>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.
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>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.
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>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.
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>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.
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>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.
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>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.
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Using FoxPro? Those who do will by and large only be impressing a dwindling circle of friends and admirers. Most everyone else will react the same way those folks at the conference yesterday did. If they even know FoxPro is still alive it isn't anything they want or need now.

Why did the dinosaurs become extinct? Probably no one knows for sure but certainly one possibility is it was the same way most extinct species did: they failed to adapt.

On the lighter side, or should I say the far side, my favorite theory about the dinosaurs was Gary Larson's in a classic Far Side cartoon. A bunch of dinosaurs are standing around smoking cigarettes (LOL).