Randy Pausch, 1960 - 2008

Randy Pausch, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, died today from complications from pancreatic cancer. See the full story here.

If you haven't seen his "Last Lecture", it can be viewed on YouTube. I recommend that everyone view it, as it has been an inspiration to thousands of people, has spawned a bestselling book, and has introduced a number of people to a fine individual and one of the truly great educators of our time. In addition to the Last Lecture, I also recommend checking out his lecture on Time Management, given last year at UVA, where he was also a professor for many years.

For those who have watched the lectures, seen him on Oprah or talking to Diane Sawyer, I can tell you that he was every bit as authentic as he seemed. While I was at UVA, Randy was my thesis advisor, and is one of the people most influential to the way that I both conduct myself personally and professionally, along with the methods I use for better engineering and coding. His classes were always extremely entertaining (at least to the folks who got the good grades), and that was one of the main reasons we all learned so much from him.

Unfortunately, I haven't spoken to him since shortly after graduating from college, and sometimes I wondered if he knew just how much he had touched the random lives he intersected through the years, but I'm pretty sure he'd gotten some idea of it through the correspondence he'd gotten after giving the lecture.

Rest in peace, Randy. You will be missed.

Bring It On!

Yes, yes, I know I haven't posted in two weeks. I'm a bad blogger. And this one ain't gonna satisfy anybody who actually cares about my running, either, but I'll give a quick update:

Boot camp hurts. Badly. Those are muscles I haven't used in 20 (OK, 17) years. Damn.

It feels good to be swimming again. Not this week, but 2000 yards last week in about 50 minutes was pretty good. It'll only take a little longer to get back to my all-time high of 5000 in 59:50. But that was when I was 16. And it was non-stop (for the Swim-a-thon). And it was just about the last time I used any of the muscles that we're using in boot camp.

Ran a 10-miler on Saturday. Unfortunately, when you use MapMyRun to create a new route that you've never really done before... well, it doesn't show fences. So we got lost for a little bit. But we managed to adjust and it actually came out remarkably close to my goal distance. And it didn't feel too bad. And it took less than two hours, so I was happy.



And today... we drive up to Atlanta.

And tomorrow... we run the Peachtree!

Wish me luck!