I had a really pleasant surprise yesterday when one of the people who use my software sent me an Amazon gift certificate for $40! This is the first such gift I’ve received from anybody and it was indeed something pleasant and surprisingly gratifying just because of the fact that you know that what you do is appreciated by others 🙂 Von is a Blog user that I got to know a few weeks ago because she had a few questions for me – then I stumbled across her site while going through my site logs – and as I usually do – went over there and noticed that she was having some problems with setting up comments … I’d already walked a few people through the process and so I offered my help and we were able to get it working after some tweaking. I thought nothing of it after that till I received the gift certificate yesterday – so thank you Von 🙂
In fact, Von’s gift made me think of putting up some sort of a Hall of Fame for people who have contributed back in some form or other. Because when I thought about it, I realized that Von’s gift was the first monetary contribution I’ve received, that there are a few more people who’ve given something back in their own way – there’s KuhnDog and Lyon Lym who host the mirror sites for me (they have to pay to keep their sites operating and they give me space on the servers free of charge), there’s sinesolis who’s put in his time to come up with some incredible icons for my apps as well as ideas about how to improve them, there’s John who’s done a lot to get me started with Delphi and continues to give advice and help and last but not least, there’s Jugg who always listens to my coding problems, gives advices, tests an app as soon as it’s ready and is basically a very good friend 🙂 So there are all these people who’ve given quite a bit to me and I feel that they remain unappreciated just because only I know of what they do – so I think I should put up a Hall of Fame for them and I’ll probably get started on it today … just as soon as I finish “Munch’s Oddysee” :p (I’m kidding of course – not about putting up the Hall of Fame, but about waiting till I finish the game <g>)
Speaking of “Munch’s Oddysee”, I spent another day yesterday playing the game and adding to the hint guide I’d started and while I thought I would finish the game by evening, I was proved wrong 🙂 Of course, I needed to take breaks in between to think through how to tackle a particularly tough problem and give my fingers a rest but still I can’t imagine how some of the people who claim to have finished the game in one night on Usenet could have done it – they must have been maniacs! (Or extremely smart – probably the latter since I’m no great shakes in the brains department <vbg>) One thing seems to be sure, a lot of people seem to like the Oddworld game guide I put up because I’ve already had over 70 hits! So I guess I’ll keep on adding to it 🙂
I’ve added links to both the Oddworld guide and the Hall of Fame I was talking about earlier, on the sidebar so that they’ll remain there even after these posts have moved on … 🙂