For geeks like me email and IM are great tools, you get instant feedback to your messages. However sometimes people go dark, they don't answer emails and they're no longer on IM.

Today, via google I found out why my friend Alex/squeaple was no longer responding.

Alex was the first developer I employed at Virtue (Annelie being my real first employee, poor lass got all the crappy HTML stuff to do). I can remember his interview, in Carluccios in Market Place. We were discussing the best way to design a database, with Peter. Alex argued, he argued a lot. He was a baby, young. He'd started working at around 15 and neither Peter or I had noticed his age wasn't on his CV, so when we found out he was in his very early twenties it was a bit of a shock. I was never sure whose ego was bigger, his or mine. His code was interesting to say the least, you set him a task, sometimes it would get done, sometimes he'd focus on one bit and fly off at a tangent. His methods for making VB services properly multi-threaded where impressive. We raced each other to try to master areas of .net. I referred to him as my minion, he had a sign on his monitor using his "title" with pride.

Virtue moved from London to Marlow. Alex always had problems with mornings, and that journey was awful, so he finally had an excuse to fulfil his fantasy and learn to ride and then get a motorbike. I remember well his excitement when he turned up in his leathers and his brand new bike. There were a lot of jokes that day, I stuck a sheet of paper on the back of his bike with "Come stroke my helmet" written on it.

As happens, Virtue ran into money problems. We had to let people go (and eventually I got let go as well). It was a hard decision to make, emotional, and Alex was one of the people we couldn't keep, out of about 80 I think 8 made it safely through.

So he started his own business at home, he didn't have to get up before 11 that way. We kept in touch over IM and emails, I asked him to be an usher at my wedding, I even made it onto his CV, as "their highly skilled ex-Microsoft man". I gave him good references for jobs. Then it all went dark.

I assumed he was busy, sent the odd email ping every couple of months. He never responded to the wedding invite, so I did wonder if he'd switched email addresses or something and put it down to a quiet time.

It wasn't. For some reason he popped into my mind today. I checked his web sites, still up, and decided I'd do a google search. To my horror I found that Alex died on September 27th, 2003. He crashed the bike he was so proud of. I wish I'd known. I wish I could have gone to the funeral. I wish he was still here.

No-one at Virtue knew, this happened a year after we all went our separate ways. That was an email I didn't wish to send the Virtue people I am still in contact with

Farewell Alex, I wish I could have said goodbye properly.