Acknowledgments

This book is the result of the combined efforts of a team of skilled professionals whose work we trust and admire and whose friendship we value highly. Kat Marriner, our wonderful typographer, did the work of two people and did it graciously. She not only refined and produced the graphics but also laid out the complex design, wrestling with problems ranging from limited space to logical arrangement of numbered steps. We appreciate her excellent work. Our dear friend Alice Copp Smith has helped us improve every one of the books we've written. Alice does so much more than proofread and copyedit: Her gentle and witty chiding on countless yellow sticky notes makes us groan (and laugh) but teaches us to write better and, always, to get rid of those danglers! And we are fortunate indeed to be able to work with indexer par excellence Jan Wright, whose index reveals in microcosm the soul of the book. We thank this dedicated and hardworking trio for their exceptional work and their unwavering good humor in the face of grueling deadlines.

At Microsoft Press we thank Lucinda Rowley and Juliana Aldous Atkinson for asking us to write this book, and we thank Kathleen Atkins for her valuable insight and helpful suggestions. Thanks also to Jim Kramer, Sandra Haynes, Victoria Thulman, Bill Teel, and Sally Stickney. We also thank Dan Polivy and Jen-Hung Ho at Microsoft for helping us with the Windows SideShow tools.

Thanks also to the Seattle Audubon Society for allowing us to use images from BirdWeb, their beautifully designed and comprehensive Web site about the birds of Washington State.

We thank, in spirit, Oscar Tschirky, longtime maître d'hôtel at The Waldorf (now The Waldorf-Astoria) in New York City, whose book The Cook Book by "Oscar" of The Waldorf, first published in 1896, is a family heirloom and the source of the sample text in many of our screen shots.

On the home front, we thank our wonderful grandchild, Zuzu, for love, laughter, and many hours of Monopoly, at which she routinely beats both of us and winds up with more money than the bank. We also thank puppies Baiser and Pierre for graciously allowing us to publish their private playlist.

Last but not least, we thank each otherfor everything.