big nerd ranch

Bret was telling me today that he's thinking about taking a class on LAMP, which reminded me of the geek cruises and the Big Nerd Ranch. Now I badly, badly want to go to the five-day objective-C and Cocoa class at the Big Nerd Ranch. While my employer would probably pick up some educational expenses, I don't think they'd be into paying $5k for me to learn the skills for my next job. Don't get me wrong here; I love working at Laszlo Systems and I've got no plans to go anywhere else. But there usually is a next job, sooner or later, and I want to write mac software. Just as soon as I master lzx, photoshop, and settle down to a single text editor.
UC Berkeley Extension doesn't seem to have really LAMP-specific courses, although this one on XML & Web Services sounds good.
As a clueful client-side geek who can sort of scramble by on the server-side, how can I best help a brilliant friend learn what he wants to know about internet architectures?