Acknowledgements

For Frans van de Pol, who taught me the basic principles of batch scripting.

For Neil J. Rubenking, whose User-to-user column in Ziff-Davis' PC Magazine convinced me that, except math, one can do almost anything with DOS batch files.

And for Tom Lavedas, for convincing me that even real math can be done in batch files.

For Laurence Soucy and Bill James, who taught me more on batch scripting, and helped me make these web pages more accessible.

For René Engelbart, whose enthusiasm inspired me to dig deeper into distant memories of batch files and to dive into Windows NT 4 Terminal Server and NT shell scripting.

For Adriaan Westra, who helped me make my first steps in KiXtart and in unattended installations.

For Alex K. Angelopoulos for helping me to get started on Windows Script Host and VBScript.

For my wife, Marja van Oosterom, who had to miss me during so many nights when I was upstairs creating these pages.

For my son Bas, whose simple, straightforward questions kindled new ideas and solutions, and who often helps me translate my Dutch texts to English, and got my CSS and JavaScript code working.

For my father, who was the first in our family to explore the possibilities of home computers, at a time I still thought they were a hype that would soon pass.

For Mr Stevens, my high school math teacher, who made me realise math could be fun, and encouraged "out of the box" thinking.

For Tim van Dijk, who gave me the opportunity to make a living out of what had only been a hobby up till 1990. And for the - literally - thousands of colleagues during the years that followed.

For Brian Havard, creator of File Commander, the program I use to create and maintain my batch files as well as these pages.

For Joan Murray, Editor with Addison-Wesley Professional, and Don Jones, author of (amongst many others) Windows Administrative Scripting Unleashed: Using VBScript, WMI, and ADSI to Automate Windows Administration. Having me review the manuscript for this book taught me more about VBScript than I would have thought possible.

For the many authors of the books, articles, help files and web pages I read on Rexx, HTML, JavaScript, shell scripts and batch files, and operating systems.

For the creators of all the great tools I used to create and maintain this site.

For the many programmers at IBM, Microsoft and all over the world who made it all possible in the first place.

Zaandam (Netherlands)    
January 3, 2009    
Rob van der Woude