San Diego 2001: Tom knew he was sick but he looked normal and just blew it off and that's probably why none of us can remember what the problem was. He had the 1000 yard stare and was a lot more reticent than normal but, honestly, it was my first conference as a Softie and I was nervous and inattentative.

Different with Ed; Ed kvetched for years so it was hard to know when he had a serious problem because every problem was seemingly serious. You just figured that was the way it was going to be until, suddenly, his sister is emailing us and telling us he passed away at his desk one night. Answering UT questions to the end, no less.

Drew is a whole 'nother matter. The last time I saw Drew was at the 2005 Advisor DevCon in Las Vegas. His son was there, as usual, and I remember seeing Drew and his son playing catch (I think) outside before he came into a speaker get-together (or dinner?) in, like, a poolside lounge or something. I don't recall anything unusual about their behavior. Seemed typical Drew and, as I called his son, Mini-D. Others knew him better than me and are in a better position to judge.

As to Tom, the girl's first name began with "T", right? Yeah, he would fixate over those pictures, on reflection, I remember him showing some pictures in SD. When you think about it, there was something poignant about that fixation and it really didn't have a weird feeling at all.

I went to a mini-conference today, the Atlanta MSDN Developers Conference (see my blog at gonzmax.blogspot.com for details). There were 300 or so attendees and, of those, 1 person knew me and 3-4 recognized my name but didn't know from where. Of those who couldn't quite place me when VFP was mentioned they looked at me like I was a living dinosaur. A couple of them didn't even know that there was a VFP past version 6.

Maybe I'm off on a rant but that really bothered me. It's bad enough that the Fox community is in decline and that we'll never again have an 1800 attendee conference but are we dinosaurs? Sure, some of us are. A friend of mine recently nicknamed me "The Lion in Winter". I like that because it means that when the thaw comes I'll come roaring out. Maybe. What's our average age now? 50 or so? Can some of us come roaring out and prove we're still the best doggone developers out there? I hope so.


>>I honeymooned in London and Inverness, Scotland. Unfortunately I caught viral pneumonia heading out there so most of the honeymoon was a wash.
>
>Well, that sure put a damper on things, didn't it?
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>>Tom....I also miss Tom. He was seriously chasing skirt in New Orleans for the DevConnections conference in 2000. He was fixated on this one girl, name withheld, but nothing ever came of it. Tom seemed more a romantic - he would see a girl he liked and then focus on her the rest of the conference. But he never was rude or forward. A true romantic.
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>I know her first name, can't remember her last. Tom talked about her incessantly once the conference was over. I'd go over to his house for dinner and he'd pull out a bunch of pictures from the conference (sighing over the pics of her). Yeah, a true romantic, I agree.
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>>The last time I saw him alive was in 2001 in San Diego for that ill-fated conference that just happened to be run when 9/11 occurred. I sat with Tom and offered to buy hm a drink but he refused and just drank water. He was trying to change himself. He wasn't the normal Tom; I dunno, maybe he knew something was wrong.
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>I think he had been sick, but I don't remember much about it now. He did some contract work for our company a month or two after that San Diego conference and so he was frequently up at our office in WA. I remember remarking to him something about his having lost a lot of weight, but didn't even stop to think at the time that it might have been because he'd been sick.
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>>Several weeks before Advisor DevCon 2002 he emailed me and, to make a story short, was going to be my roommate since my room was paid for and his finances were tight. He passed away a few weeks before the conference.
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>>That's it, now I've depressed myself thinking about Tom, Ed, Drew......
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>Yes, it can be depressing. But remembering the good times makes me smile and helps me to get past that. =0)
>
>~~Bonnie