The "I" you see in these pages is mefor better or for worse, I came up with this series, and am thrilled to be able to bring one of the first books in the series to you. But, that leads me to the enormously talented group of folks who made that possible.
There was a time when I loved writing acknowledgements, because I got to thank everybody involved in helping me get through another book. Of course, now I realize that there are so many people I forget to thank, that I'm a little scared...I guess that's the Oscar-acceptance-paranoia working itself out. In any case, any book such as this truly is a tremendous effort by a ton of people, and I couldn't go without at least trying to name most of them.
To Mike Loukides, who edits most of my books (this being the exception), and Mike Hendrickson, who's just all-around smartthanks for paving the way for these new, inventive, cool little notebooks. I think you've done the programming world a real service with them. I need to thank David Flanagan for doing all the heavy lifting; the Sun folks, especially at CAP, for letting me see JDK 1.5 early on; and guys like Hans Bergsten, Bruce Perry, Bob McWhirter, and Steve Holzner for writing good books and letting me spend less time editing than I deserve to.
Finally, in trying to keep things brief (you'll think I'm funny because of that, right?), I owe the biggest debt to my family, as is always the case. My wife, Leigh, only gripes occasionally when I'm working at 9:00 at night. Of course, that's mostly because she's exhausted from chasing the two bits of inspiration I have; my older son, Dean, and my younger son, Robbie. When you guys can read, you'll see your names here, so thank the readers for the college fund, OK?