He wasn’t my grandad. But I hung on his words as if he was. I valued his outlook. More times than not agreeing with everything he said.

I met Richard for the first time back in 2008 I think. It was at one of the blog awards. We stood at a table and we shared stories and craic for hours. I also met his funny and wonderful daughter K8 the Gr8 that night. He was a well spoken, plainly spoken, funny and very wise man. His geek streek was almost as bad as mine. I loved his posts about Windows and the posts where he was exploring a new Linux distribution. I also loved his posts about the old days in RTE.

I heard the news about his death last week. I knew it was coming soon. I had Emailed him at the start of this month and his response promised to write when he had a little more energy and privacy. But unfortunately, that energy never came and nore too did his follow up Email.

I know I only met the man once but I have been reading his rambles and I have been talking to him ocasionally by Email for almost two decades. I really feel like I’ve lost a friend. I lay awake thinking about it last night.

I haven’t been good at posting to this blog for over a decade now. But I wanted to write something here today to mark his passing and mark the character that I will really miss.