Just give me a Date, Time and Place to be and I will be there.
Even though Gary didn't play computer games, he was the one who started my
Computer career in an around about way.
The very first program that I ever wrote was for a friend who had a CoCo like
I did. I was 17 (1978) and wrote a character rolling program that even
randomly gave money and then took you to a shop to outfit him. Neither of
us could afford a printer so we still had to write down the stats but it was
fun generating odd characters with the CoCo. He paid me with a
DMG. They cost $15 back then.
Later on, I got a job working on a PDP-11/70 and a graphics workstation
attached to it. I busted my A** learning all I could and doing my work as
fast as I could so that I had time to play with this awesome machine. I
worked 3rd shift so as long as my work was done and done right I had extra
time. My friends loved the dungeons that I would do on large sheets of Mylar
with the pen plotter. I even took an awesome character sheet we had hand
drawn and digitized it into the system to make it editable and perfect.
The layout of that character sheet is still in use today and has become the
defacto standard. No, we were not the only ones to use that standardized
layout but I bet we were the first with a digitized version :-) (1983)
So, Today, I sit here owning my own computer business and working on
computers because I wanted to play. I worked so hard to be so productive
so I could play with equipment to play D&D in a new way.
In an interview that I read recently, Gary said "Magic doesn't
exist." I beg to differ Gary. Magic exists. It is there
in the hearts of new RPG players. It is there in the very souls of those
of us who made this amazing journey with you. It is there is the heart of
a state and a city when 30,000+ people get together just to play games 
Magic beats strongly within my own heart as I write this, the
magic of possibilities, the magic that you gave not only me, but the
world. We will miss you Sir Gygax, but we will not miss the Magic.
The magic that you gave the world can never die, not so long as there is but
one heart that can say... "What if..."