Hilari H:   I met Jos about 2 years ago, 1997, on his first day at WebTV. Kieca and I hired Jos to help us do customer email.

I remember the first day really clearly because he was pretty extroverted, and I tend to be a little introverted, and I tend to be a little leery of those who are extroverted. Jos came in, he came bounding in to the office. He was very excited and very interested in everything.

The first thing he did is call me Hil-Bop and if you recall back in the summer of 1997 there was the Hale-Bopp comet. He referred to me as Hil-Bop from then on out as well as some other names.

I remember those days being really fun because he used to come over to me with really interesting questions. He used to come and pester me with questions all day long until we decided that it would be best to save all of his questions until later on in until the afternoon. He'd come grab me and make me answer all his questions. He was really great.

At one point Kieca and I overheard him explaining JavaScript to somebody, a new phone agent, and we decided that he wasn't long for the email world and thought that maybe we should put him into Previews. Once he went over there we didn't get to see him as much but we did get to see him a lot on his orange couch that he purchased with Camilo, all the time. It was the ugliest couch in the world. We also saw his Merriam Webster word of the day which he insisted upon writing on a white board so everytime you walked in, you had to see the word of the day. I thought that was pretty great.

He had this amazing insight into the world. He always took things and twirled them around and looked at them from a different perspective. I really appreciated that. Every time we were out together we just had a fabulous time with him.

There was one other occasion he just blew me away. One afternoon about a year ago he calls me up, and I was so excited to see him call me on the phone because he was always so exciting to talk to, even on the phone, so he says, "Hil-Bop, we have to go out tonight."

I'm like, "Alright, Jos, so what's the story?"

He says, "There's me and Joel and one other person, we need to go looking for chicks."

"Won't I be a little bit of a distraction if you are trying to find women?"

And he is like, "No, No, No. Here is how it works. You and Christian are going to go with us and make it look like we are really attractive and popular men and then we'll just scope out the chicks from there."

This logic completely defied me, but it was so Jos, so great so we ended grabbing a few more people and we went out that night and we had a great time. We went over to the Tide House here in Mountain View. I remember at one point during the night Kieca came over and said, "Well, I really want to go to a strip house."

Jos just took her very seriously on this and like for weeks after he'd be sending us URLs from strip clubs. He did a lot of research on strip clubs, which one we should go, when we should go. Unfortunately we never got a chance to do that because I think it would be a lot of fun. That was a very enjoyable night, I remember. I gave him a ride home and we say goodbye.

It was always a lot of fun to hang out with him after work. Probably most of what I remember about Jos is how he made me feel really good all the time, you know, like whenever I saw him ringing, you can tell when somebody's calling, the caller ID shows.

He'd say, "Hey Hilari, you wouldn't believe how many hits you are getting on my toessel site today."

I was one of the models. I was like, "Oh, give me a break Jos, what do you need?"

He always made me feel really, really good about myself and was really really fun to be with. Running into him in the hallway was always a joyous experience. It often just made my day at work. Whenever it was a little dark it was always great to stop by and see Jos.

I could tell you other occasions he always looked out for his friends. There was one point where I was looking to change jobs here at WebTV and he knew that and he looked out for me, any jobs that came his way, he tried to get me that position. He was just really, really wonderful at things like that.

I miss him a great deal. I think about him every day. He was such a joy. It was such a privilege to know him.

He brought so much joy to our lives here. I just wanted to let you know.