Dear team, I was very sad when I heard this news. Bill was a fun and friendly presence, and patiently mentored me in my early days. I’ll never forget when he scrawled “I love bots” on one of my NANOG badges. I still have it. :) I had the fortune to be on a couple of panels with him, and I learned from his answers and the way he presented them. I admire that he cared, and he gave of himself without hesitation. I will miss him and his contributions.
Zichrono livracha, Bill’s memory is definitely for blessing.
Be well,
Rabbi Rob.
> On Jan 27, 2020, at 3:34 PM, Brett Watson <br...@the-watsons.org> wrote:
>
> I was saddened to see this yesterday, that Bill Manning had passed. I was
> surprised this morning that it hadn’t hit NANOG yet but thought I’d post
> something because I have a ton of respect for Bill as I’m sure many here do.
>
> I met Bill as a very young, thought-I-knew-everything network engineer around
> ’92 when I was starting my internet life at a small ISP in Houston. Bill was
> visiting Stan Barber @ Sesquinet, which was my upstream provider at the time
> via T1, if I remember it all correctly.
>
> I was young, fresh out of college with a CS degree, and learning this
> “internet thing.” I met with Bill on campus at Rice University to discuss
> networking/routing, and Bill taught me CIDR, which I had no f-ing idea at
> that time what it was. Bill was always gracious and willing to share/teach.
> We always chatted and stayed in touch at NANOG and IETF conferences and
> through his relationship with Los Nettos over the years. Most notable, to me,
> was 2007 when my youngest daughter was diagnosed with cancer, and I believe
> Bill’s wife had (or previously battled) cancer as well. I hadn’t seen Bill
> for a few years, but he immediately reached out, shared his positive
> thoughts/prayers, and kept in touch during the battle we went through. Bill
> cared about people, and as noted below, he was smart as hell, and always had
> a crazy idea for how to solve a problem. Also as noted in Rod’s note below,
> Bill had a wealth of music knowledge and could always recommend something new
> and interesting to listen to.
>
> I’ll definitely miss Bill, and his passing makes me feel the years, and the
> mileage, but in a good way.
>
> -b
>
>>> This morning I talked to Julie Manning, Bill's wife. Bill died early
>>> Saturday morning, at home in Oregon. Most of you know Bill was
>>> waiting for a new heart. He would perhaps have gotten one next
>>> month. I guess the old one just wouldn't hold out long enough.
>>>
>>> I first met Bill in about 1995, when I returned to ISI after my first
>>> stint in Japan. He had taken a position in the Los Nettos project at
>>> ISI, a regional network project in the days when Internet service and
>>> operations work was still heavily shared between business and
>>> academia. Bill brought an operator's eye to the project, often seeing
>>> things differently from the researchers in the group.
>>>
>>> Bill kept the most erratic hours of any non-student I've ever met. He
>>> might be in the office at 2am or at 2pm, either was equally likely.
>>> I'd ask, "Bill, what time did you come in?" He'd reply, "10am." "I
>>> was here before that, and you were already here, it must have been
>>> earlier." "Greenwich Mean Time."
>>>
>>> And in one phase of life, "Bill, where do you live?" "Seat 4A." He
>>> would speculate about his average altitude and speed over the previous
>>> month.
>>>
>>> And, like any good geek, Bill had a spectacular collection of tie-dye
>>> t-shirts. He came by the look honestly: growing up in the Bay Area,
>>> he had actually snuck into Grateful Dead rehearsals held in a barn,
>>> and had traveled as a deadhead for a while.
>>>
>>> At ISI, we called Bill "the bad idea fairy". He always brought a
>>> slightly-off-kilter view of technical problems, which triggered
>>> endless discussions of fascinating, if usually implausible,
>>> alternatives.
>>>
>>> He had the most broad-ranging musical tastes of anyone I knew, and
>>> would eat almost anything (though, like me, he didn't drink alcohol).
>>> I was often envious of his eating and musical experiences. He
>>> certainly lived life to its fullest.
>>>
>>> On one occasion, I recall, we were eating lunch in a Thai restaurant
>>> for the first time. Bill called for the food "the way you'd make it
>>> in Thailand". The waiter went back into the kitchen and came out with
>>> a few raw Thai chiles. Bill ate one whole, without even breaking a
>>> sweat. The owner of the restaurant immediately came out to see who
>>> was eating them. Pam became a friend to our group.
>>>
>>> On other occasions, when the waiter asked for his order, Bill would
>>> point to another person at the table, and say, "I'll have what she's
>>> having." "Well, what is she having?" "I don't know, I haven't heard
>>> her say." Once in a while, he would point to someone else in the
>>> restaurant and say, "I'll have what they are having." It was funny
>>> and sometimes disconcerting, which was very Bill, and it was also his
>>> way of making sure he himself was eating (and thinking and doing) as
>>> broadly as possible, without getting stale.
>>>
>>> Bill worked in a bakery before joining Texas Instruments and
>>> accidentally falling into computer networking. (When we first met, he
>>> was commuting between Houston and L.A.; Julie and the kids were still
>>> in Houston.) I believe he attended a series of colleges but never
>>> finished his bachelor's degree. Just a few years ago, however, Jun
>>> Murai convinced him to get a Ph.D.; this took clearing administrative
>>> hoops to demonstrate that Bill's life experience matched that of a
>>> bachelor's degree, which it certainly did. I was honored to be on his
>>> Ph.D. committee. I literally created a "trouble ticket" accounting
>>> scheme to track change requests for his thesis.
>>>
>>> Bill was a valued member of the WIDE Project here in Japan. He worked
>>> with the DNS root operations group here, and participated in as many
>>> WIDE meetings as he could. He also came to Keio University's Shonan
>>> Fujisawa Campus when he was in Japan, and one of the best things about
>>> Bill was how seriously he took the students and their work, treating
>>> them like adult colleagues.
>>>
>>> Bill had friends on all seven continents, and for all I know on the
>>> International Space Station, as well. He was loved by us all.
>>>
>>> Julie does not plan to have a funeral immediately, so there is no need
>>> for flowers or the like. The family may do a memorial service in Utah
>>> in the spring.
>>>
>>> He was a unique and wonderful human being. And a good friend.
>>> Rest in peace, Bill.
>>>
>>> —Rod
>
>>
--
Rabbi Rob Thomas Team Cymru
"It is easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we
agree." - Leo McKern
signature.asc
Description: Message signed with OpenPGP
