George Williams has died

It’s kind of odd to see one’s own name in an obituary.

Oh, I know my name is moderately common. For one thing I’m the fifth of that name in my family so I’ve shared my name with my father all my life. When I was a child my father occasionally got his mail mixed up with another “George Williams” who worked at the other university in town.

But it’s one thing to get one’s name confused with someone else, it’s quite another to be told one is dead.

I’ve known of this gentleman (the other GW), and been amused by his name whenever I ran across it. He provided the best explanation of why old age and death have evolved.

He, also, I learned in the obituary, ran. When he was 52 (roughly my age) he started running 1700m (roughly a mile) and recording his time each year to watch his own ability decline with age.

It makes me wonder what I will be remembered for. I can’t really think of anything. I’m good at a number of things, but I’m not great. I’m not best at anything. In my work… well, I work in a field of transience. I wrote an html-editor once that had hundred of thousands of users. For a while. But the technology moved on, and development on my program was stopped, and now no one uses it.

Sigh. I‘m not dead yet.

• I died again…