On Pownce Mason Browne posted this fun little exercise. Gives an interesting look at what people are reading and how things sound out of context.

Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book;
2. Open it at page 123;
3. Find the fifth sentence/ phrase;
4. Blog the next four sentences/ phrases together with these instructions;
5. Don’t you dare dig your shelves for that very special or intellectual book;
6. Pass it forward to six friends.

Here’s mine:

From Dreaming in Code (which was slightly closer than The Little Zen Companion)

“(One programmer posting on a coders’ site wearily put it, ‘The name for my pain is…managers.’) Others accept the value of having good management but run screaming from the prospect of taking on the job themselves.

As the hunt dragged on, Lou Montulli and Aleks Totic suggested a name for their Netscape days. Micheal Toy had been one of a band of employees at Silicon Graphics who left with its founder, Jim Clark, when Clark decided to start a new venture that would turn into Netscape.”

I like the first two lines. It jumps between paragraphs and I think the last thought is basically cut off so it falls a little flat out of context. But yeah. Let’s see what you guys come up with.

6 friends? Where am I going to find 6 friends?!