Writing a book is an interesting experience. It is equal parts delight and drudgery. I love writing, most of the time, and get real joy out of explaining something in such a way that others can understand it, learn from it, and go on to solve real-world problems. However, since I don't know everything, there's a lot of grunt work that goes into getting the facts straight and explaining concepts that I only recently learned myself.
Additionally, there are all the mechanics of taking my various text files and conglomerating them into the stack of pages that you now hold. For that part of it, I cannot claim any credit. If anything, I have hindered the process as much as I possibly could by a variety of means, from insisting on using a document format that none of the editorial staff was familiar with, to consistently having too many things going on to meet any of my deadlines.
For assistance in this part of the process—for helping with the mechanics of putting together a book—I'd like to thank the following people.
Ken and Matt, thanks for twisting my arms until I consented to learn LaTeX, and then assisting me in making documents look like I actually wanted them to.
My coauthors, Daniel and Allan, came on board rather late in the game, after I started to realize exactly how far I was in over my head, and bailed me out. You are both great assets to the Apache project, and I deeply appreciate your help on this book.
Scott, thanks for always showing up at conferences and buying me dinner.
Heather and Jennifer and Shelley, thanks for dragging me through the process. Although I am writing this before the process is actually complete, you each have kept me motivated to keep moving, and I'm sure that you'll continue to do so. I'll try not to frustrate you too much. Thanks for trying to learn LaTeX, for putting up with the arcana involved in converting it to useful formats, and for going along with my insistence that it really is the best way for me to convert my ideas to something printable.
Carlos and Patrik, thanks for the helpful comments as we worked through the text. Elizabeth and Chip, thanks for your great job of helping me say what I meant in grammar that would not cause my high school English teacher to make disparaging remarks about Americans.
Joshua Slive, your involvement in the Apache documentation has really helped to make it a single cohesive document, rather than just a collection of documents that happen to be distributed together. It is a pleasure to work with you, and I hope that I'll be able to contribute more in the future.
To all the other folks on the apache-docs mailing list, especially Bill Rowe, thanks for handling my sporadic barrages of questions and always providing helpful and insightful answers.
I'd also like to thank some other folks, who, although they had nothing to do with the actual process of putting this book together, were nevertheless invaluable to me while that process was ongoing.
Chad, thanks for being so understanding as I traipsed around the country, and around the world, to a variety of conferences at which you believed I was learning more about Apache.
To the wonderful folks at Coffee Times, in Lexington, thanks for always remembering my daughter's name, even when you don't remember mine. Thanks for our table in the corner, where Sarah can play tea party with her Daddy. And even though you are not running Apache on your Web site (http://www.coffeetimesinc.com/) you are still some of my favorite people.
To the folks on #perl, thanks for offering just the right amount of support, and just the right amount of heckling, when I needed it. May each and every one of you finally get your pony.
srl, Skud, LotR, and the other folks on the Reefknot team (http://www.reefknot.org/), thanks for a refuge in other interesting projects when this one started to make me crazy (which was at least a few times a week). Hopefully, now that this book is on paper, I'll have a chance to fix some of the bugs that I introduced.
Ken Rietz, Wes Sheldahl, David Pitts, Dean Thomsic, Loren Lang, and a variety of other TM3 folks: Thanks for being my guinea pigs, reading the manuscript over my shoulder as I wrote it, and providing helpful feedback. The TM3 advisory board extends its blessing to you.
And, finally, to my wonderful little girl, Sarah. You are the most important part of my world. It's all for you.