Back in my dark days of graduate school, our department had a fancy Italian espresso machine, grinder, and they'd apparently even hacked the ROMs from the "American" settings to the "Italian" settings (whatever that meant).

I found that getting good espresso was pretty simple, but foaming the milk properly is where the art comes in. My officemate was able to consistently get a solid inch of foam floating above the top of his mug. His technique was all about keeping the steamer head at the very top of the milk, rather than just heating up the whole thing uniformly.

These days, I save espresso drinks for emergencies. One shot of espresso and I'll be wired for the whole day and have trouble getting to sleep.