The SO and I were ambling the Castro yesterday. We stopped by the Eureka Valley Library.

I picked up Nick Hornby's Songbook. One of my work-related resolutions (I'm unsure to label it a New Year's or a fiscal year 2007 first quarter one) is to finally get my C++ to a respectable level (it is, at present, piss poor).

So I went to the card catalog terminal, looking for an good book on the topic. There was one. I clicked on it, looking for it's physical location (please, oh please be here). There wasn't one. It was one of those... e-books.

The UW had a subscription to Safari Books Online, which was nice. As long as you logged in with a campus IP, you had access to all of the Safari books.

But the San Francisco Public Library has a subscription. And you can access the books from your own computer, from home, by typing in your library card number.

Oh, San Francisco. Your government leaders might be squabbling and ineffective, your public schools sub par, and your public transportation sparse and unpunctual.

But kudos on free tech books for the citizenry. Seriously.