A hacker remembers

This story by David Humphrey from last week really hit home:

She told about how my grandfather made his living repairing radios, toasters, fans–anything and everything electrical. He’d only received a 4th grade education in Scotland, before he had to start earning a living to support the family. She described how their entire house, with its mechanical and other systems, was kept working through his creativity and persistence. When the well pump went, he made a new one out of parts from three others…

David could have been describing my own grandfather, who died last month. I knew him as Ojiichan ("Grandpa"). A child of immigrant farmers, his formal education stopped after the sixth grade. As a young man during the internment, he took a correspondence course in radio repair, and after the war started a life-long career in electronics. He worked on electronics at home too, building projects like a cruise control for his own car. Almost up until his death at 93, he lived alone, still drove, and still flew every year to keep his pilot's license up to date. At his memorial service, his family remembered his love of tricky, hard-to-solve problems.

Many of Ojiichan's children and grandchildren have grown up to be engineers, but few of us could do some the things he did. He was a lively embodiment of the hacker spirit.