Guided By History is a blog that I and my colleagues produce as a resource for you readers. There's a couple people who help out behind the scenes to make sure that this blog and a couple others get out there for you all. One of these was Vincent, the tech genius who made this blog actually appear. When you access this blog, you read my stuff but the presentation is all by Vincent.

We learned yesterday that Vincent passed away over the weekend. This news took us all totally by surprise.

Vincent was one of those guys who you really want as a friend. He was always level-headed and never lost his cool. Indeed, Vincent was always in a good mood. Now when I say "always," I really mean it. I never had a discussion with him that was not fun, that didn't have about a dozen good laughs.

And when we finished our talk, the issue that brought us to the table was resolved. He had this talent for changing big problems into minor issues that got fixed. See, I'd call him and tell him what the trouble was, and he'd listen and say "Mm hmm" a lot. As I started giving him the details, I'd hear his keyboard clacking away on the other end ("Mm hmm...Mm hm..," he'd say as I droned on). Then the keyboard would go silent and I'd finish my monologue and he'd say, "It's all taken care of."

It was, too. I swear, I never called him about the same issue twice.

Vincent was a fun guy. He liked gadgets and was connected by wireless, chat, email and web all at the same time. Not so much because he was a techie, though he was, but more because he liked being connected. The guy could maintain half a dozen live conversations. A real "people person," that Vincent. And he was into it — you hang with him for only 10 minutes, it was like you had known him for years. Like I said, too, he liked to laugh so everything was pretty easy going, even meetings about troublesome upgrades to what-the-heck-do-I-care 2.1

Vincent did great work and was proud of his work. He was fun and funny. He was in a good mood and put everyone else at ease. He was really, really a great guy. I miss him.