days are spent immersed in technology.  From backup and recovery strategies, performance tuning and debugging, to planning the next version of KaiNexus, my days are a computer nerd’s fantasy and English major’s nightmare.  The most recent focus of my work related learning has been researching everything about the various tools, platforms, languages, and frameworks in preparation for the start of development on KaiNexus 2.0.  Rather than sharing the technical blogs and publications that I’ve been pouring through, here are some of the other books I’ve been spending time with.

Poor Charlie’s Almanack

Charlie Munger, the Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, modeled this book after ‘Poor Richard’s Almanac’ by Benjamin Franklin. This book is an excellent blend of philosophy, business and investment strategy, ethics, and common sense. There are few books that will open your mind to new ways of thinking in a way that this one does. When someone famous for answering eager investors by simply stating, “I have nothing to add.” chooses to speak, it is wise to listen. 

The Happiest Baby on the Block

After recently becoming a new dad I have distilled my knowledge of why a baby may be upset into four reasons: 1) Baby is hungry. 2) Baby needs to be changed. 3) Baby needs to burp. 4) Any reason under the sun including too hot, too cold, too bright, too dark, inflation, the internet running out of IP addresses, or sun spots. My wife bought this book and reading it has helped decipher and explain #4.

Rework

I read this book a long time ago, but it has a permanent place on my desk. It is written in small manageable chunks that each address a different topic, which are perfect if you have 5 minutes to kill. It is an excellent compilation of business and life philosophies that challenge conventional wisdom, or provide a new way of looking at something. Not many books encourage you to emulate a drug dealer, pick a fight, or say no to customers - this one does.

Manual for Water Cooler model 8LIECH-SC-SSD

Why on earth would anyone read this? Well, we needed a water cooler for our office and I recently bought two used/slightly broken ones from Craig’s List. The hot water worked on one and the cold water worked on the other. Having always had an affinity for taking things apart and fixing them, I brought them home, downloaded the manual, and within an hour had a fully functioning water cooler. Perhaps I’ll do another blog post on other random things I’ve taken apart and what I learned from them.