Looking back even further for a basic grounding, let us not forget:
http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0705041&printmode=true

Very true! :)

That one is an absolute ground-level article.

Side note: I've always tried to be careful when posting code for articles, but on that article, I made several mistakes (mainly stupid copy-paste mistakes from my code samples into the article code)....I got some incredibly nasty emails from 1 person who thought I was completely incompetent....who posted a large handful of separate comments on the site.

(That's always been an issue of mine...I can go up to an article site, post 10 different comments, and it will appear that they came from 10 different people).

But I used that code as the basis for a community presentation that became very popular...once drew over 100 people in a room.