[as-j]

Oh no! This breaks my heart. :(

David and Ron Crane hired me for my first job in California right around 2000. I had no clue who they both were we just met at a trade show and I said I was looking for a job, we had this crazy interview where we just talked about anything and everything, and voila I was working in silicon valley. I think we spent about 2 hours talking about how we could float a balloon beside an AM radio station and how light up a light bulb...

Anyways, who fresh out of school doesn't work for the inventor of ethernet/fast ethernet/a core founder of 3com, etc? I only spent 2 years working with them, and I've always been looking to work with similar talent/kindness/etc. How they put up with a fresh grad I will never know.

I remember David and I working on an SDSL project, and we were just having the worst time ever. We couldn't get it train and finish setting up the link, it did almost everything but then just failed at the end. It was meant to be easy....but we just couldn't figure it out. We spent a crazy amount of time on it, maybe a month. Finally Ron got fed up, and asked "have you tried reversing the pairs?" and it worked! Turns out we had plugged the cable in backwards, and trying to streamline/debug the code had removed the final bits of cleanup code that checked if the pair was reversed. Ah well.

They were amazing mentors and friends. David invited me over to his home for wine tastings, to meet his cats (Palo and Alto), etc. I unfortunately lost touch with him over the years as I moved, he moved, etc.

Thank you David, you welcomed me to California and you'll be missed.

[stringfood]

Finally some relevancy I can bring to Hacker News. Ron Crane was my uncle and him and David Boggs were such good friends till the end. Any more good stories from Ron or Dave? They are hard to come by.

2000 would've been around the time of LAN media, no?

[as-j]

Yes, was Lan Media times. :) I probably have more Ron stories since we worked in the office together every day.

Ron and I kept in touch. (since he replied to emails) I lived overseas for a while, and when I was in the bay area we'd meet up, I remember visits with him to get breakfast at Black Bear Dinner, or touring the computer history museum together, a talk at parc. I so loved his excitement, he was so excited to meet up with me...made me feel special. I loved how he'd just chat/teach and that curiosity and patience.

Ok a story. So on this SDSL project we need to simulate 10,000 feet of cable, so Dave and I got some big boxes of cable and put them under our desk. But as the project progressed we need fancier setups. Again Ron pitched in, shook his head at out huge spool of cable and disappeared into the lab. About 30 minutes later he came back with this little mass of resistors, caps all soldered together in a ball and said something like "here, this is a good enough model of 10kfeet of cable with a 1k foot tap..." I just remember this little ball of parts...and having no clue how he just came up with it out of thin air. I think he explained it, but woosh. Analog, complicated, not 1s and 0s.

Or when I left....I gave notice and Ron was really nice. But he kept suggesting I should give 3 weeks notice. Just stay on for another week, etc. I was young, and I never listened well anyways so was firm with my date. Too bad...if I'd listened stayed 2 more days I would have collected my rather sizable retention bonus....ah well.

[atdrummond]

Sorry for your loss.

I ran into him once at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View a while back and he was willing to grab lunch with me and some friends and shoot the shit for a few hours. I can tell why he was a great mentor - approachable and knowledgeable.

[winterplace]

How did you keep in touch with David at first?

Do you have an email address or a contact method?

[rendall]

My condolences.