Hi John,

I wanted to personally thank you for your outstanding service on the past few versions of Visual FoxPro and your continued commitment and devotion to this great Fox community. It was a pleasure to work with you despite our political differences <g>. I suspect you might not get a response from Microsoft on this one, although I know many folks there really appreciated your work on the product.

I don’t think folks in the community realize all the challenges faced with delivering and supporting a world-class product like Visual FoxPro. Add to that the personal challenges that you faced during the past few years many of which I was not aware of, and I know that folks will be appreciative of all your hard efforts.

BTW, great opening quote from one of my favorite movies. Your message also reminded me of another favorite quote from the movie Wall Street which I am sure you faced a number of times these past few years:

“A man looks in the abyss, there is nothing staring back at him. At that moment he discovers his character. That keeps the man out of the abyss.”

I guess we all have choices to make and sometimes they are hard ones, but if you can wake up in the morning, feel proud of yourself – and know that you may have made a difference to someone, it is all worth it even if it means making personal sacrifices. I hope you will remember the many fun times we had (I know Richard will miss our daily pilgrimages to one of Seattle’s best kept coffee secrets <g>).

Good luck with your future endeavors….

Randy