{"id":13069,"date":"2013-08-25T14:54:32","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T19:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smaggi.us-east-1.derr.space\/?p=13069"},"modified":"2013-08-25T14:54:50","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T19:54:50","slug":"rest-in-peace-ben","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/2013\/08\/25\/rest-in-peace-ben\/","title":{"rendered":"Rest in peace Ben"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ben<\/a>

Ben and I at my Pinballz-based birthday party last Summer<\/p><\/div>\n

Last Friday morning (Aug. 23, 2013) Austin, TX and Apple, Inc lost a person who made the world a better place. This is no hyperbole because many co-workers of all stripes liked Ben. I never heard a negative thing about his character or his work ethic, a hard thing to do in life regardless if you’re the POTUS or a burger flipper. I recently wanted to use his abilities at putting customers at ease with Aperture as a foundation to help others struggling with their interactions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben Rasberry came into my life around early 2010 after he had completed his Enterprise ProApps training. I believe he was recruited from the iApps team so supporting Logic, Final Cut and Aperture wasn’t a difficult transition after mastering Garage Band, iMovie and iPhoto respectively. Being a Stars season-ticketholder and Ben having a cube along the high-traffic section of work area inevitably led to us socializing on the day he wore his Dallas Stars jersey.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many conversations later led to us sharing numerous other favorite interests: D&D\/Pathfinder, cartoons (Dexter’s Lab<\/em> was the big inside joke for us), hockey and clever shirts. Ben once told me he originally wanted to get a job with DNA Productions since they were based in his original home area of Dallas; DNA is the company you see at the end of\u00a0Jimmy Neutron<\/em> cartoons. This plan was nixed by\u00a0The Ant Bully<\/em>, the \u00a0movie responsible for tanking DNA. Still, it all evolved into our ongoing inside joke of “omelete du\u00a0fromage\/it’s all you can say!” from\u00a0Dexter’s Lab<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m glad Ben was able to attend a couple Stars games with me too. He was a Dallas fan and it’s always great to see how your team’s future prospects are tearing up the rink. Then you can say, “I saw so-and-so back when he was on our AHL team. He was awesome during those days too.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, I want to say Ben’s smile, more upbeat demeanor and frequent, sincere laughter were infectious. There were times it helped me put my grouchiness or irritation at other co-workers into perspective. Plus the dude made some impressive beef jerky he was always willing to share. I was bummed the day Ben left for another, equally exclusive team at Apple a few weeks ago. However, I didn’t begrudge his decision, I immediately admitted to Ben I wanted him to stay for my own selfish reasons. I saw the upside though, Ben would be our organization’s\u00a0liaison to his new one. Maybe we’d join up for team-building outings and\/or have a friendly, annual game of softball against each other. He was a smart guy with solid customer-handling skills who would definitely have an advantage in this team thanks to his three years with ProApps.<\/span><\/p>\n

All those past, wonderful memories do counter the sadness I feel, especially when I choked back the tears last Friday morning as my former manager Walt and current area manager Corky broke the news in private to me. Being human, I wanted to know the details but in the end, it doesn’t matter. What will matter is how we all remember Ben.<\/span><\/p>\n

Currently the gears are turning in our collective heads, primarily by keeping an old AppleCare tradition. Naming a lab or meeting room after co-workers as a tribute to their memory. I would like to take a step further by piecing together a little plaque giving a quick explanation (for lack of a better word) due to the influx of new people at Apple. There are probably a couple hundred remaining employees who can say who was Lyons, Dee, Shank and Mistuyoshi; I knew two personally and the stories of the remainder. Several of us are petitioning to name the new ProApps lab in memoriam to Ben. Co-worker Misty helped coin its title too\u2026Rasberry Fields Forever. We’ll see. I want to make sure Ben’s wife Ami approves. Much like Mitsuyoshi’s picture of Mount Fuji accompanying the Enterprise Server lab, I think there should be either a picture of the Dexter character (Ben’s favorite?) or the Dallas Stars logo. Again, Ami will be the best judge to decide this in due time.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other matter some of us are\u00a0collaborating on will require HR’s assistance. We want to do it correctly without anything coming off as panhandling or coercion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben’s service will be tomorrow (Monday, August 26, 2013) up in Cedar Park. He is survived by his wife Ami and son Alex.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Friday morning (Aug. 23, 2013) Austin, TX and Apple, Inc lost a person who made the world a better place. This is no hyperbole because many co-workers of all stripes liked Ben. I never heard a negative thing about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-obituary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13069"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17045,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13069\/revisions\/17045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maggipicayune.derr.io\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}