I had finally got the opportunity to travel for work for the first time.

Tom and I were going for Qual groups and spending a day or two in LA, and another day or so in Dallas. We needed to be in LA by Monday morning for groups, so we decided to fly in mid-day on Sunday to give us more time to get settled and not be overly rushed.

I had suggested wanting to spend a day or so doing something in LA, like Universal Studios, and Tom said we might be able to swing it, but it could be tough since we would land in the middle of the day and the park might close early. We ended up flying in and getting to the hotel around 3:30pm, but with the park closing early that day, there wouldn't be enough time to make the visit worth it, so I had pretty much given up on being able to make the stop.

Tom however, in his infinite travel wisdom (and hatred of doing nothing) made the last minute decision that 1) we could make it and 2) we would go. When we got there, the line to get tickets was short but the lines for the rides were long, so we would only be able to ride maybe a ride or two inside the park before it closed. Universal Studios offers tickets of varying prices, with higher priced tickets letting you skip to the near front of the line for each ride, but they were very expensive.

Tom insisted on buying us the expensive passes so we could ride as many rides as possible before the park closed that day. It was a huge surprise for me and extremely nice of him to do, since without those passes, we would not have been able to do nearly as much.

We went into the park with the Premium Passes and skipped nearly every line, which let us ride every ride in the park just before it closed down. We even got to ride the (realistically) only good ride several times over thanks to the passes he got for us. We left the park at sundown, walking out the last crowd, having crammed an entire day at Universal into it's last few open hours thanks to Tom.

Tom consistently had an affinity for travel and the nice things in life, and he was always open and willing to share that knowledge and love with those around him when it really counted. I'm extremely grateful that I got to work under Tom, because those qualities made my first work-travel experience unforgettable, and it was genuinely all because of him.


Thank you Tom, for everything.

A few PSBers will know the journey of the Azure CXP team- a brutal gauntlet of cloud-oriented work in a pretty stressful environment, managed by a... fun client :-)

I had the privilege of being a part of that team. While I learned a lot, some days were more difficult than others with the hours, the workload, and deliverables that needed to be turned around faster than they could be developed.

One Friday, I was in the office working late, and Tom was one of the last people to leave (around 6pm). He asked me how long I was going to be there, and I said I didn't know. I remember he looked at his watch, looked back at me and said "Well, I'm going to sit at El Gaucho's until you are able to join me. I'm buying." About 2 hours later, I walked down to El Gaucho's, thinking "There is no way he is still here- I'll just grab a quick bite and head home". Lo and behold, there he was at the bar, with an empty stool next to him. We ate dinner, talked, laughed, and had way too many G&Ts. We ended up having to leave our cars at the office and Uber home. I don't know if I ever thanked him for that night, but he really helped me out of a poor mental spot.

Cheers to you Tom. I'm gonna miss you man.