RIP: Bill Manning

Tue Jan 28 01:59:20 UTC 2020

I too am saddened by this news. I had the honor to work with Bill during
our time together at ARIN. The world is dimmed by his passing.
---------------------------------------------
Don Wilder
---------------------------------------------

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build
bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce
bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 5:54 PM Rabbi Rob Thomas <robt at cymru.com> wrote:

> Dear team,
>
> I was very sad when I heard this news.  Bill was a fun and friendly
> presence, and patiently mentored me in my early days.  I’ll never forget
> when he scrawled “I love bots” on one of my NANOG badges.  I still have
> it.  :)  I had the fortune to be on a couple of panels with him, and I
> learned from his answers and the way he presented them.  I admire that he
> cared, and he gave of himself without hesitation.  I will miss him and his
> contributions.
>
> Zichrono livracha, Bill’s memory is definitely for blessing.
>
> Be well,
> Rabbi Rob.
>
>
> > On Jan 27, 2020, at 3:34 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
> >
> >>
>
> --
> Rabbi Rob Thomas                                           Team Cymru
>    "It is easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we
>     agree." - Leo McKern
>
>
>
>
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