Bostonian

I just got off the T in my new home, Boston, and headed straight to Harvard Square. You can learn a lot about a new place just by being inconspicuous, observing people and listening to their conversations. ("Eavesdropping", if you're the sort to put a negative spin on it.) Subways like the T are perfect for that. And just on the short ride here, I heard two older guys talking about XML, saw a young coed studying accounting and a professor-ish type with a meticulously kept chin-strap beard and a baseball hat that read, "Physics". I wanted to hug each one of them and exclaim, "YOU ARE MY PEOPLE!"

I think I'll like it here.

I'm off to pick up the keys to my new apartment. Check back in a few days for my first impressions of Boston.

Nicholas Perkins Dupre

On this day fifteen years ago, June 10, 1995, my friend Nick died.

He died of complications from his cancer treatment. Every year on this day, I mark his passing. He'd have some choice words for me for being sentimental about it. Better to remember him by having a party, he'd say; "After I'm dead, prop me in a chair with a drink in one hand, a girl in the other, and have a big party." Typical Nick-style gallows humor. He never wanted any sympathy or complained about anything. He worked hard when it would have been easy to give up. He always chose life, and lived it on his terms, right up to the very end.

I miss him.