Mike,
It's snowing here. So I'm home today. I just decided to look through this thread again from the beginning.
I wanted to say this has really turned out to be a great story. I hope others look into this thread and understand the sustainable dedication and persistence required to start and finish a project like this. And lets not forget to mention resources.
This May, you will be going on 3 years. It took me about the same time. And then came the part of when I had to work out all the major bugs. This was another year or so.