RIP: Bill Manning

Mon Jan 27 21:33:53 UTC 2020

Sad to hear about Bill.  I also began my career at a small ISP in Houston
where we also had a T1 to SESQUINET, and Bill was already a legend to us
Jr. Sysadmins in town in 1995/96.

-Andrew

On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 2:36 PM Brett Watson <brett at the-watsons.org> wrote:

> I was saddened to see this yesterday, that Bill Manning had passed. I was
> surprised this morning that it hadn’t hit NANOG yet but thought I’d post
> something because I have a ton of respect for Bill as I’m sure many here do.
>
> I met Bill as a very young, thought-I-knew-everything network engineer
> around ’92 when I was starting my internet life at a small ISP in Houston.
> Bill was visiting Stan Barber @ Sesquinet, which was my upstream provider
> at the time via T1, if I remember it all correctly.
>
> I was young, fresh out of college with a CS degree, and learning this
> “internet thing.” I met with Bill on campus at Rice University to discuss
> networking/routing, and Bill taught me CIDR, which I had no f-ing idea at
> that time what it was. Bill was always gracious and willing to share/teach.
> We always chatted and stayed in touch at NANOG and IETF conferences and
> through his relationship with Los Nettos over the years. Most notable, to
> me, was 2007 when my youngest daughter was diagnosed with cancer, and I
> believe Bill’s wife had (or previously battled) cancer as well. I hadn’t
> seen Bill for a few years, but he immediately reached out, shared his
> positive thoughts/prayers, and kept in touch during the battle we went
> through. Bill cared about people, and as noted below, he was smart as hell,
> and always had a crazy idea for how to solve a problem. Also as noted in
> Rod’s note below, Bill had a wealth of music knowledge and could always
> recommend something new and interesting to listen to.
>
> I’ll definitely miss Bill, and his passing makes me feel the years, and
> the mileage, but in a good way.
>
> -b
>
> >> This morning I talked to Julie Manning, Bill's wife. Bill died early
> >> Saturday morning, at home in Oregon.  Most of you know Bill was
> >> waiting for a new heart. He would perhaps have gotten one next
> >> month. I guess the old one just wouldn't hold out long enough.
> >>
> >> I first met Bill in about 1995, when I returned to ISI after my first
> >> stint in Japan.  He had taken a position in the Los Nettos project at
> >> ISI, a regional network project in the days when Internet service and
> >> operations work was still heavily shared between business and
> >> academia.  Bill brought an operator's eye to the project, often seeing
> >> things differently from the researchers in the group.
> >>
> >> Bill kept the most erratic hours of any non-student I've ever met.  He
> >> might be in the office at 2am or at 2pm, either was equally likely.
> >> I'd ask, "Bill, what time did you come in?" He'd reply, "10am."  "I
> >> was here before that, and you were already here, it must have been
> >> earlier."  "Greenwich Mean Time."
> >>
> >> And in one phase of life, "Bill, where do you live?" "Seat 4A."  He
> >> would speculate about his average altitude and speed over the previous
> >> month.
> >>
> >> And, like any good geek, Bill had a spectacular collection of tie-dye
> >> t-shirts.  He came by the look honestly: growing up in the Bay Area,
> >> he had actually snuck into Grateful Dead rehearsals held in a barn,
> >> and had traveled as a deadhead for a while.
> >>
> >> At ISI, we called Bill "the bad idea fairy".  He always brought a
> >> slightly-off-kilter view of technical problems, which triggered
> >> endless discussions of fascinating, if usually implausible,
> >> alternatives.
> >>
> >> He had the most broad-ranging musical tastes of anyone I knew, and
> >> would eat almost anything (though, like me, he didn't drink alcohol).
> >> I was often envious of his eating and musical experiences.  He
> >> certainly lived life to its fullest.
> >>
> >> On one occasion, I recall, we were eating lunch in a Thai restaurant
> >> for the first time.  Bill called for the food "the way you'd make it
> >> in Thailand".  The waiter went back into the kitchen and came out with
> >> a few raw Thai chiles.  Bill ate one whole, without even breaking a
> >> sweat.  The owner of the restaurant immediately came out to see who
> >> was eating them.  Pam became a friend to our group.
> >>
> >> On other occasions, when the waiter asked for his order, Bill would
> >> point to another person at the table, and say, "I'll have what she's
> >> having."  "Well, what is she having?" "I don't know, I haven't heard
> >> her say."  Once in a while, he would point to someone else in the
> >> restaurant and say, "I'll have what they are having."  It was funny
> >> and sometimes disconcerting, which was very Bill, and it was also his
> >> way of making sure he himself was eating (and thinking and doing) as
> >> broadly as possible, without getting stale.
> >>
> >> Bill worked in a bakery before joining Texas Instruments and
> >> accidentally falling into computer networking.  (When we first met, he
> >> was commuting between Houston and L.A.; Julie and the kids were still
> >> in Houston.)  I believe he attended a series of colleges but never
> >> finished his bachelor's degree.  Just a few years ago, however, Jun
> >> Murai convinced him to get a Ph.D.; this took clearing administrative
> >> hoops to demonstrate that Bill's life experience matched that of a
> >> bachelor's degree, which it certainly did.  I was honored to be on his
> >> Ph.D. committee.  I literally created a "trouble ticket" accounting
> >> scheme to track change requests for his thesis.
> >>
> >> Bill was a valued member of the WIDE Project here in Japan.  He worked
> >> with the DNS root operations group here, and participated in as many
> >> WIDE meetings as he could.  He also came to Keio University's Shonan
> >> Fujisawa Campus when he was in Japan, and one of the best things about
> >> Bill was how seriously he took the students and their work, treating
> >> them like adult colleagues.
> >>
> >> Bill had friends on all seven continents, and for all I know on the
> >> International Space Station, as well. He was loved by us all.
> >>
> >> Julie does not plan to have a funeral immediately, so there is no need
> >> for flowers or the like. The family may do a memorial service in Utah
> >> in the spring.
> >>
> >> He was a unique and wonderful human being. And a good friend.
> >> Rest in peace, Bill.
> >>
> >> —Rod
>
> >
>
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