Austin Ziegler

... he went, “You know Steve Perelgut!!” Apparently, they go back a long time. =) Austin’s a way cool Ruby person!

I first met Austin many, many years ago when we were both active participants on USENET in alt.soc.generation-x. (Yes, I was a poseur.)

Austin is a plain-speaker and not shy with sharing his opinions.

Hence, hanging around Austin on a group like that usually involved keeping marshmallows and a stick handy for the inevitable flamewar.

Always with positive intentions.

I had lunch with Austin at RubyConf 2005, talked to him about integrating Ruport with PDF writer, something that is finally starting to happen.

I ran into Austin Ziegler at RubyConf 2005. He was presenting yet another piece of his bad-ass software (PDF::Writer this time).

All around great guy. Buy him a beer, damnit!

He has the best hair! Plus he’s very friendly and nice. He was one of the people who really made me feel welcome at RubyConf, where I really didn’t know that many people and was one of the newbies feeling a little lost among people who’d known each other for years.

Derek has made a splash in the Ruby world since he’s publicly converted CD Baby from PHP to Rails and Ruby. Being the connected person that he is, he’s usually early into new technologies. He’s responsible for giving me early invites into several social technology groups.

Add that to the fact that he was really cool and bought a bunch of us dinner at RubyConf—he’s a definite class act.

David is a funny and enthusiastic guy. You don’t have to agree with him—he’s okay with that—but it’s almost impossible not to like him and his irrepressible personality. He’s genuinely smart and has done an amazing job with Rails and 37signals.

Wobblini is having an identity crisis on 43people right now. He’s really David A. Black, international man of mystery—er, sorry. He’s really David A. Black, a director of Ruby Central, Inc. and one of the people who puts on RubyConf every year. He’s a genuinely nice guy who would be much happier if this stuff just worked! He also happens to be one of the people who makes it worthwhile to be in the Ruby community.

Austin is a great person, a brilliant programmer, and the most sincere Windows user I know.

It doesn’t make me want to use Windows, but I respect him for it.