My Magazine Addiction

I have a problem that seems to be totally out of control. I went out of town for just four days last week on a business trip. When I returned, I had 9 magazines sitting on my desk waiting to be read. That, of course, would be in addition to the four magazines I bought to read on the plane.

AAAAAGGGHH


I have to admit that I like magazines. Its not just that I write for one (Robot Magazine) but that I like reading them. It does help that several of them are free. Since I'm a chief engineer and make a lot of decisions on R&D, I get people sending me free stuff on desktop engineering, embedded computers, COTS products (Commercial Off the Shelf) and so on. On the personal interest side, I read Flying and Private Pilot and get AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association). Popular Mechanics is just a guilty pleasure, although I wish their articles were longer. And I now get Aviation Week and Space Technology, a truly wonderful publication. To tell you the truth, I rarely read the articles in many magazines I get. But I do look at all of the advertising. As a robot designer, I need a lot of estoeric stuff for my projects -- lately I've been looking at hyperspectrial imaging systems and ground penetrating radar, for example. So I find a lot of my "stuff" advertised in the magazines I read. And a lot of it is only advertised in magazines. So I do get a lot of value and I hope this encourages all those people who send me free magazines to continue and to tell their advertisers that at least one person reads every single ad. Now I just need to summon the will power to not save. every. single. magazine. forever.

I think I'm going to need a bigger... trash can.