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I met Seymour Cray, and he was definitely as amazing as you can imagine. He's also very much dead.
by mark-r 7y ago
I met Seymour Cray, and he was definitely as amazing as you can imagine. He's also very much dead.
- protomyth 7y agoKilled by a drunk driver in 1996 just as he was starting to develop his version of a massively parallel machine. Friggin irresponsible people ruin the world.
- dang 7y agoCare to say more? How did you meet him? what was it like?
- mark-r 7y agoI was part of a small group of students from the University of Minnesota who were invited to the Cray plant in Chippewa Falls WI. The highlight was a visit with him in his office which didn't last long. He was very gracious. I don't remember much of what he said, except for the pumpkin. He pointed to a pumpkin on his desk and proclaimed that it was the Cray-3. His daughter had grown it in the garden, and knowing he was already working on a Cray-2 project decided that it should be called the Cray-3. To give you an idea of when this was, I think they were just finishing the final tests of serial #5 of the Cray-1. They were very proud of the cooling system and invited us to touch the panels.
- dboreham 7y agoI held a door open for him in 1989. Unfortunately I didn't realize who he was until later.
- mark-r 7y agoReminds me of a story I heard on the radio. A guy went out to eat in a New York restaurant. A couple came in, a pale white dude accompanied by the most beautiful black woman this guy had seen. They were seated close to him. It was immediately obvious to him that they were getting much better service than him - for instance they got their food almost immediately after ordering, while he was still waiting for his. So he started to heckle them. Fast forward to a year later. David Bowie has died, and his picture is on the front cover of every magazine. This guy finally realizes who it was he'd been heckling.