One Last Thing-Humor

You’ve probably noticed by now that this chapter is written with a fairly light tone. After all, I’m a geek, so my wife usually doesn’t find the jokes I tell to be funny, right? (I’m being ironic actually and using “my wife” as a literary device here, but please don’t tell her in case she’s offended by this usage.) (More irony.)

OK, so maybe I’m not the most slapstick kind of guy. And why add humor, anyway, to a serious book about a serious product developed by a serious company like Microsoft? Well, apart from the fact that Microsoft can poke fun at itself sometimes (search the Internet for the “Microsoft IPod” video and you’ll see what I mean), the main reason I’ve tried to use humor is to better engage you, the reader. Yes, you’re an IT pro, a geek, and you read manuals all day long and get your kick out of finding errors in them. Well I am too-my father used to tell me a story about how, when I was in high school, he came down to see me in my room one evening and found me “reading a calculus textbook and chuckling in a superior way” about something I was reading. I can’t remember that particular incident, but I do recall getting a laugh over some of the textbooks I had to read in university. Such is the curse of being a geek.

And, hopefully, that describes you as well-because if you’re the totally wound-up and straight-laced type, you’re probably in the wrong business if you’re an IT pro. Software doesn’t always do what it’s supposed to do, and it’s usually best just to laugh about it and find a workaround instead of taking it out on the vendor.

Anyway, I’m telling you all this just so that you’re aware that I’ll be adding the occasional joke or giving lighthearted treatment to some of the features and enhancements discussed in this book. In fact, at one point I even thought of trying to add a Dilbert cartoon at the start of each chapter to set the stage for what I wanted to tell you concerning each feature. Unfortunately, I eventually abandoned this plan for three reasons:

• Reason #1: I had to write this book in a hurry so that it could be published in time for TechEd while still being based on builds as near to Beta 3 as possible. So, unfortunately, there was no time to wade through the red tape that Microsoft Legal would probably have required to make this happen.

• Reason #2: My project manager didn’t have the kind of budget to pay the level of royalties that United Feature Syndicate, Inc., would probably have demanded for doing this kind of thing.

• Reason #3: Scott Adams probably uses a Mac.