The Unidata Program Center wishes a fond farewell to Robb Kambic, who is forsaking the snow and Chinook winds of Colorado's front range for the mosquitos and hurricane force winds of central Florida.
Robb's tenure as a Unidata software developer began in August of 1993. In the intervening years, he has contributed to a wide variety of Unidata projects, ranging from the Local Data Manager (LDM), data decoders, and the THREDDS Data Server.
"Robb is refreshingly adaptable and open to new ideas and approaches," says UPC staffer Ben Domenico. "As such, he made important contributions to the Unidata community in non-glamorous, behind the scenes areas that might otherwise have been ignored."
UPC software developer Steve Emmerson adds, "Robb was always available to help me with the Perl programming language — which I hate."
Mike Schmidt, the UPC's long-time system administrator, recalls: "In the earlier days of Unidata, after a staff departure we had to divide up some of the tasks that were left over. Robb ended up managing Unidata's mailing lists and backups. While someone else eventually took over management of our mailing lists, Robb handled our backups for the better part of two decades. Good backups saved staff many a lost file (and lost disks, and lost RAIDS), not to mention helping us through a disasterous 4th of July fileserver meltdown."
Robb's contributions to Unidata didn't end at the computer keyboard, though. As the UPC's Jeff Weber remembers, "Robb, Ben (Domenico), and I would often attend the Internet Data Distribution (IDD) colloquium, which was most often held at Haystack Golf Course. This group would go on to suffer many a defeat in the UCAR golf tournament." Recounting the story, Weber couldn't stop himself from adding, "After Robb left the 'team,' Ben and I won the last UCAR golf tournament to be held — so Unidata remains the reigning champion!"
We wish Robb the best in sunny Florida.
