In lieu of a wake, let me tell a funny story about Simon. He flew out to San Rafael while we were both working at Greenplum, for us to work together to implement Greenplum's resource management system. He'd never spent much time in the US before, and had never been to a chain restaurant before.

San Rafael being what it is, our first night there the partners took us out to a CA chain restaurant that pretended to be a French bistro ... (1)