Wall of Death

Someone I knew personally died last week; he’s the third one in 2012, and the year is only a third over. He was a guy named Nate. I knew him because he represented his agency, the state Department of Transportation, in the same way I represent mine within the New York State Data Center Affiliate program. Early on, he would speak in such technical terms that he might has well have been speaking Klingon, so little I understood. But as I became more savvy with the data and the terminology, he became more comprehensible. He became a great resource for me. About 15 months ago, he discovered he had lung cancer, which had been treated until the last few days, when he went into hospice. He died at the age of 61.