Glen Ditchfield - my tribute

RE: https://passages.winnipegfreepress.com/passage-details/id-316785/DITCHFIELD_GLEN

I will always appreciate Glen's humility, gentleness, astute observations and great knowledge on many subjects.?

At work, I would intentionally seek out Glen when looking for insight into a subject or idea as he almost always had a useful perspective on things to help me on my quest. I would rarely leave an interaction without having learned something. Whether it was about a technical subject or just chatting about an expected but equally interesting sidebar.?

One of Glen's small gifts to me is the word "sublimate". I observed one spring day that the snow was evaporating quickly. He gently corrected me that snow sublimates not evaporates. I've kept that word in my lexicon ever since.

Glen one day found out that I liked to collect flags. He even knew the word for a person who does such things, which I did not: vexillologist. Another word that I've kept.

I met Glen in the early 1990s while working at a startup venture that was creating a custom radio network for power utilities. He once had an unbelievably high score on one of the games that came on SunOS. He had played it over a week-end on the company's server; presumably on a 1200 baud or 2400 baud modem. He did not however retrieve the Amulet of Yendor.

Glen was the sort of person you could bring up a topic, like the word "xyzzy", and find yourself magically transported from one place to another during the discussion.

One of Glen's sayings that I have adopted was that "reviewing another software developer's code was like cleaning their toilet". It is a vivid picture of how unpleasant the task can be and very accurate. It was also an encouragement to recognize the work for what it was and to get the job done.

As neither of us were in management, we would from time to time find ourselves in a meeting receiving an announcement about a new direction or a new policy. Sometimes things about the announcement didn't seem quite right to me (as sometimes management executes less than perfectly), but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Glen was a perfect person to discuss things with as he was usually well ahead of us all on predicting outcomes. If management's idea was particularly bad, Glen would say "Nooooo!" in his patient way of expressing impatience with idiocy.

I will miss Glen and his friendship but I will retain his many gifts of wisdom he has shared over the many years that I knew him.