Friday was my last day at Microsoft. It was a bitter-sweet moment for me having been there for 3 years and feeling I've done my best to contribute to the web initiatives at this wonderful company. After chatting with my manager Jeff Sandquist, though, I realized that I wasn't moving in the direction that I wanted and needed a change. It had nothing to do with the company and especially not my peers. I've been so fortunate to work with such an amazing, passionate and intelligent group of people, by far the best I've ever worked with...ever. And the things I've experienced, the work I've done and the places I've been have all made my time at MS completely worthwhile. It was one of the best decisions of my life to work at the greatest software company in the world. But I really needed to chase my passion and Microsoft wasn't filling that need for me.

So starting today, I'm going to do just that. It could be that I just turned 45 but I don't want to look back and live a life of regret for not chasing that dream and working in the technology which is my passion...<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_(programming_language)">Clipper</a>.

I've realized that this "web" thing is getting stale and people are losing interest in it. It's all about the desktop again and I want to make sure I'm on top of this new wave. I got my start programming Clipper and remember how powerful it was for building apps and I know it's gonna be the comeback technology of the next 5 years. Features like t-browse, .dbf files, and the dBase syntax make it so incredibly powerful and an obvious choice for the next wave of immersive and scalable experiences. And I'm stoked because it looks like I can still snag a copy of the <a href="http://www.funcky.com/Start.Asp">Funky lib</a> for Clipper! Even <a href="http://www.appsolutions.com/Classy/">Class(y)</a> is free now! Open source FTW!

Thankfully, Amazon shows 8 used copies of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Clipper-5-Version-5-01/dp/0201570181/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364784335&sr=1-1&keywords=clipper+programming">Programming in Clipper 5</a> and I scored a copy of the Clipper 3.5" disks on eBay so I should be good to go as soon as I buy a 3.5" floppy for my desktop. Also, it's badass that I won't need to worry about complex OSes like Windows, OSX or Linux anymore. I can finally pop in my MS-DOS 4.01 disks and get back to the <strong>REAL</strong> terminal, not that fake stuff in those overpriced PCs everyone's been buying lately! The great thing is that with PCs being as powerful as they are, I no longer have to worry about configuring himem.sys or emm386.exe to get as close to 640k as possible. Booyah!

I'm still going to keep some systems using Windows 8 and OSX around since I plan on using Clipper to build both Win8 and iOS apps. I may also write a Clipper lib to interface with Google Glass. MS-DOS in eyewear; huzzah! I'm sure I can link to them via an RS-232 cable or something.

I just want to close out in thanking all of my buds like <a href="https://twitter.com/rainypixels">@rainypixels</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/allenjs">@allenjs</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/jeffsand">@jeffsand</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ClintRutkas">@ClintRutkas</a> for being supportive of my decision and for <a href="https://twitter.com/shanselman">@shanselman</a> for bringing me into the fold. You guys have been awesome.

My new company name will be called "I'm Seriously Not Crazy Enough to do This, LLC.".

Wish me luck!