Even when you know it's coming, it's hard to process. Met Mikeal at oscon in ... 2007 I think, where he was presenting windmill as a testing tool for js/ajax.

Even when you know it's coming, it's hard to process. Met Mikeal at oscon in ... 2007 I think, where he was presenting windmill as a testing tool for js/ajax. We kept in touch for a few years, and he was kind enough to meet up with me during some travel time in California the following year. He took great joy in introducing me to some tapas place I can't remember now, but I do remember the excitement he had just... telling me about it. That low key passion (tech, food, anything else) is one of the things I still remember about the few times we met in person. Reading about his cancer last year was difficult, not so much for him directly; he seemed to have made peace with it (that's the impression I got anyway). But it's a reminder of my own mortality, and I know I would not react or continue on the way he did. That's difficult to acknowledge.