Tom was my close friend and roommate in the early-mid 1990s in San Diego. We met at the San Diego CalPIRG office where I was a recent college grad and new canvasser, and he was also a recent college grad and our trainer and supervisor. I didn't last long at door-to-door fundraising, but Tom was tenacious, responsible, and hardworking, skills that I personally lacked and admired in him. Those skills served him well throughout his life and career.
We had a large group of common friends and had a lot of fun in our early 20s, going to the beach, concerts, road trips, local rock-and-roll shows, and rollerblading on the Pacific Beach boardwalk. Tom could be funny and goofy. I had the honor to be best man at his wedding.
He worked for most of a year for my mother's small sales office, where he made sales calls and developed a new contact database. I think this is how he originally caught the technology bug.
I moved to the Bay Area in 1997 to start my own career in tech and through the years we saw each other occasionally but eventually less frequently and drifted apart. I had not seen him in the last few years and now deeply regret not reaching out. I'll miss Tom.