When we were leaving his office (home of our weekly D&D game now), I forgot to wish him a happy birthday last night, but better on time than never right? Last year we joined him for dinner at Fuddrucker’s and he was in great spirits; his new business doing data recovery (Heroic Efforts) was going great guns, still is in my opinion, and he has another business with a third in the works.
Anyway, Jeremy is another living example of how friendship is made at odd times and places. Making a good friend at work is not that unusual (he used to be on the phones at Apple-Austin), it was the introduction; I monitored and rated one of his tech calls when I was a backfill manager in 2000. I honestly don’t even remember the specifics of the call, it was probably good since Jeremy pretty sharp and the disastrous ones are unforgettable. His reaction to the evaulation was the priceless part, something along the lines of “who the heck are you?” We weren’t in the same buildings, ah the gulf of that parking lot. I think he was one of the agents stuck in managerial limbo then too (sometimes employees get shuffled frequently during growth and it’s impossible to know who reports to whom). Despite the awkward introductions, our paths crossed again later that Summer as Third Edition D&D was appearing. We were both looking to start up a campaign then and as the cliche goes, the rest is history.
We’ve been friends for many, many other reasons outside of D&D though. We’ve gone to movies, dinner with spouses and general socializing. Once again demonstrating how gaming is just an old, analog version of social networking, the point I was hoping to make in the recent movie I was in (still waiting for a copy of this).
Meanwhile, wish him happy birthday or better yet, keep Heroic Efforts in mind if you lose data on your computer’s hard drive (he can rescue more than Macs) or read his posts on ungenius, the site for former Mac Geniuses.