Before ASP came out, I wrote a DLL to connect IIS to VB5/6 applications. I was also the VB guide on The Mining Company (which became about.com around 1997). Thi

Before ASP came out, I wrote a DLL to connect IIS to VB5/6 applications. I was also the VB guide on The Mining Company (which became about.com around 1997). This was enough of a resume that I was awarded the title MVP for IIS/ASP. I got a watch, notepad and pen. Seemed pretty cool for an 18 year old in smalltown Ontario. Eventually, they announced that VB6 was the end of the line for COM and VB.net was VB in name alone. I was one of about 100 MVPs that signed a petition encouraging MSFT to keep VB moving forward as a parallel product. "No, and stop asking" was the reply. Fast forward a few years, and I saw the original DHH "Build a blog in 15 minutes with Ruby on Rails" video. What I saw didn't even seem possible. I knew that it was going to be a big deal, and the next day my friends and I cofounded the first Rails consultancy in the world circa Fall 2004. This led to my first Mac Mini, and deploying to Linux. Today I only boot into Windows to do VR and hologram stuff. I haven't thought about my MVP certificate in over a decade, but I'm confident that it exists in a box. I'm honestly a little shocked to know that it's been going all this time.