Acknowledgments

     First, we would like to thank No Starch Press. Without them, this book would
never have been imagined, much less published. In particular, we’d like to
thank our editor, Tyler Ortman, who had the thankless tasks of making us
write and cutting our dumb jokes. We’d also like to especially thank Rami
Rosen, who provided us with an excellent technical review; Jeanne Hansen,
our long-suffering copyeditor; and Bill Pollock, who paid for it all (and who
made sure we actually finished it). And to everyone else on No Starch’s team:
we couldn’t have done it without you. It was a humbling experience to see so
many people scrutinizing our work, and the book is much, much better for it.
     We also want to thank all the people who worked on prgmr.com during
its checkered history. Without help from many skilled people willing to
work at below market rates, the company would have folded long ago. So,
heartfelt thanks go to Thuy Vu, Neal Krummell, Will Crawford, and Nick
Schmalenberger, and to everyone else who has worked here for shorter
periods of time. Neal deserves a special mention. Aside from introducing
Chris and Luke, Neal provided encouragement and help during the critical
early phases of the project.
     Maybe most of all, we want to thank the customers of prgmr.com for
giving us a lab with real users to test all this stuff.
     Chris would like to add:
     And to Alan, Chris, Ian, and Ken: The book’s done now, so stop teasing
me about it. Thanks for the encouragement, everyone.
     Luke’s personal acknowledgments:
     I want to thank my dad. (Sorry you got beat out for the dedication.
I’m sure you understand.) Without his encouragement, my natural entrepreneurial
spark would never have developed into the flaming inferno it is.
And I want to thank my other dad, too. When I make fun of enterprise
software, I compare it to stuff I wrote with my stepfather’s copy of FoxPro
when I was 14.
     And extra thanks to Paul Vixie, who both gave me my first real job and
agreed to write the foreword for this book: If I’m a good sysadmin today, my
time at MAPS has quite a lot to do with that.