The First Dead-Tree Copy of the Book is Here!

[I know, you must be sick of book-related posts: please bear with me just a bit longer, I think we’re almost done :-)]

[UPDATED]

YES! I just found under the door mat – wait for it – the very first printed copy of Programming Windows Identity Foundation! Considering that exactly today it’s 9 years that I work in Microsoft, I can think of very few better ways to celebrate 🙂

In the picture above I re-created the work setup I used for most of the writing: Visual Studio on the tablet screen, the manuscript in the portrait screen, reference material (specs etc) on the old Relisys from Italy (before you ask: hooked to the tablet via DisplayLink). And of course the whiteboard, with the Enrico la Talpa that I use for christening ALL whiteboards, real or virtual. Ryan and David, please do not add any details about that 😉

The book is slightly thinner than I expected, but I get that feeling for every book: it’s a function of the amount of work they require, the thickness is never enough. The pry bar on the cover is awesome, I can’t believe it was never used before by the Microsoft Press covers team… I feel privileged 🙂

The production guys did a superb job with the illustrations. I was real worried that some would be just too hard to read, but they ended up looking great and perfectly readable even when featuring multiple keys.

OK, the physical copy is here; now the question becomes, when is it going to be there? I.e., when are the printed copies going to be available? I know as much as you in this respect. As silly as it sounds, a couple of weeks ago I bought a copy of the book on Amazon and I’ve been polling the shipments page ever since. I doubt that they fired up the printing machinery and printed just this copy for making me happy, hence I’d consider this a sign that the printed copies are just about to hit the warehouses.

Ahh, I was supposed to still do a couple of things before checking out: but now I think I’ll just get downstairs, open a beer and leaf through this bad boy. I’ve got to enjoy this bliss while that lasts, soon enough I’ll enter the phase in which I’ll be unsatisfied with the way I wrote this and that 🙂

[UPDATE 9/30 – 6:30 PM PST] Not even 30 mins, bliss already over! Found a typo which completely changes the meaning of the sentence. Page 234: “the new version of the protocol is now backward compatible with OAuth 1.0 and is largely based on OAuth WRAP. ” should be “the new version of the protocol is not backward compatible with OAuth 1.0 and is largely based on OAuth WRAP. “