J. Robert Brown, a midwestern native, has been involved in computer problem solving for nearly 20 years. His introduction to the X-Window system came shortly after its release from MIT in the mid-1980s. This introduction turned to passion and has taken him to three continents and a dozen countries where he has instructed, developed, and debugged in C, C++, Java, X-Windows, Motif and system management. As a computer scientist for Los Alamos National Laboratory, he continues to work, travel, and write from his home in New Mexico. He can be reached at brownj@staff.juno.com.