Kevin,

>On J.C., I've learned a substantial amount of information from his books - some of which I've (almost) committed to memory. However, his conduct on the newsgroups is, well, a different story.

I agree that Joe's books are very useful. BTW, I'm reading a very good book by Ken Henderson, "The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL" (Addison-Wesley), which is full of practical solutions to tricky T-SQL scenarios. I'm studying Ken's various approaches to hierarchical data right now.