Oh, one other thing. I read "Soul of a New Machine" back when the book was new. A few years later, in 1986, I joined a company where there was a manager by the name of Carl Alsing. I didn't recall the name until somebody told me that Carl was one of the players in that book. So I went back and reread the book and I was really impressed by Tracy Kidder's writing. When he described Carl in the book, his description was really great and captured many aspects of Carl's personality in just a few words. It gave the rest of the book much more credibility to me. ----- Jim Battle == frustum(a)pacbell.net