My buddy, Tim Adams
My buddy Tim was a great admirer of Thomas Edison. Fittingly, Tim was an engineer at a company I worked for about 7 or 8 years ago - the only engineer. That means he was high level tech support for all manner of issues us mere repair technicians had. He was also the Research and Development department. As I was a young engineer-to-be at the time, he gladly welcomed me in so that I could learn what real design development of electronics was about. He was a patient and kind mentor, never condescending, always willing to admit whether he was unsure about something or not - trust me, these are rare traits in the engineeing field.
My last real project with him before seeking somewhat greener fields was one of the neatest proposals that we knew would get rejected but just had to put on the table, if nothing else so we could skip away in geek-filled glee at the thought of building a scaled down prototype. The idea was to improve upon drive through voice quality and harness the power of the sun in so doing. To our surprise, the idea was met quite well and soon we were designing, testing, and building our nifty little idea for the big demo.
Long story short, while initially the test customer raved about it, over time issues cropped up that bumped the price point above what the market demand was really there, so it was scrapped. Tim didn't whine, complain, or shed a tear. "Such is life," he would say, shrugging it off, getting back to the Next Big Thing.
Since departing for the greener pastures (which really weren't all that much greener), I've been fortunate enough to stop back by a couple of times and see Tim - one of his first questions was always "Worked on any neat projects, lately?"
My buddy Tim passed away a few weeks ago - another former co-worker who's in school with me let me know. At the too young age of 43, he was diagnosed with cancer of the long doctor's face variety, meaning he didn't have long. I don't know how he spent his last days, but having watched my father go through it 10 years ago, I could imagine it to be either anguish or drugged euphoria.
And my world just seems a little bit sadder now that he's gone.
My last real project with him before seeking somewhat greener fields was one of the neatest proposals that we knew would get rejected but just had to put on the table, if nothing else so we could skip away in geek-filled glee at the thought of building a scaled down prototype. The idea was to improve upon drive through voice quality and harness the power of the sun in so doing. To our surprise, the idea was met quite well and soon we were designing, testing, and building our nifty little idea for the big demo.
Long story short, while initially the test customer raved about it, over time issues cropped up that bumped the price point above what the market demand was really there, so it was scrapped. Tim didn't whine, complain, or shed a tear. "Such is life," he would say, shrugging it off, getting back to the Next Big Thing.
Since departing for the greener pastures (which really weren't all that much greener), I've been fortunate enough to stop back by a couple of times and see Tim - one of his first questions was always "Worked on any neat projects, lately?"
My buddy Tim passed away a few weeks ago - another former co-worker who's in school with me let me know. At the too young age of 43, he was diagnosed with cancer of the long doctor's face variety, meaning he didn't have long. I don't know how he spent his last days, but having watched my father go through it 10 years ago, I could imagine it to be either anguish or drugged euphoria.
And my world just seems a little bit sadder now that he's gone.
posted by misawa at 1:48 PM
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