).I have a lot of people to thank for making this first book a reality. The biggest and most important are my wife, Katy, and son, Danilo. Katy served as my non-technical English editor, reading chapters while having no idea about what she was reading and somehow translating and fixing what she read from Elver to English. They both endured my physical and emotional absence throughout this process, at times encouraging me to keep going when I wanted to quit (did I allude to how hard it is to write a book?). Although at times it looked as if they were more pleased than not that I was locked in my office, their support is what made this project possible.
I also want to thank those at VMware (Chris McCain, Jenny Lawrence, Quang Nguyen) who provided the opportunities that put me on the path to writing this book. I want to thank those at Pearson (Mary Beth Ray, Chris Cleveland) who took a chance on me and provided me guidance along the way to get this done.
Special thanks goes to my editors (Richard Hackman, William Grismore, Jon Hall) for going through the pain of reading my drafts. I know it wasn’t easy, but your feedback was very valuable (well, most of the feedback ).
I want to save the last thanks to those who kept asking me “when is the book coming out?” Every few weeks someone would ask me this, and although I didn’t say it, it was encouraging that someone out there was interested in reading what I wrote. Muchas gracias.