Peter, First, congratulations on the new baby; that's wonderful. With two toddlers myself, I remember the sleepless nights, but it does get better <g>.

As for what to learn of SAS, I'll offer a few comments: 1. Find out what your market is -- academic studies? Market research folks? Financial data? Health data? Sales analysis?etc. 2. For each market that seems worth pursuing, determine what unfamiliar technology is commonly needed. 3. See what's available to help you learn those technlogies. When you have an idea of how important they might be to your work, and how difficult or easy they might be to learn, you can establish priorities. 4. The suggestion to learn enough of a few common operating systems to be able to work comfortably makes good sense, if it looks like you may need to work on systems you're not now familiar with. Don't forget to consider other technologies, too, if they seem applicable to the markets you're looking at; for example, a little SQL knowledge together with a cursory familiarity with Oracle or SQL Server might be very helpful for some jobs. 5. Despite all my "know the market" caveats, I'd still suggest it's worth making sure you're comfortable with Base SAS, including features of wide applicability you may not have fully utilized -- e.g. arrays, PROC SQL, macro programming, TRANSPOSE, REPORT, TABULATE, Output Delivery System, etc.; possibly even use of DATA _NULL_ approaches to reporting, depending on how fine a control you want to be able to provide over output appearance. A few suggestions to help with this: Ron Cody's "Professional SAS Programming Logic" provides wide coverage at a higher level than most intro books would offer; Art Carpenter's book on macro programming (at least until Ron comes out with his <g>); a book on SQL (SAS Course Notes, or something like Bowman et al's Practical SQL Handbook); Lauren Haworth's books on ODS and on PROC TABULATE; SAS Inst.'s "Reporting from the Field" collection of SUGI papers on techniques for generating reports. 6. There are a few books out on statistical consulting that might be worth browsing, too -- "The Human Side of Statistical Consulting" comes to mind, but there are two or three others that also looked good. A general book on running a consulting business might be good, too.

Good luck!

Steve Albert Director of Biostatistics Spectrum Pharmaceutical Research Corp. San Antonio, TX SAlbert at SpectrumCRO dot com