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45-year-old Leonard Zubkoff was killed in a helicopter crash in Alaska on August 29, 2002. Leonard was the creator of Dandelion Digital, a small recording studio and producer of filk recordings on compact disc until 1999, as well as a linux kernel developer and the maintainer of BusLogic and DAC960 projects. The Dandelion Report offers heartfelt condolences to Leonard's friends and family. Also see:
From Jeff Bohnhoff: Like many of you, I was terribly shocked and saddened to learn of Leonard Zubkoff's death last week. I heard the news just as we were getting ready to start filking Sunday evening at ConJose. I'm still coming to terms with it. With all due apologies to those who may have known Leonard better and for a longer time, here are some of my thoughts. I first met Leonard in the summer of either 1995 or 1996 (my memory for such things is not so good). Jane Robinson had asked me to add some guitar tracks to her "Dr. Jane's Remains" CD, which Leonard was engineering. I drove from Grass Valley to San Jose on Saturday afternoon and upon arriving at Leonard's home in San Jose was greeted by big hugs from Jane, Leonard, and his partner at the time, Jo Kellnor. Leonard and I immediately hit it off, and we spent a very enjoyable afternoon and evening recording electric guitar and bass tracks for the album. I think Leonard was a little taken aback by my electric guitar rig, he had always recorded acoustic and a capella music before that, but he quickly "got into the swing" of it. I spent the night there, and Leonard and Jo were wonderfully gracious hosts. The next morning Jane and Leonard took me out for a nice breakfast, and we then got back to work. I'll always have very fond memories of that weekend - I was fairly new to the filk community and it felt nice to make a connection with someone else who was so actively involved. Over the subsequent years, we saw a lot of Leonard, mostly at conventions like Consonance and Baycon. We also became good friends a bit later with another group of filkers that Leonard recorded - the Duras Sisters, and we spent a lot of shared time with both them and Leonard both in Phoenix and the bay Area. I witnessed Leonard's extreme generosity many times during the time we all spent together. In recent years, Leonard pulled away from the filk community, but we still saw him occasionally. He and Chris Dickinson came to our house for a visit last winter. It was during this visit that I first learned that he was pursuing a helicopter pilot's license. He was very animated talking about it. We last saw him this past May at Leprecon in Phoenix. He was very far along in his flight lessons, and just as excited as when I first talked about it with him. It was wonderful seeing him so happy and excited about the direction he was going. It's sad to think that he has passed on, but I take some comfort in knowing that he was happy in what he was doing when his life ended. Some other random thoughts - Leonard described himself as a "sensualist". He took great delight in many pleasures, especially food. One particularly fond memory I have is an evening we spent at Consonance at one of his favorite Indian restaurants. The food was great, and we talked for hours. We did end up missing out on some of the filking, but it was well worth it. He was very childlike in his enthusiasms (I mean this in the most positive sense) - when he was into something, he was WAY into it. Most of you know how enthusiastically he embraced Linux and the Open Source GNU. The same was true with his new found love of helicopters. He also loved fast sports cars.
From Lynn Gold:Leonard and I had known each other for around 19 years. We first met professionally, then got to know each other socially when he moved out here in the mid-80s. He and I clicked right away because we both loved gadgets, science, science fiction, filk, and good food. When he and I both worked at Oracle we got together at least once a week for lunch. After my stint at Oracle ended we saw each other at least twice a month for a long time despite hectic work schedules. He started Dandelion Digital to produce audiophile-quality recordings of filk music. His setup was simple but very high-end; two mikes carefully positioned together so the end result would sound like a live concert if you were sitting in the middle of his living room. (It did.) He would often invite folks over to try out his latest piece of equipment. Leonard was a brilliant computer scientist who "struck gold" in Silicon Valley. He was as generous as he was cash-rich. At his own expense he registered consonance.org and, for several years, held all our mailing lists. Whether it was computers or audio, he always "had" to have the latest and greatest equipment. He readily gave away his castoffs or sold them at ridiculously low prices. The running half-joke out here was if you wanted a new computer, you waited for Leonard to take out the trash and stretched out your arms. If you had a software or hardware problem, he was also ready to help. He also loved complex engineering problems. At one point he invited me over to use his hot tub when my leg was in a cast just to see if we could work out the logistics. (The solution involved several layers of plastic bags, a small trash can, and a lot of duct tape.) His last high-tech venture enabled him to get paid to hack Linux, something he did just for fun. Eventually he decided hacking Linux was more fun than running a filk recording company, so he closed down Dandelion Digital. He still showed up at cons from time to time, but Linux and problems with a second marriage had really consumed the bulk of his time. When VA Linux Systems changed directions, he left, cashed out, and took up helicopter flying. This let him see lots of pretty sights while getting to play with gadgets. I expressed concern about the helicopter lessons, asking him at the last Consonance, "Isn't that a dangerous hobby to be taking up?" He confidently replied, "No more dangerous than anything else." He was the kind of person who, although he liked fast cars and such, would always make sure everything was working properly. He even joined Alcor so he could be preserved if he died of something we couldn't cure now. Perhaps sometime in the future Leonard will be back, reading this, thinking about what a fool I was to not do likewise. Maybe that's why it's hard to believe he's gone. I can still see his smiling face, hear his voice, and feel his hugs. He was a good friend, and he will be sorely missed. |