An obituary often fails to capture the essence of a person among details of the services, by whom the deceased is survived and when he or she died.
But when William "Bill" Fink passed on December 16 at the age of 46, his brother knew exactly how Bill would wish to be remembered.
View post on imgur.com
A passionate programmer, Bill's obituary appropriately memorializes his life in tech-speak. It reads,
William Ralph 'Bill' Fink, 46, of Belleville, Ill., born July 28, 1969, in Belleville, Ill., encountered an unhandled exception in his core operating system, which prematurely triggered a critical 'STOP' condition on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015. Bill was an avid technophile, program developer, and educator, whose master functions were harnessed by Microsoft Corp. as a technical evangelist. Some of Bill's most impactful sub-routines centered around video games, coaching youth sports, building elaborate displays for Halloween, and spending time with family.
An Imgur user by the name of ChezTheHero uploaded the photo, and Bill's brother later spotted the image on the social sharing website, at which time he commented,
I'm not the OP, but I am the author of the obit. My brother was an amazing guy who ate, slept, and breathed computers, and I could think of no better way to memorialize his passing than to invoke memories of our childhood: Tron, Basic, TRS80, DOS, etc. Thanks to the OP and to all who commented. Bill didn't want a funeral or to be mourned, but to go viral like this seems to be the perfect tribute to him.
The closing of the obituary sweetly reads,
Though his hardware has been decommissioned, Bill's application has been migrated to the Cloud and has been repurposed to run in a virtual machine on an infinite loop.
One thing's for sure: Bill Fink will be remembered not only by those who knew him, but by the Internet through which his legacy lives on.
Citations: Mashable
