Unexpected passings

My good friend Keith Mickunas contacted me this last Saturday to pass on some news.  Our mutual friend and colleague Randy Rathbun had passed away.  Randy had been fighting cancer, and I didn't expect him to pass quite so suddenly.  I always thought there would be more warning - foolish me.

Randy is one of the main reasons Janet and I got into blogging in the first place.  You can see parts of his now defunct website from 2003.  He was also kind enough to link to my own self-hosted effort.

Keith put in a great post about Randy.  He was a geek's geek, and one of the best nerds I know.  I owe him more to my online life then I can ever sum up, but as well as Keith's listed qualities of nerd-dom, Randy was also kind, helpful, and pretty much always there for any technical issue.  He was also the curator of the Jello Biafra newsgroup alt.fan.jello-biafra.

As I look back upon the many years that I have known Randy, I realize how much of my internet and nerd-presence he influenced.  I also realize how much better this planet was with him on it.

You are missed Randy.

Randy from our first ever KC bloggers gathering - March 24, 2003.