I just learned that my friend Michael Bartosh died this weekend. His death was accidental; he fell from a balcony in Tokyo. He was a pretty well known guy in the mac enterprise consulting sphere; definitely one of the very best at his craft, constantly jetting all over the Earth, doing his thing. His last IM status line that I remember was “3 continents in 3 days”.

I first met him 3 or 4 years ago on the Apple certified training circuit; I was just getting started, and he was an old hand. We were at Apple in cupertino, having been invited by the courseware developers to alpha test some new curriculum, provide feedback, and tighten things up for the release. I was surprised to hear that his feedback was pretty harsh at times; not necessarily directed at the courseware, but at Mac OS X Server in general. He was very honest about the shortcomings of the OS, which was kind of a breath of fresh air… many hard-core mac guys tend to gloss over the faults.

We shared an apartment for a week at a time on several occasions in the course of doing the training stuff for Apple. In 2004, he asked me to contribute the firewall chapter for his O’Reilly book; I was and still am proud to be associated with his work. Once I started working at Apple, I’d always try to hook up with him for beers / dinner when he was in town.

It was always good times, as Michael was very much a fun loving guy, and really smart. Lots of great stories. He was one of those people who does everything to the max… worked real hard, played real hard.

Real hard. I don’t know the details of his death, but anyone who knew him decently well knows that he was not afraid to push limits.

This is the first time a friend of mine has died, and it feels weird. I read mailing list posts from him last week, exchanged IMs… now he’s gone. He was 28 years old, same as me.

He’ll be missed.