Gaston C. Hillar is an Italian and has been working with computers since he was 8 years old. In the early 80s, he began programming with the legendary Texas TI-99/4A and Commodore 64 home computers. Gaston has a bachelor's degree in computer science and graduated with honors. He also holds an MBA, in which he graduated with an outstanding thesis. At present, Gaston is an independent IT consultant and a freelance author who is always looking for new adventures around the world. He has been a senior contributing editor at Dr. Dobb's and has written more than a hundred articles on software development topics. Gatson was also a former Microsoft MVP in technical computing. He has received the prestigious Intel® Black Belt Software Developer award seven times. He is a guest blogger at Intel® Software Network (http://software.intel.com). You can reach him at gastonhillar@hotmail.com and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gastonhillar. Gaston's blog is http://csharpmulticore.blogspot.com. He lives with his wife, Vanesa, and his two sons, Kevin and Brandon.