Side note: The illustrated portrait of Gates that accompanies this article was done by, drumroll...my dad!

In fact, my pops did the illustrations for the entire series. Microsoft Press was one of his favorite clients back in the day. Growing up, he'd tell me stories of disorganized secretaries at Microsoft sending him awful reference photos, so he'd look up the execs in the phonebook and call them at home. Sometimes he'd get their wives/husbands on the phone, and he'd nicely explain that he was an artist, and would they mind if he borrowed the family photo album? Many fine stories from those cases, too.

Somewhat ironically, my dad never learned how to do art on a computer. Now he's a commercial construction inspector in Seattle.