I learned yesteday that a good friend died recently. Paul Pershing was an incredible, fascinating guy. He’d toured the country with a rock band. Didn’t lack for journalistic chops. And he was a prototypical computer geek. He’s the one who turned me on to HTML back in 1994, when it was completely incomprehensible to me. Paul was patient, and together we figured out how to write the code it would take to put the Rocky Mountain News on the Web.
When I heard yesterday that he’d died, I started searching google to see if I could find an obit or something. I didn’t find one then, but I did find a slew of Usenet posts he made dating back to 1989. It’s so strange to read these posts now, knowing he’s dead but that his words live on in cyberspace.
I learned a lot from you, Paul, and I’ll never forget you. Rest in peace, old buddy.
BTW: During the Google search, I also found a Rocky article about when we launched the site.