1965. I\u2019m a grad student working part time at IBM\u2019s Education Center in San Jose, CA. They teach executives from all over about those new-fangled mainframe computers. My department provides education materials. IBM had simple apparel standards. White shirts and suits: black, navy and any shade of gray will do. Couple of days into this gig a tall, slender, energetic guy ambles into my department. He sticks out! He\u2019s wearing a bright red sport coat which blinds the eye from whatever else he had on! Turns out he had another renegade sport coat: power blue.You got it! That dude was Donald G. Farrar, employee of IBM\u2019s Field Engineering Department. Jovial and totally out of step with whatever those other people were doing there. We hit it off. Rapid-fire wit. Amiable. Also, a part time guy going to school. Early stuff in common.And the friendship went on from there for 56 years. Playing \u201cburn-out\u201d throwing a hard ball in the streets. Softball and flag football. Live music. Laughter. Batman. Archiving Oakland Raider broadcasts, all the best music of all the decades, eBooks (about 4,600 titles), coverage of current events framed against Libertarian convictions \u2026 and so much more. Don was a natural born librarian \u2013 without the walls and quiet. And a conversationalist, too. We spent hours reviewing his myriad opinions (and a few of mine), where the world has gone wrong, math theories and formulae, science plausibilities and bagful\u2019s of other topics. He was a Mac Nut of the first order. I remain his main convert.Don silently tucked away a soft side, too. He cared, but not often out loud. Like all of us, he had some life laments and those woulda-coulda-shoulda things he outwardly discounted and inwardly entertained. Self awareness takes over now and then. But, in the end, Don traveled life\u2019s road energetically, daily and mostly in ways that suited him just fine. I was happy to ride shotgun.Sail on, Partner. Miss you! Chuck Heinrich
