RLoew (1952 - 2019) has passed away.

[rloew]

I didn't realize that people would find out so soon about my father's passing. I wanted to express my appreciation of the impact he has had for many of you with all his work on Windows. I got to hear about it for years over meals and I never realized how many people found value in his patches.

It is a busy time right now but I did want to clear the air regarding the patches. I would like them to continue to be distributed, for his work to be remembered and to be beneficial to others. So, please, freely distribute what you may have in terms of the work my dad did. When things are more settled, I will see what I can do regarding anything missing he might have had available and whatever relevant material there might be that someone could use to further pursue his work.

[Tommy]

3 hours ago, rloew said:

I didn't realize that people would find out so soon about my father's passing. I wanted to express my appreciation of the impact he has had for many of you with all his work on Windows. I got to hear about it for years over meals and I never realized how many people found value in his patches.

It is a busy time right now but I did want to clear the air regarding the patches. I would like them to continue to be distributed, for his work to be remembered and to be beneficial to others. So, please, freely distribute what you may have in terms of the work my dad did. When things are more settled, I will see what I can do regarding anything missing he might have had available and whatever relevant material there might be that someone could use to further pursue his work.

First off, let me thank you ever so much for coming here to post an update, you have no idea how much it is appreciated.

Second, I personally want to extend my sincerest condolences for your loss, to you and the rest of the family. We truly enjoyed having your dad as part of our community. Heh, my heart actually started racing when I saw his username had posted, thinking that somehow we got a bum steer and he was coming to tell us that he was still alive.

But back to seriousness, we understand that it's probably a very busy time for you and the family and we want you to take all the time you need to grieve and take care of important business. But know that even though we didn't get to meet him personally, he was still a friend around here and we treasured the time we had with him. If I may ever be so brazen, was his passing expected or unexpected? You don't have to answer if you don't want to but it may help some of the hurt that some of us feel and give us some closure.

Again, thank you so much for coming and posting this update for us! It really helps to keep up in the loop of things. I'm sure some of our users will greatly appreciate his work not being lost to the world, especially those who are as diehard Win9x users as your dad was.

[jaclaz]

5 hours ago, rloew said:

I didn't realize that people would find out so soon about my father's passing. I wanted to express my appreciation of the impact he has had for many of you with all his work on Windows. I got to hear about it for years over meals and I never realized how many people found value in his patches.

It is a busy time right now but I did want to clear the air regarding the patches. I would like them to continue to be distributed, for his work to be remembered and to be beneficial to others. So, please, freely distribute what you may have in terms of the work my dad did. When things are more settled, I will see what I can do regarding anything missing he might have had available and whatever relevant material there might be that someone could use to further pursue his work.

If I may, besides the actual value of the patches/programs he made (some or which are simply invaluable) , it was the value of what he taught us (directly or indirectly) that made him a reference point.

Personally - besides and beyond his work -  I always admired his rigour and staightforwardness, qualities that while they should be "default" for engineers, are not at all common.

We will miss him.

jaclaz

 

[schmatzler]

Just to make you aware: The Vogons Community was able to provide some of the software sold on rloew's website in the past.

It has been archived on archive.org so it doesn't get lost:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Rudolph+R.+Loew%22

If you have bought some software still missing there, you can help extending that library. Just make sure to fill the creator field with "Rudolph R. Loew" so it gets added to that list.

I wanted to create a collection, but that's only possible with a minimum of 50 items. So we'll have to make due by going with the creator name.

[Tommy]

8 hours ago, schmatzler said:

Just to make you aware: The Vogons Community was able to provide some of the software sold on rloew's website in the past.

It has been archived on archive.org so it doesn't get lost:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Rudolph+R.+Loew%22

If you have bought some software still missing there, you can help extending that library. Just make sure to fill the creator field with "Rudolph R. Loew" so it gets added to that list.

I wanted to create a collection, but that's only possible with a minimum of 50 items. So we'll have to make due by going with the creator name.

Thank you for the update. I was aware of the compilation a few days ago but I wanted to hold off here until we had official confirmation on the family's wishes on his patches. Since we have gotten the word, we're allowing them to be posted publicly on here. Is there a way to add tags to help those find these easier? I noticed it has to be very specific, so is there a way to add rloew to the package so that if someone happened to search for rloew, it would bring them to the same directory?

[bphlpt]

I hope whoever has them will see that ALL of his programs and patches are uploaded and archived at the archive.org link posted above, both the free and pay ones.  They should all be stored together for easy access.

That the family has graciously encouraged that rlowe's work be preserved and distributed is a truly kind and wonderful thing. Their wish, and his memory, should be respected.

Cheers and Regards

Edited September 27, 2019 by bphlpt

[Dave-H]

I couldn't agree more, a very generous gesture, which will I hope ensure that Rudolph will never be forgotten by the DOS and Windows 98 preservation community.
I have four of his programs, and I will happily provide them if they prove to be missing from the proposed archive.

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

This sh!+ hurts. We lost a pioneer. I will learn and appreciate you guys more. jaclaz and others, I'm truly sorry for our ups and downs. I'm a christian and don't hold ill feelings. I wish we could have help more by knowing the circumstances. The family of rloew, I hope you are blessed abundantly.... I'll forever miss him. Damn!!!!!

