BreakPoint
The start of a new era dawns with The passing of the first Knight.
In this era, with so much of our lives connected through "social media" rather than in the physical world, has the unfortunate side effect of allowing people we consider to be friends, even those we may never have met in person, disappear. And having disappeared, for whatever reason, it is so hard to "find" them in the physical, or is some cases, make them fade. I have considered creating a "in the event of" sealed envelope with passwords and login info so that, heaven forbid, something untimely (or as old as I am, possibly timely) happened, one of mine would be able to 1)notify friends, 2) end my presence on the web. Gloomy thoughts, caused by the recent passing of a "physical world" friend. Also, seeing a lot of doctors, even with them all giving me good (relatively, they say I am no longer 35!) news, has caused me to have "Deep Thoughts"!
Of course, I don't want my "children" to find the envelope before it is time, hate to have them poking around in my "real" life! 😉
Side story: Way back in the early '90s, I was involved in fund raising and organisation for a memorial in my home town for all lives lost at sea. Coming from a fishing village and my father being a fisherman (and being chairman of the Fishermen's association at the time), it was originally thought of as a memorial for fishermen whose lives were lost but whose bodies could never be recovered. It soon became clear that it needed to be extended to all whose lives were lost at sea and whose bodies never had a final resting place.
https://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Ireland/South/Dublin/Howth/photo1431157.htm
The ground the monument is on is consecrated ground. To date, well over 200 people are remembered here.
While the passing of some of the forum greats does not directly compare to this idea, I was wondering if we shouldn't think about some kind of physical representation of all the forum leaders (I don't want to neccessarily limit it to Champions) who have since passed. It would represent in some small way a lasting effect they have had on the LabVIEW community. It seems like such a paltry effort in comparison to the years of effort which went into building the community.
Maybe I'm completely out of my mind, what do others think (about the "monument" and my being out of my mind, if you so wish).
Part of the issue here is that sometimes other LabVIEWers just disappear, for any number of reasons, death being the most extreme (incarceration being high on the list too). Some change jobs where LabVIEW becomes less/un important, some may retire and not hang out here, some, as I have, go through patches where they just don't log on. Unless they have friends in the "real world" that are in contact with them the rest of the community might never know.
As to a wiki, well most of those dwelling here don't have a full bio available to fill in the info, and it still doesn't address the issue of the MIA ones for which we are left in doubt.
In my pretty long time on this and the preceding forums and boards I have seen a number come and go, have known why for some, have known some with serious illness that I assumed had passed, for them to suddenly show back up after a long time. It is just painful to wonder and worry about people we have argued with, joked with, kudoed, when they suddenly aren't there.
Another who hasn't posted since 2014, but visited the forums in February of 2018 is Chilly Charly (chilly_charly) our subterranean frog.
