I would like to take a moment to mourn the untimely passage of a friend. Mark Lindsey died this morning of a massive coronary. I will remember him as a cheerful, fun, good man. The guy used to quote from Python movies at the staff meetings. He had grown into his role of manager and was becoming a very good boss despite all odds and a notoriously unruly staff. Most importantly though, you would be extremely hard-pressed to find a nicer guy. It is a sad day.

I met Mark in the fall of 1994. I was a freshman in the college of engineering and I was on a mission to get a work-study job. At the time he was working as a sysadmin and putting himself through school (where do you think I got the idea?). He always seemed like he should be australian... always sun-burnt (it seemed) and endlessly good-natured. Maybe it was the hair. He gave me a job sitting around in the lab. He probably expected more from me but I had few skills at the time. It's funny that shortly after I accepted my job with the University he would return from a "real" job to be my supervisor again.

I don't have the ability to do him justice.

        The Galaxy Song    by Eric Idle   Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving at nine thousand miles an hour. It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, 'Round the sun that is the source of all our power. Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see, Are moving at a million miles a day, In the outer spiral arm, at fourteen thousand miles an hour, Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.   Our galaxy itself contains a hundred million stars; It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side; It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick, But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide. We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point, We go 'round every two hundred million years; And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe.   <waltz>   Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding, In all of the directions it can whiz; As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know, Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth; And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!