Goodbye, Jeff B.

Yesterday I learned that a friend of mine passed away. He was crusty, and I'm not sure how many people could tolerate him. We knew each other mostly by email, passing back and forth the technical details of databases and the logic that makes them work well, stuff that should be boring but that we both enjoyed very much.

Whenever we did meet in person at his company, I tried always to walk up and shake his hand first, because he was an honest person, despite his insane politics, someone who loved his dogs and who was not afraid to speak his mind and go against the wind.