Debra Littlejohn Shinder has lived a somewhat interesting (at least to her) life and she's always had plenty to say about it. The biggest frustration of her life is the fact that it's way too short to do and be everything that she'd like. As a child, she aspired to be an artist for a time, because she loved to draw pictures and make up stories about them. Later, around junior high school (yes, she's so old that it wasn't called middle school back then), she thought about being a doctor or a research scientist when she became fascinated with the idea of bio-engineering, and started a (not very good) novel about recombinant DNA monsters long before Dean Koontz tackled the subject. In high school, her aspirations turned to journalism, and she was editor of the school newspaper and literary magazine. In college, her love of words blossomed into an ability to speak them as well as write them, and her experience on the debate team led her to think about getting into politics, and considered becoming an attorney. She also discovered computers, first in the form of the IBM and Wang word processors, and discovered that she loved playing with them. She still has her ancient Commodore VIC-20, C-64 and original IBM PC (with giant 10 MB hard disk) in a storage closet. Marriage and the birth of her daughter then sent her life off in a whole different direction.

Despite the challenges of being mom to her two great kids, Deb has managed to live many of her career dreams, at least for a while. She worked for a short while as a professional photographer, back in the days when the top of the line Nikon didn't even have a built-in light meter. She soon found that there was more (or at least more stable) money to be made in the legal field, and spent several years as a paralegal - which cured her of the idea of someday going to law school. Then she moved on to public administration, and was City Secretary, Personnel Director and assistant city administrator for a couple of small towns in Texas. In those positions, she saw things that needed changing, and ran for City Council in her hometown. She served two years as an elected official, was appointed Public Safety Commissioner and was exposed to - and fell in love with - law enforcement. She then made the surprising decision (to her family and friends) to go to the police academy, where she graduated as valedictorian of her class. Her (soon to be ex) husband wasn't thrilled with the idea of being married to a cop, and she found herself raising her kids (with a huge amount of help from her own mom and dad) as a single mother.

After working the streets for a while, Deb realized her real talent was teaching others, and spent the next five years doing just that. She worked as a training coordinator and instructor at the North Central Texas Regional Police Academy in Arlington, and taught at the Criminal Justice Training Center at Eastfield College. Then she moved to Little Rock, AR in 1995 when she married her husband, Dr. Tom Shinder, whom she met online. That's when she started to get really serious about her computer hobby. Tom was tired of practicing medicine and Deb was getting burned out on police work, so together they turned their love of computers and technology into a dual mid-life career change, and studied together to earn their MCSEs.

It was the right decision at the right time. They started doing web design and network consulting for small businesses and municipalities, and soon were teaching network engineering classes at Eastfield College, Deb's old "stomping ground". They still teach part-time on occasion and have written five books together and contributed to over twenty others. Deb has written two books on her own, "Computer Networking Essentials" for Cisco Press and "Scene of the Cybercrime" (www.sceneofthecybercrime.com) for Syngress Publishing. Tom is the ISA Server guru and "head perpetrator" of www.isaserver.org. Deb edits the WinXPNews (www.winxpnews.com) and Windows Server Security journal (www.elementk.com). They both contract for Microsoft and have been named MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) by the company for three years in a row. They also contract to provide whitepapers, Web content, product documentation and marketing material for a number of other large and small software and hardware companies, and are invited to speak at technical conferences all over the country. Deb has combined her police and computer expertise to teach and write about computer forensics, and she's fascinated by cryptography and currently specializes in network security technologies and issues.

In addition to her government, police and computer experience, Deb has written fiction, poetry and songs, has delivered 12 babies and assisted at over 30 other births as a midwife's assistant, and loves to read and learn about new things. Some of her interests include Russian history (especially the Romanov period), submarine warfare and Naval operations, home theater, digital photography, bird watching and gourmet cooking (Italian and Japanese). Deb is the luckiest person she knows. She's never won the lottery (yet), but in addition to being born to the best parents in the world and marrying the greatest guy in the world, she was lucky enough to give birth to the two most fantastic kids in the world. Her daughter has been in the Navy for the past ten years, and is currently serving in Afghanistan. Her son is a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas and travels around the country, teaching chess.

Deb and Tom live in their dream house overlooking Lake Ray Hubbard east of Dallas, Texas.

Deb is a political conservative on fiscal issues and a libertarian on most social issues. She enjoys lively debate and regularly annoys both Democrats and Republicans with her views.