Randy Pausch passes

I normally don't really care so much about public figures on a personal level, but when Phil called me today on my way to work to tell me that Randy Pausch had passed away today, I was honestly saddened.


If you haven't heard of Randy's story, I strongly recommended reading his book "The Last Lecture" It is a truly inspiring, touching, and amazing story. Randy was a professor in the Computer Science dept at Carnegie Mellon in PA. He was a pioneer in his field with regards to virtual technology and he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given only months to live back in 2006. He very much so reminded me of my old boss, Jean Ichbiah - who was also very much a pioneer in his field of computer science and who also passed away due to terminal cancer.


For those of you who are familiar with my Myspace page, you may have noticed the quote I use in my heading that says "Its not the cards your dealt, its how you play the hand" That quote was from Randy's book. And basically, in a nutshell, his view on his cancer was that he could not change the cards he was dealt, there is nothing more he can do to change the outcome of his illness, so he decided to instead change the way he "played the hand". For his last lecture, he decided that he was not going to talk about cancer, and how sad he was, he instead talked about achieving your childhood dreams, and how he was happy to have achieved all of his dreams in his lifetime. He did the lecture and wrote the book because he wanted his 3 children to have something special to remember him by, and to also something that could allow the kids to know him on a more personal level - especially the youngest who he feared would not have any memory of him at all.


To read his book and to hear him speak at his last lecture is just beyond inspiring. I really recommend the book, I don't want to give to much more away about his story for those who want to read it.



To read more about Randy's life and obituary, please see the link below.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148949/last_lecture_computerscience_professor_randy_pausch_dies.html