Paul Lomax is the author of Learning VBScript and VB & VBA in a Nutshell (published by O'Reilly & Associates), and technical director of Mentorweb, a leading web design and hosting company. Over the past two years Paul has created and maintained over 60 commercial web sites for Mentorweb's clients. He is also the driving force behind Shop@ssistant, a new NT/ASP based high-end shopping cart/web commerce server. He has been a programmer for over 12 years and has been a dedicated fan of Visual Basic since Version 1. Paul has written systems for financial derivatives forecasting, satellite TV broadcasting, and the life insurance industry; and he's written a major materials tracking system for the oil and gas industry. He is also responsible for the concept, design, and programming of the successful Contact series of national business databases. When not in front of a keyboard, Paul can usually be found behind the wheel of a racing car competing in events around the UK. Paul and his family--wife Deborah and children Russel and Victoria--have recently returned to their home in England after several years in the Arabian gulf. Matt Childs is a vice president with Integrity Solutions Inc., one of Alaska's leading custom software development companies. Matt is responsible for overseeing all in-house development, and over the past year has worked with the State of Alaska and Alaska's two largest telecommunications companies. Matt has worked in the information technology field for nine years, and has been a VB programmer since Visual Basic 3. During most of his early career, Matt was an information technology manager for a large transportation company, where he developed custom software solutions and systems integration for the company's largest clients. Matt has industry experience with utilities; express transportation; and chemical, petroleum, and retail companies. In the winter, Matt spends his free time with his telescope, and during the long Alaska summer days, he enjoys playing softball and spending time with his family. Matt, his wife LeAndra and their daughter Meghan recently returned to Anchorage, Alaska, after spending some time in the southern United States. Matt is also a fiction writer and a freelance journalist. Ron Petrusha began working with computers in the mid '70s, programming in SPSS (a programmable statistical package) and FORTRAN on the IBM 370 family. Since then, he has been a computer book buyer, editor of a number of books on Windows and Unix, and a consultant on projects written in dBASE, Clipper, and Visual Basic. Ron also has a background in quantitative labor history, specializing in Russian labor history, and holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Columbia University.
