I just found out that Ethan Townsend was killed in a rock slide in China while on a hike with a fellow a PhD candidate from the University of Colorado. Details are sketchy. I could not find anything on this in the local papers at all.

I did find this.
http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_13283354

We hire many college students at Project A every summer to intern with us and work on cool/important projects that we would not necessarily have time to work on and it gives them great work experience.

Ethan worked for us one summer (2005). He was a brilliant kid that figured out how to convert our CMS to open source database and published a white paper on it.
http://postgresql.mirrors-r-us.net/docs/techdocs-38.html

I remember one time when he was head-down in the conversion and we were in the middle of a fire-fight on the Cobalt RAQs and he nonchalantly took care of a low level journaling issue on the hard drive array we were struggling with and went back to work on the conversion. I think it was his way of getting peace and quiet back in his space.

I didn't get a chance to know him very well, but I do recall admiring his brilliance, liking his energy and his desire to spend time with his dad that summer rafting or hiking.

I wish I stayed in touch. I will go out of my way to get to know all future interns a little better.

My thoughts and prayers go out to both families as they try to cope with this tragic loss.