I’ve been a fan of Nintendo and its content since I first played Super Mario Brothers in a 7-11 back in the 80’s. I slaved over my Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988 to master Super Mario to such a degree that I could play through the entire game without warps, all on one life. I was awed by The Legend of Zelda, subscribed to Nintendo Power for the free copy of Dragon Warrior, and made Contra my bitch after months of practicing with the aid of the infamous Konami Code.

Another free book giveaway? What, am I running a library here? Well, it turns out Packt liked my review of Instant PostgreSQL Starter so much, they want me host a short period where you can obtain your very own copy for the low, low price of $0. To those ends, I have a few brand new digital copies comprised of shiny premium electrons ready to dispense to three lucky commenters. Does that sound good?

Hmmm… maybe I should reconsider rebooting my server until tomorrow. Stupid maintenance…

As a newly minted Packt author, it makes sense that I might get a request to review one of their books from time to time. On this particular occasion, I have the opportunity to give a look at Instant PostgreSQL Starter by fellow PostgreSQL user and author Daniel K. Lyons. I’ll be straight-forward with a giant caveat that I’m not the target audience for this booklet. I tried to read with the perspective of a new user since we’ve all been there once, but please bear with me if I break character.

It occurs to me I forgot to congratulate the winners of the free ebooks. So without further ado: SAB, who seems to host a nice blog geared toward server administration. Stephan, who’s looking to improve existing strategies. Jeff and his growing PostgreSQL cluster. Pierre, who apparently has an experimental PostgreSQL backend for MySQL. Interesting. Congrats to the winners. But more, I call upon them to pay it forward by contributing to the community, either by corresponding with the excellent PostgreSQL mailing lists, or maybe submitting a patch or two to the code.