One story that didn't make it the article:

In September, after we'd released our S-1 but before Cloudflare's IPO, I took two weeks off and went back to my home town of Park City, Utah. (It's actually where Lee and I had been roommates many years before.) That two week period before you go public is known as the quiet period, so I was generally avoiding social media or answering my phone or doing anything other than resting and getting ready for the pre-IPO road show.

We hadn't talked much publicly about Lee's disease, but Michelle and I had written a bit about it in the S-1 Founders Letter:

"Finally, there are two of us signing this letter today, but three people started Cloudflare. Lee Holloway is our third co-founder and the genius who architected our platform and recruited and led our early technical team. Tragically, Lee stepped down from Cloudflare in 2016, suffering the debilitating effects of Frontotemporal Dementia, a rare neurological disease. As we began the confidential process to go public, one of the early decisions was to pick the code name for our IPO. We chose 'Project Holloway' to honor Lee’s contribution. More importantly, on a daily basis, the technical decisions Lee made, and the engineering team he built, are fundamental to the business we have become."

One evening my phone rang and the called ID came up as "Lee Holloway." I checked the number and it was his. I didn't answer and the caller didn't leave a voicemail. My first reaction was that somehow his phone had been hacked or his number was being spoofed and someone was using it to somehow screw with me. Figured someone had read about his disease in the S-1 and was being a jerk.

I reported the call to Cloudflare's security team to investigate. I also texted Lee's wife to let her know to be on the lookout. She wrote back: "No, that's Lee. Sometimes I think when he's feeling nostalgic he reaches out to old friends. He never says anything, but I think it's his way to let you know he's thinking about you."

So I still shoot him text messages from time to time to let him know I'm thinking about him. And I hope, somewhere inside his mind, there's a part of him that still knows that.

This Wired piece was amazing: full of sadness, humanity, and hope. One thing that really stood out to me was how incredible the people around Lee are. You all really care for him, and that says a lot about the type of person he is, even in the midst of this disease and the toll it must be taking on all of you.

Cloudflare is a great platform, and I'm glad, thanks to Ms. Upson, I got to know one of the folks responsible for it a little bit. I'll be sure to keep chasing the hard problems in my own day-to-day code, and keep a thought for Lee while I do it.

Can I ask you, when Lee’s personality began to change drastically, did he maintain the same level of technical proficiency (in coding or gaming)? It is a wonderful piece on a very sad story, and after reading it that’s one of the things that I’m interested to know more about, to understand the general condition.

I don't know about gaming, but I do about coding. First, if I look back over the 18 years I knew him, I can see some things that make me think he had the disease the whole time. He was a brilliant coder when he first started working with me out of college, but I think he really hit his peak ability to focus and do amazing things around 2014 — right as we were rolling out Universal SSL. But, even to the end, he was great at coding. In fact, I was told that the doctors said one of the things that was unique about his presentation of the disease was that while most people lose the ability to complete complex tasks first, Lee almost seemed to do the opposite — still thriving on the complex. We brainstormed whether there were coding challenges we could keep sending him after his diagnosis to keep that part of his mind active. It never ended up happening in part because he lost a lot of his verbal communication skills around the same time, but I wonder when you hear him counting under his breath what puzzle he's still solving in his head.

I spent most of my time with him when he only starting a family and his business tasks were few. Most of the symptoms described in this article happened after his family and work responsibilities grew, which both reduced his time for MMORPG / RTS gaming. When his older son was old enough, they would play casual games together, but that's a completely different realm of proficiency required.

Which RTS games did he play?