Acknowledgments

Thank you especially to all of the people at Sybex who have been so supportive, friendly, and professional with me in the years I have been writing for this superb publisher. Neil Edde—thank you for taking a chance on me years ago and for being patient with me over the years. You are and always will be the man. I hoist a virtual glass of ’00 Bordeaux in toast to you my friend.

Thank you as well to everyone on the staff who worked with me in some way on this book: Pete Gaughan, Mariann Barsolo, Kim Wimpsett, Eric Charbonneau, and Richard Hauck. Gentle spirits, amazing people all. Books are not written by one person but by teams who help authors make sense out of what they’re doing and saying. Without you, it would not have been possible.

I would also like to thank my family: my wife, Kim, and my son, daughters, and granddaughters. When you are writing a book, there are lots of times you have to “put your family on ignore.” Fortunately for me, my wife is the author of the Project Management Professional (PMP) Study Guide—a long-running Sybex best seller—so she gets it when the headphones go on and I’m checked out into the virtual world of letters and sentences. But when your kids come to the door for Thanksgiving dinner and your wife has to answer because you’re getting that last sentence knocked out, well, that takes extra patience from your loved ones. And that’s what they demonstrate day in and day out.

Thanks also to my students, who have unwittingly been the fodder for many of the ideas in this book. “Just in time curriculum development” means that you have an idea while you’re driving to school for the day that will hopefully entice your kids into wanting to delve more into the world of technology. All of the examples in this book were used in the classroom before they made it into this book. They’re tried and tested, mmm good. A big hats off to one of my students—nicknamed Ginger—for his odd and strangely beautiful gift for design. He was the inspiration for the cow abduction section of this book.