People who give up the security of their job to do something crazy, risky, fun, or beneficial to humanity are inspirational to me. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one. I'll be posting others here as I discover them.
Jean-Philippe Soulé quit Microsoft and started traveling in Asia, teaching, plotting adventure expeditions, and taking photographs.
Cameron Beccario was a Visual Basic developer who left Microsoft to study Japanese.
Patrick Jennings left Microsoft on April Fool's Day, 1994, and travels, occasionally writes code, and writes about his adventures and thoughts on his blogs/ejournals. He's been known to bicycle across China, run off to Thailand, follow Route 66, and trek across remote regions of British Columbia.