SquawkBox 3 released less than two days ago and as of now, over 6200 different people have tried the software. While reading through and responding to the posts in the technical support forum has been daunting, the relatively small number of problems that have come up has been really encouraging!
Thank you to everyone that has sent words of thanks and congratulations--it means a lot to me. In a little while you will have the opportunity to direct this good will to benefit a charity that helps those much less fortunate than all of us. Stay tuned for more on that.
I want to take this chance to thank a few people.
Thank you to all the excellent beta testers. Their tireless hours flying with half-working software and doing countless re-installations really helped make SquawkBox 3 all the better.
Thank you to the folks at VATSIM who have helped support the release of SquawkBox 3 on their network. Richard Critz, Richard Jenkins and George Marinakis in particular were very active in making the release process go smoothly.
Thank you to everyone that has helped answer questions on the forum since SquawkBox 3 has released. It has been a very difficult task just keeping up with all the postings so I could definitely not have done this alone.
Thank you to all the users and volunteers on the network that make this hobby into something special. I got involved with this development because I thought online virtual ATC was about the coolest thing I had ever seen. I still feel that way and am looking forward to getting back to flying myself!
Finally, thank you to my wife and kids for putting up with my at times unhealthy obsession with finishing this software. People always e-mail thanking me for my work and sacrifice, but in reality this is pretty fun for me. The real sacrifice has come from my longsuffering family. If you want to thank my wife, her e-mail address is wife@squawkbox.ca.
Lastly I want to offer a small admonition: enjoy the software, but please don't take this hobby too seriously. It's a game after all and it's meant to be fun. Play nicely with others and try to do your part to give to the community as much as you take from it.
Cleared for takeoff!
Posted by Joel at March 26, 2005 06:45 PM