Acknowledgments

No author can create a book of this scope working alone—the number of people who come together on a project like this is amazing. An author agrees to write a book, and as the process begins, people start coming out of the woodwork to help. It’s a lot like the Microsoft Office Assistant: “Hey! It looks like you’re writing a book! Want some help? How about some great graphics for the part openers in your book? This heading would be great if it was in a gerund form!”

At Microsoft Press, I’d like to thank Danielle Bird for asking me to write this book. Danielle, I promise to stop hounding you for an Xbox console. I’d also like to thank Dick Brown, who is doomed to a life of trying to get authors like me to hit deadlines. I’m sure Dick is happy to see the last bits of this book cross his desk. Jennifer Harris was responsible for turning my geeky text into readable English sentences. Jennifer, I’m sorry about forcing you to read my long-winded digression on the significance of the Battle of Agincourt. Thanks to Donnie Cameron and Julie Xiao for their excellent work as technical editors. I’ve never been so thoroughly reviewed and cross-checked. Thanks for your diligence and support.

A big thank you to the other authors, who provided me some much-needed help: Brad Jones, Brad Wist, Mike Pope, and Christoph Wille. Thanks, guys.

Thanks to the people I work with at Interactive Software Engineering and .NET Experts in Santa Barbara: Bertrand and Annie Meyer, Raphael Simon, Manu Stapf, and Bill Navickas. Thanks for working around my schedule and for providing a great place for me to train and consult with other developers. Special thanks to Hal Webre, my training cohort at .NET Experts. Hal kept me well supplied with CDs and cookbooks. While we were at the ACM SIGCSE conference recently, Hal took me out for Cincinnati-style chili, which was interesting, but why it’s called chili is beyond me.

And it’s not just to the people who deal with me professionally that I owe thanks. Thanks to my sister, Jennifer, and her husband, Mitch, for providing a base where I could write while I was in San Diego, as well as for scheduling new additions to their family around my book writing timetable.

And finally, thanks to my daughters, Ali and Mackenzie, for remembering what I look like. And thanks to my wife, Rene for being far more patient than I deserve. Next year we’re definitely going to Banff.