Acknowledgments

First and foremost, this book is for my wife Tina. I could not have done it without her patience, support, and encouragement. She kept me fed and sane, and she even read early drafts of material about which she knows nothing. Now that’s support! She also contributed the Gnome picture in chapter 21 and the bird-watching information and pictures in chapter 2. And I can now recognize the call of the California quail.

Thanks to my parents for their love and support over the years. Yes, I am finally done with the second edition!

Of course, there wouldn’t be a PowerShell book without a PowerShell product in the first place and PowerShell wouldn’t exist without the vision of its chief architect Jeffrey Snover. He was kind enough to do extensive reviews of both editions of the book. The book, like the product, has benefited greatly from his insight and suggestions.

PowerShell v2 would also not have been possible without the continued efforts on the part of Kenneth Hansen, lead Program Manager of the PowerShell team. Kenneth provided most of the day-to-day leadership during the Version 2/Windows 7 release cycle. He continues to be one of the strongest advocates for the customer that I’ve seen at Microsoft.

I’d like to thank the following PowerShell team members who took time to review specific chapters: Jason Shirk, who implemented most (all?) of the advanced function features in v2, reviewed chapters 7 and 8. Refaat Issa and Lucio Silveira, who were responsible for the design (Refaat) and implementation (Lucio) of the ISE, reviewed chapter 15 which covers the ISE.

To all of the MEAP readers and reviewers, many thanks for your feedback. I’ve incorporated as much of it as possible (boy, I make a lot of typos). In particular, I’d like to thank the following: Peter Johnson, Jonathan Medd, Sam Abraham, Andrew Tearle, Keith Hill, Richard Siddaway, Paul Grebenc, Kirk Freiheit, Tony Niemann, Amos Bannister, Jeff Copeland, Marcus Baker, Massimo Perga, Tomas Restrepo, Jason Zions, Oisin Grehan, Kanwal Khipple, Brandon Shell, Bernd Schandl, and Matthew Reynolds. Thanks to all of you for your patience. This book took way, way too long to complete.

Finally, special thanks to all of the people who piled on at the end of the project to finally get it done: Cynthia Kane, my development editor, who is still talking to me (I think), even after all of the missed deadlines; also Liz Welch, Mary Piergies, Tiffany Taylor, and everyone else at Manning who helped get this book out the door. All I can say is thanks, and thanks again.

And more super-special thanks to three of our wonderful PowerShell MVPs who helped enormously with the final reviews. Marco Shaw was the technical proofreader who read the chapters during production. Jeffrey Hicks, a fine author in his own right, helped with the last set of “author” reviews. And Aleksandar Nikolić went above and beyond the call, turning around reviewed chapters stunningly quickly, and then reviewing the reviews! Dude, you’re a lifesaver!