Skip to main content

When Your Co-worker is Dying

This blog post is dedicated to a fellow work and friend of mine of some 14 years.

Ryan Andersen was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer about 4 years ago.  The doctors told him he had about 8 months to live.  Ryan was a very unique individual, he spoke his mind and was a very good programmer.  I can attribute a lot of what I've learned in programming (especially in web programming) from Ryan.  We worked together close to 14 years and we became a very strong team.  Every once in awhile I come across some of his comments in our code and I just laugh.

In the workplace, it was a very tough situation knowing Ryan was going to pass away soon, but also try and get as much information from him on the projects he was working on.  We actually were in the middle of a software project that we marketed and sold.  I had the task of taking over, but imagine while you're working with your fellow co-worker, who doesn't think they're going to die.  It was tough.  Not as tough as what Ryan was going through though.  Every time I think about his death I get teary eyed.

Ryan passed away in January 2015.  He had a wife and 10 year old son at the time of his death.  He was only 47 years old.

Every once in awhile if I'm working on some project or code and I get stuck, I'll say a little prayer to Ryan to help me out :)  We miss you Ryan and thank you for all the help you've given me!



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Alexa Is Listening, Recording, and Sending!

Check out this story where a couple in Oregon was having a private conversation and Alexa recorded and sent the conversation to one of their contacts!  They were not aware until the contact contacted them about what had happened.  The couple contacted Amazon and they verified the series of events.  But what's even more bizarre is the couple wanted to return their Amazon home devices but Amazon has not agreed to return the costs for the devices! Check out the article here  by Bruce Brown on  Digital Trends

Cybersecurity

I went to a Cybersecurity conference last week hosted by  Data Connectors and I want to give kudos for the job well done in running the conference.  First of all they held the conference in a very nice Westin downtown, so the facility was great!  The Vendors were very informative and the presentations were very good as well!  There was a good mix of breaks so we could talk with the Vendors and learn more about their products.  The lunch and snacks were good too!  Always a plus! But back to the subject of Cybersecurity.  It's truly amazing all the cyber attacks made against companies, websites, home owners, smart phones, etc.  I don't remember the exact numbers, but at the time they presented them, I was amazed how high it is, and how high it's going to be.  Everything on the web is exposed and most people don't realize the bad exposure that's out there.  Yes, bigger companies are spending lots of money to protect their data but the ...

My Twitter Followers Have Gone Down!

If you're a Twitter user you might have heard or seen on your account the number of followers go down.  For some of us, those numbers might be minimal.  I have a Twitter account @NKYSports which I use in connection with one of my High School sports website NKYSports.com.  Last week I had about 6,070 followers.  That number today is down about 100.  But I have heard users who have followers over 50K, 100K, etc. losing thousands and thousands of "so-called" followers. So what happened?  Twitter has started cleaning accounts due to fake news scandals and data privacy.  That equates to about 1 million accounts the past quarter (2nd Q of 2018).  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says improving the health of the platform is critical for future growth. Twitter has been a great tool for my website, but I also like getting updates sent directly to my phone to get the latest news, sports, weather, etc.  I know what to believe and not to believe as well!...