Hi Hackers,
It is with grief that we must share the news with you that Bion, who has been long-time member of our Hackerspace community, passed away last week unexpectedly. we were asked to delay announcing so his family could be notified. His wife Sharon is being supported by family and some ATXHS members. We’ll find out more soon about how we can support her at this time.
Bion was a friend to all hackers, a trusted volunteer, and helped make the electronics shop the resource you see. The truest gift you could ever give him was an interesting question, the more esoteric the better. He jumped into member questions or projects for the space with patience and joy and humor. You can see him give a tour of the E-shop in our intro video — https://youtu.be/EL05GqQbm1c starting at minute 21. We’ll follow up with details of a memorial, and after our annual meeting on Dec 2nd please join us to make a toast and share stories of Bion.
Bion, we’ll miss you dearly.
If you wish please share a story or good wish below, and we’ll share them with his other family and friends.
So Kye had an old MacBook that had passed away and we wanted to get the data off. Like they do, the drive had standard protocols but a proprietary physical connection. Googling for the solution wasn’t conclusive, but I knew this was catnip for a far better resource. In the before times you could pretty well count that there’d be three to five Linux/Hackintosh/Electronics folks hanging out in the lounge and sure enough Bion, Computer Wolf, and crew spent the next forty five minutes helping figure it out. Bion had a lovely unique speaking pattern that made it easy to hear the gentleness and curiosity in his ideas and advice on any matter. I’ll miss you, friend.
I really liked Bion’s T-shirt collection. He liked animals and loved his wife. I can’t think of a conversation with him where he didn’t mention her at least once. And yes, I loved how Bion was up to consult on anybody’s project. He was never interested in impressing people, but was also a bottomless well of esoteric information, open to any idea and so curious – and he never met an “obsolete” piece of technology, or a person he didn’t treat with courtesy. So many things were fun for him to work with, re-furb, just appreciate. I think he just liked the way humans make things to suit needs, and then enjoyed finding another way of using them or making them functional. I just feel like on a basic level Bion liked adopting things, and wouldn’t ever discriminate just because it wasn’t immediately useful or efficient. The snack dispenser in the lounge was a project he was wanting to get to – as well as the screen with calendar in the foyer – he liked helping the community and he liked inventing new ways to do that all the time.
Here is a link to Bion’s memorial page. It says here: “If you wish to honor him, please donate to a local animal rescue group near you, tell a great joke or horrible pun, or raise a glass in cheer.”
