>>When Rick came back, I reminded myself not to be my usual somewhat flippant/tongue-in-cheek self and to stay out of religuos discussions.
>>I read his posts as he does know quite a bit on technical matters and certainly is not stupid.
>
>I stay out of religious discussions as such...

I do not engage in religious discussions or debate people. The things I have to say on any such subject matter are only me teaching. I do not debate or argue in any circumstances, but I will answer questions.

We've all been asked (back in 2014) not to discuss anything like that here in public forums, and I'll honor that request. I didn't then, but I will now. And if someone has any questions I'm happy to go to another forum and answer them, or to do so in private message.

>This time I was way behind, because Rick is on my ignore list ever since he heavily insulted me and refused to take it back - so I didn't know what he wrote until it was echoed by others.

I don't know what you're referring to. I cannot remember a single time in my life I've purposefully insulted someone. And the times I have been perceived as doing so, it's not because I've been insulting, but it's because they were insulted by the content I was conveying.

If someone quotes this and you're able to see it, please send me a message and identify what it was I wrote that heavily insulted you. I'm sure there's a non-insulting explanation.

>I do check some of his technical messages, because for some FAQ he has the pretty much same answer as I would give, so I need to know whether I'd be repeating what he said.

I enjoy helping others. It actually brings me the most pleasure in life. I wish my job had more direct interaction with customers because I enjoy being able to help them, to solve their issues, to diagnose and correct their problems. I've actually taken over all data fixes in the job I'm in right now because I get more customer interaction. Everyone else hates data fixes. It's kind of tedious and boring. But, I wrote this nice auto-fix utility where I take a before data set and after data set and then it compares the two using SYS(2007) and SYS(2017) and generates the SQL add/delete/update code to make the before set look like the after set. It handles new iids properly, is able to correlate known data relationships, etc. Very nice. I also have it setup now to be table-driven so it works with more or less any of our applications, and not just those I'm more directly involved with. I've been trying to get our support department to start using it for simple data fixes, but they want us developers to do it. :-)

I get extreme satisfaction out of helping people. And my goals are sincerely to do what's right in this world. I look at honoring other people's interests, whether I agree with them or not, as being part of that, and this is absolutely true in software, and even for Microsoft who I've spent the last 20+ years of my life writing software to directly compete against (an operating system, Visual FreePro, plus other utilities). I loathe what Microsoft has done to software and our societies through their software and business practices, but it's their right to do it, and those people involved will ultimately suffer the consequences for their decisions. All I can do is respond to their actions, which is what I'm doing, and have done, since the mid-90s.