bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2002-11-16 03:17 pm
bigmacbear) wrote2002-11-16 03:17 pm
Farewell to the Purple Palace
Update: See below.
The story began some years ago, when I used to work for Eastman Kodak and was part of a team of system administrators trying to convert an old coax-cable Ethernet (or as some might call it, Cheapernet) to what was then a newfangled thing called premises wiring.
We were working with an outside vendor, a subsidiary of IBM, and a project manager by the name of Richard Coleman. He was a nice, well-mannered person, although the requirements of the project (which he immediately dubbed the "Purple Palace" project, based on our affectionate nickname for a cavernous room full of purple office furniture, purple partitions, and purple carpeting) meant that he and I tended to butt heads a lot, which tended to color my opinion of him. Eventually after going round and round on one particular issue and going nowhere I was encouraged to bow out of the negotiations and let one or two of my colleagues deal with Rich and his firm.
Over a period of several months we managed to get a network design hammered out despite a maze of conflicting requirements that seemed impossible to get through. Then the folks from Rich's firm ran the wires, and we switched everything over to the new systems.
After that I didn't hear much from Rich until nearly five years later, Kodak sold our division off to Heidelberg. At that time one of my colleagues ended up having to work with Rich to negotiate the return of all that expensive network equipment so we wouldn't have to pay outrageous prices for obsolete stuff. That accomplished, the next thing we did as a part of Heidelberg was to completely remodel the building which we'd bought from Kodak, in the process removing most traces of the "Purple Palace" and all that wiring.
And then, last night, this happened. Although there is no official word confirming the identity of the pilot, all other evidence makes it seem obvious that it was Rich who was at the controls when his plane crashed into an athletic field at the University of Rochester.
I'm not sure what to say at this juncture, or if anything really needs to be said. I didn't really know the man well enough to mourn him, but I think it an odd coincidence at the very least, and note that circumstances always seem to arrange themselves in the way you would least expect.
Update: The local paper this morning ran a picture of the owner of the plane, who was confirmed to have been killed at the controls. The picture looks nothing like the man I worked with. The dead pilot was much fairer-haired and fairer-skinned than the other fellow. It appears this is a case of multiple people with the same name. (Whew!)
The story began some years ago, when I used to work for Eastman Kodak and was part of a team of system administrators trying to convert an old coax-cable Ethernet (or as some might call it, Cheapernet) to what was then a newfangled thing called premises wiring.
We were working with an outside vendor, a subsidiary of IBM, and a project manager by the name of Richard Coleman. He was a nice, well-mannered person, although the requirements of the project (which he immediately dubbed the "Purple Palace" project, based on our affectionate nickname for a cavernous room full of purple office furniture, purple partitions, and purple carpeting) meant that he and I tended to butt heads a lot, which tended to color my opinion of him. Eventually after going round and round on one particular issue and going nowhere I was encouraged to bow out of the negotiations and let one or two of my colleagues deal with Rich and his firm.
Over a period of several months we managed to get a network design hammered out despite a maze of conflicting requirements that seemed impossible to get through. Then the folks from Rich's firm ran the wires, and we switched everything over to the new systems.
After that I didn't hear much from Rich until nearly five years later, Kodak sold our division off to Heidelberg. At that time one of my colleagues ended up having to work with Rich to negotiate the return of all that expensive network equipment so we wouldn't have to pay outrageous prices for obsolete stuff. That accomplished, the next thing we did as a part of Heidelberg was to completely remodel the building which we'd bought from Kodak, in the process removing most traces of the "Purple Palace" and all that wiring.
And then, last night, this happened. Although there is no official word confirming the identity of the pilot, all other evidence makes it seem obvious that it was Rich who was at the controls when his plane crashed into an athletic field at the University of Rochester.
I'm not sure what to say at this juncture, or if anything really needs to be said. I didn't really know the man well enough to mourn him, but I think it an odd coincidence at the very least, and note that circumstances always seem to arrange themselves in the way you would least expect.
Update: The local paper this morning ran a picture of the owner of the plane, who was confirmed to have been killed at the controls. The picture looks nothing like the man I worked with. The dead pilot was much fairer-haired and fairer-skinned than the other fellow. It appears this is a case of multiple people with the same name. (Whew!)