Changed my life? Naw! I am too much like him, secure in my own certainty and belief that the rest of the world is out of line with reality and wandering blindly down the rose-colored glasses path to self-delusion and perdition. We have always gotten along because we each mine the world for ideas and improvements, seeing incremental progress in a better light switch, a more logically placed cup holder, a time-saving klemfedderspanner (I actually have one in my toolbox), the polyglot, the arcane, the outre and the brainstorm. What others call nuts, crazy, a waste of time, is to both Duane and me, well-worth exploring for the unrefined ore that may lurk within. We suffer fools poorly and dismiss empty rhetoric with well-deserved disdain. Our mutual advice to the world of business and politics specifically is shut up and try something useful so we can find out if you can do the job. A long-suffering friend of our mutual acquaintance once tagged us both as Asperger’s syndromites. We laughed uproariously. It is simpler than that; it is easier to ignore that and those which are not interesting than to exert vast energies accommodating an uncomprehending throng.
So changed my life? No. But enriched it by recognition of another unique and rebellious personality who spits in the eye of convention because the alternatives are vastly more interesting! Absolutely!
Andrew Allan
Comment by Vanessa
In about 1983, Duane got a contract job with SRI (Stanford Research International) to use his skill with Morse code to work on a spy program. That led to SRI hiring him to lead the field survey crew for the NEXRAD weather radar known as Doppler radar that we see daily in weather forecasting. He pulled in a couple of friends who were quite technical and willing to do hard work. One was Andy Allan. This is his very interesting answer to my request for comment about Duane.