This week we learnt of the sad passing of a long term regular attendee of Humbug, Gary Curtis. Gary was often early, and nearly always the last to leave.
One of Gary’s prized possessions was his car, more specifically his LINUX number plate. Gary was very happy to be our official airport-conference shuttle for linux.conf.au keynote speakers in 2011 with this number plate.
Gary always had very strong opinions about how Humbug and our Humbug organised conferences should be run, but rarely took to running the events himself. It became a perennial joke at Humbug AGMs that we would always nominate Gary for positions, and he would always decline. Eventually we worked out that Humbug was one of the few times Gary wasn’t in charge of a group, and that was relaxing for him.
A topic that Gary always came back to was genealogy, especially the phone app he was working on.
A peculiar quirk of Humbug meetings is that they run on Saturday nights, and thus we often have meetings at the same time as Australian elections. Gary was always keen to keep up with the election on the night, often with interesting insights.
My most personal memory of Gary was our road trip after OSDC New Zealand, we did something like three days of driving around in a rental car, staying at hotels along the way. Gary’s driving did little to impress me, but he was certainly enjoying himself.
Gary will be missed.
Whining, Not Dining 