> And thanks for filling in about the lives of MVPs, I did not realize these[color=blue]
> things.[/color]


Yeah, the MVP is awarded annually for a person's contributions in the
previous 12 months ... but once awarded, the MVP has no obligations. Except
if they want to keep their "MVP" they have to keep on being active in the
community (newsgroups, websites, presentations at conferences etc).
[url]https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/gp/mvpexecsum[/url]

But we don't have any formal ties to Microsoft (well, apart from an NDA).