[truemaster]

when i see rloew reply at first i was shocked. my deeply condolenses to all your family. his work will be continue to exists eternaly like his memory.

[rloew]

On 9/26/2019 at 1:17 AM, Tommy said:

First off, let me thank you ever so much for coming here to post an update, you have no idea how much it is appreciated.

Second, I personally want to extend my sincerest condolences for your loss, to you and the rest of the family. We truly enjoyed having your dad as part of our community. Heh, my heart actually started racing when I saw his username had posted, thinking that somehow we got a bum steer and he was coming to tell us that he was still alive.

But back to seriousness, we understand that it's probably a very busy time for you and the family and we want you to take all the time you need to grieve and take care of important business. But know that even though we didn't get to meet him personally, he was still a friend around here and we treasured the time we had with him. If I may ever be so brazen, was his passing expected or unexpected? You don't have to answer if you don't want to but it may help some of the hurt that some of us feel and give us some closure.

Again, thank you so much for coming and posting this update for us! It really helps to keep up in the loop of things. I'm sure some of our users will greatly appreciate his work not being lost to the world, especially those who are as diehard Win9x users as your dad was.

I am glad that he had found friends here. I never really knew the extent of all of his Win9x work. My current desktop can still boot into Win9x because of him, although, I haven't in a while.

I would like to try to provide some closure for others so I'll give a timeline of what happened. You may or may not have known that my father had heart issues. He had a mild heart attack in his 40s.

August 19th: Goes in for angiogram, gets fast tracked for triple bypass surgery. He left me a message midday about it and I called him that evening. We discussed the options they gave him and he seemed settled on the bypass surgery.

August 21st: Has the surgery. Gets out of surgery, doctor tells me take he handled it well.

August 24th: First time I was able to contact him on the phone after the surgery. He seemed well but certainly worn-down after the surgery.

August 25th: Had a heart attack (cardiac event). Survived, but apparently it was not a good situation. I was able to talk to him that evening (I think, it could have been the next day). Got the impression that his diabetes and insulin resistance played a major role in the incident.

August 28th: Last night I get to talk to him. I made plans to come down to see him on the 30th.

August 29th: Situation escalates, possible infection/sepsis.

August 30th-September 2nd: He is heavily sedated for the pain. But things seem stable. Not good, but stable. I return home and hope for the best.

September 3-7th: Situation goes back and forth, fluid buildup leads to treatment for infection. Ultimately, the infection is treatable but the sepsis is not.

September 9th: Palliative care nurse contacts me and I go back down that afternoon. Situation is getting worse.

September 10th: Responsiveness to questions during sedation vacation is lost except to pain stimulus. 

September 11th: Taken off of life support. Passes at 1:28pm. 

I hope that helps. I think it has helped me to write it out. I forgot I had the message from him in my voicemail about going to the hospital. My own personal take on it is that complications from diabetes played a major role in his inability to recover but I am not a doctor and it's just my own mind trying to justify the situation. 

[Tommy]

1 hour ago, rloew said:

I would like to try to provide some closure for others so I'll give a timeline of what happened.

Wow, that is quite a timeline you have provided here.

Let me first start out by saying thank you ever so much for posting this and giving those that "knew" him some closure. I know @LoneCrusader will probably appreciate seeing this post as well because he and your dad kept in contact a lot and worked on projects together. I'm glad it also helped to get it off your chest as well, so it benefited all of us in the end.

I still feel very sad over the loss and in time we will all heal but it sounds like he was quite a trooper through the whole thing but unfortunately just wasn't strong enough to come through. But some of us truly liked your father and he was always welcome here. As a small token of our gratitude, we promoted his account that you're using to the patrons group which is reserved for those who have had a special impact here or retired staff members. We know it's not much but it's all we can really offer along with our most sincere condolences.

While you may or may not have much use being here, please be aware that you're certainly most welcome in the community, even if you just want to talk to some of us who were close to your dad. Not a lot of people would have done what you did but I know myself and others will be more at peace with your dad's untimely passing.

Again, thank you ever so much for the update!

[TmEE]

I come back after a bit of absence and what do I find.... this is really upsetting, RIP

[Dibya]

He was a amazing man , Of course a good friend .

It is honor for me that i once worked with him in some project and learned many thing from him. 

He was pioneer in patching OSes beyond their limit .  He was always straight forward which is rare in today's engineer .

I cannot say anything , i am crying . Heck even i am so late , as i was offline for long .

We will definitely miss him.

RIP

[neverseen]

he will be missed. He helped so many people around the world during his lifetime, and he will always be remembered

[xrayer]

Thanks for permission of distributing the patches. In a case that even source codes become freely available I would be interested in extending the TRIM tool support also on FAT16 FS. I started to write my own TRIM years ago with partial success but after discarding the first block (I checked that it was really blanked) my IDE controller left in some error state with busy LED on and I didn't manage to solve this problem. Nobody can help me with this because not much people knowledges goes so deep and want to share it. RL made it working...

Edited October 10, 2019 by xrayer