Matt Gray

A friend of mine, Matt Gray passed away recently. I worked with him for almost 10 years at Clockwork. I have heard many people say that Matt was one of the smartest, kindest, and thoughtful people they knew. I can vouch for all of that.

I learned a lot from Matt. We were basically the same age but for whatever reason he was way ahead of me, when it came to a lot of “professional” skills. And someone I “looked up to”… metaphorically.

Matt was a great punner. I am not good at puns but I love them, a lot. There were a few proud moments hanging around Clockwork where I made a pun. A “seed pun” if you will. And then Matt would go on a “pun run.” So great.

Some of my cherished albeit everyday sorts of memories of Matt include:

• Matt teaching me how to (really) use gpg.
• Watching Matt edit code with vim.
• Matt running around the office (with several other coworkers) to the Benny Hill Theme Song.
• Setting up a bunch of RaspberryPIs with Minecraft for the first CoderDojoTC. (The PIs turned out to not be powerful enough for a good experience for the kids, but at the time RasberryPIs were so cool)
• Matt finding out how Carol (my car) talked.
• Walking to Zakia with Matt for “Fish Friday”.
• Being inspired to learn how to use the wave board after watching Matt and Marty cruise around the office (it look me a long time to learn but it was totally worth it).
• Mustachio 07. This is what got me to finally grow a beard. I’ve had a shorn face from time to time since then, but it’s been mostly beard from then on out. Matt won for “the saddest stache ever”. My stache was almost as sad as Matt’s. I’m a beard man. I can’t pull off “just” the stach.
• Watching demos of Matt showing off Tweetwally. I think this was Matt… he put in #yolo. Lots of lauging.
• Matt introducing me to Punch Pizza.
• Matt and Megan encouraging me to go “inbox 0” and GTD. Life changing.
• Running into Matt at Minnebar.
• Visiting Matt at his house and eating take out with some fellow Clockworkers. We were getting together because of his cancer treatment and we wanted to encourage him and it was a good excuse to see some people in person and hang out. We were in his driveway because of COVID. Eating Zakia, and getting to hangout IRL encouraged me a lot during COVID.
• Listening to Matt talk about the “Annual Cloud Narrative” project for Breeze Ave.
• Matting getting excited to take new co-worker’s Polaroid picture.
• Matt, Carrie, and a bunch of other Clockwork folks coming to my wedding even though it was a bit of a drive (this one is last because I have a picture of it).

I’m sorry if I have some of these memories wrong. Many of them were a long time ago.

These are not in chronological, more “stream of consciousness” order.

I miss Matt. If you knew him too, maybe reading this will help you remember something about him.