[PLUG-TALK] Kirk Reeves RIP

[Patrick "Finn" Robins]

My condolences.
On Nov 8, 2012 9:21 AM, "Keith Lofstrom" <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com> wrote:

> I learned from the Thursday morning Snoregonian that Kirk
> Reeves was found dead of suicide on Sunday in the Smith
> and Bybee wetlands.  Some of you may have seen Kirk playing
> his trumpet in his sequined suit and mickey mouse hat on
> the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge.  For OSCON, he would
> move his performance to the sidewalk in front of the
> convention center.  He ran Linux on his computer (from
> an Ubuntu disk I gave him) before he became homeless.
>
> I first met Kirk at the Orycon science fiction convention,
> where he told me of recently "losing" his job working at
> a tech support company.  His job was answering customer
> complaints about a modem PC card.  The problem was that
> the design was defective - none of the cards worked,
> but nevertheless the major brand sold tens of thousands
> of them.  Kirk's job was to make the callers seeking help
> feel stupid and go away.  Kirk was a gentle and loving
> soul, this was not in his nature.  His subversive strategy
> was to lead the customers down his decision tree ( "Did
> you install the update?  Say yes." ) until they came out
> at the end of the tree with a replacement modem.  With
> this gambit, he lead the customers through the calls
> very quickly, and his call-handling rates were stellar.
> Until management caught on, and he lost his job.
>
> His next job was night operator and tape monkey at a
> data center.  While the tapes spun, he practiced playing
> his garage sale trumpet - lonely machine rooms at midnight
> are great places to make noise.  He decided to entertain
> people - he offered his services on eBay, and you can
> see many of his videos on youtube.
>
> Friends will hold a candlelight vigil at Sunday Nov 18
> at 4pm near the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge.  That
> is linux clinic day - I will be leaving early.
>
> Keith
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG-talk mailing list
> PLUG-talk at lists.pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-talk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pdxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-talk/attachments/20121108/566dffaa/attachment.html>