Tuesday, October 28, 2008

In Memoriam - Carl

Together with Dom Lindars, I had the great pleasure to help hire Carl into Oracle 6 years ago and have worked with him ever since. How we found him he wrote about last year which for Oracle was very non-typical. Carl turned to be anything but typical, I would have never guessed what a great friend we had found that day. He is on my instant messenger list with no less than 5 different accounts. We worked together in the same office for a little over a year. We could always count on Carl for a story ranging from collecting salamanders as a student job to using his geo/mapping background helping design with the Presido of San Francisco wild life preserve to growing up in southern California in an orange grove. Whenever my son would come to the office he would always make time to talk with him.

Then he and I both joined this "marvel" team. We talked the move over for a long time if it made sense for us to do. He was a little unsure about this plsql based app versus the svg coding he was doing for the sales group. I think anyone reading this knows how well it turned out.

He always made time to chat with my son on everything from games to giant robots to godzilla movies. Shortly after joining this team marvel we had an offsite in DC, again he made time to talk "shop" with my son. After he moved to vegas my son called him a traitor for switching from Playstation to XBOX for a choice of gaming console. However, he didn't switch before my son beat him playing over the internet ! At one team outing my family accompanied me and again Carl sat beside my son and made sure to talk with him throughout the boring dinner.


His Bio on twitter sums it up best "Super Cool Guy".

Carl will be missed by all in my home. He was a great person.

My family's condolences to his daughter, his fiance and the rest of his family.
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:38 AM

    An absolutely great guy, it's such Incredibly sad news, he'll be missed a lot.

    My condolences to his daughter, fiance and family too.

    John.

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  2. Anonymous8:21 PM

    As Kris' wife, I want to validate the loss our house feels right, now.

    Carl, also, took the time for me. At Oracle functions when Kris was too busy talking business, Carl would stop and chat with me so I wasn't bored. I will always remember the kindness he showed to our family. The fact that he was the kind of friend that I wanted for my husband.

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  3. Anonymous9:08 AM

    This is so sad.

    I just met Carl once, that was during Oracle Open World just some months ago, and just during that short time he was very open minded, very informative and I liked him a lot.

    He was surely a great person.

    Lars Sjöström
    Sweden

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  4. Jamie9:23 AM

    I worked with Carl for several years and Kris is correct in his summation. Carl was the funnest guy I ever had the pleasure of working with. He really treated every day as a new experience and lived life to the fullest.


    He will be missed as a co worker and friend to me. I just heard about him and it is tearing me up. I am sad that I didn't spend more time with him like have done in years past, since we no longer lived anywhere close to each other.


    That is an idea of what he meant to people.

    ReplyDelete