I have words for a eulogy. dannye and I rarely got along. I think the closest we got was our mutual antipathy for a few users that we generally agreed were wastes of bits and oxygen. When we did agree, it was remarkable, as, like most people, I found him a hard man to get along with, much less tolerate.
I was not dannye's friend. It took me by a lot of surprise to discover that I was incredibly upset to find out about his passing. There's a lot of regret that I didn't know the man better. There's a lot of regret in how bitterly I argued with him. For better or for worse, the man taught me a lot about temper. He taught me about what drives me around the bend.
However, it drove me around the bend to figure out that I was crying when I found out that there was one piece of my poetry he actually liked well enough to ching. That there were some other pieces of writing that he approved of. I know at least part of his anger with me wasn't even necessarily about me - it was about the administration of a site he saw slowly decaying into nothingness. And it was about knowing I could do better. Most frequently, our interactions were his disbelief, or a suggestion, or raging about something I'd posted.
Another thing: two of my best friends are also the folks who edit my work the most.
They came from E2 when dannye and folks like him were editing, were informing the culture of the site a lot more. They picked up on the culture here, the drive to do better. I owe these friends my writing chops.
Godspeed, dannye. I hope Heaven's got a lot of red pens for you. You were a hell of an editor, and a hell of a cantankerous old man. And I miss you more than I ever thought I would.