My impressions about 97 things that every programmers should know book

Yesterday I finished 97 things that every programmers should know book in the bathtub (hehe :) ). This is somehow a bit sad thing, because I really enjoyed to read ideas from experienced programmers and the thinking on how add these things to my daily routine.

IMHO this is not a one time read only book and I surely get it from the bookshelf in the future often just to pick a random chapter, because you can't memorize all useful thoughts after the first time. If I have to pick my current (surely changes in the future) top 5 chapters I would list these:

Chapter 82. Test While You Sleep (and over Weekends)

Since long time I felt my PC in the office is wasting the time and money when I'm away. I mean the developer machines are strong enough to help the daily automation with their extra capacity during the absence of their owners. When do my holiday leave, my machine can be switched off to do nothing, but why I can't offer it as a free resource like the Amazons on-demand instances to help my colleagues work with it's extra capacity? My dream is a so automated environment when we can handle ALL available machines in pools and offer them several roles based on their current status.

Algorithmic challenges - if it works thats not enough.

I recently started to solve problems on CodeEval thanks to my colleague's recommendation and suddenly recognized the enjoyment of problem solving. After the boring daily routine it's a really unique and refreshing feeling when your brain starts to warm-up again.
After solving few easy problems I was very proud, because it worked! But I very quickly recognized a serious issue with my code: it just works. I had an input that I transformed to the output and submitted to the site as quickly as possible.
The code was ugly. Really. Like my first Borland Pascal solutions in the high school and I felt some shame for it, so I said to myself: calm down cowboy and think on it what do you want from this? I was already seduced by the world of algorithmic challenges (I don't no why not started it earlier...), but I had no other goals with my code than to fulfill the challenge and I almost missed a good opportunity to learn something.