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December 10, 2005
Terry Shannon, friend and colleague
Yesterday, Meg got a package in the mail, containing a Computerworld "Shark Tank" t-shirt. "Shark Tank" is a column that pokes fun at some of the absurdities that occur in the IT world. Meg had sent in a couple of items from her experience in tech support at a small ISP -- and, since they got published, she received a t-shirt, the standard reward for providing material for the column.
A few weeks ago, when her item was published, I thought of Terry Shannon, an old friend whom I'd worked with on my first job out of college, at Digital Review, a Ziff-Davis computer magazine. Terry used to write a column under the pseudonym "Charlie Matco," which highlighted rumors, generally pertaining to unannounced products from DEC or other technology companies. Terry's column was a little like "Shark Tank," in its clever writing style -- and the fact that he offered rewards (in his case, coffee mugs) to anyone providing information he used in the column.
In more recent years, Terry published a newsletter covering HP-Compaq (the company that had acquired DEC several years ago).
I surfed over to Terry's Web site, hoping to drop him a line to tell him about the "Shark Tank" thing. To my sadness, the home page contained the news that Terry died a few months ago.
Terry was a funny guy -- he had a prodigious vocabulary and a tendency to push deadlines to the limit; the latter habit led to a lot of late nights at the office, getting columns written. "Good morning," I'd say on my way in. "And what a delightful morning it is!," he'd reply, when he'd been there all night.
I hadn't seen Terry since I left DR in 1987 but had stayed in touch with the occasional e-mail. The last time I heard from him, which I think was about a year ago, he mentioned that he had been suffering from clinical depression, which was not entirely under control despite some medication he was taking.
Terry had a lot of stories from his experiences in the Vietnam war and, more recently, the computer industry wars that characterize the boom-bust cycles many of us in the technology industry have grown weary of. Terry seemed to have done well in fashioning a career as an industry journalist/pundit, and I'm sure having been through a real war gave him some perspective on what's important and what isn't.
Even though I hadn't seen Terry in a long time, I still thought of him as one of the more interesting people I've worked with. We had more than a few laughs around the office, and his vocabulary and recall of literary references (he was extremely well-read) put me to shame, despite my having spent a career putting words together. I'll miss him!
Posted by Urbie at December 10, 2005 03:25 PM