sad news

[db (martinez, ca.)]

Ted Kerber, the Land Surveyor who wrote the D'zign programs for the 65, 67, 41, 42, 48 & 50 series calculators died a couple of days ago, in the arms of his wife Phyllis, after a long battle with cancer. Many of you here met Ted and Phyl (who is also a surveyor) at the San Jose and San Diego HHCs. Many more used his work. His signature was writing routines for unusual applications like the barnet's spiral and tunneling for handheld calculators - and back when there were no programs to do that at all.

I'm wrote out, so i'll just copy part of what i wrote to Phyllis here:
Ted is irreplaceable, in different ways, to all of us. Besides the thousands that used his programs daily; he was a mentor and teacher to more surveyors than i will ever know. He was a great teacher too - i've still got his red pencil all over my apprentice papers. I won't make those mistakes again, and i'll know how - because he took the time to explain why.
He was a great man and a fine human being in a line of work, and world, where neither of those is obligatory. In everything, Ted exceeded his specifications.

If you have any stories or memories of Ted, i'm sure that the family would enjoy hearing them. You could send them to dzign@msn.com or look up the real world address at the D'zign website.

Sorry to have this bad news to give - den belillo

[Namir]

I am sorry to hear that sad news. I enjoyed seeing ted at the HHC conferences in the past few years. He will be greatly missed!

namir

[BruceH]

Me too. At HHC2009 I gave Ted a lift somewhere during the afternoon break - I forget exactly what for now. Anyway, it took rather longer than I was expecting, what with chatting, Ted taking everything real slow, plus a stop for a smoke or three, so we missed all of Richard Nelson's talk and half of yours, Namir. So not so bad after all.
</cheapshot>

;-)

[sjthomas]

Ted always remembered me at the HHUC meetings I've been able to attend -- although he had no reason to. I'm not a surveyor and have never purchased any of his products. He was very "down to earth" -- which I suppose is appropriate for a surveyor. Go with God. Requiescat in pacem, Ted.

[Iqbal]

My condolences to his wife and family. He was a very good programmer, and I know he would be missed by the surveying community.

[BruceH]

Here is Ted presenting at HHC2009 and giving all us non-surveyors an insight into how the job drove his software.

[db (martinez, ca.)]

Bruce; Good point about job driven. That is exactly what i like about his programs. For example: all routines to stake slope cuts and fills are based on an alignment & offset from a line. Like Ted's, most are IDd like surveyors think - station & offset. Ted took that one step further. He lets the shot that you take tell you the station and offset with the cut or fill. This lets one find the "daylight" point where cut and fill meet very easily. All but one other commercially available program that i know of forces the user to input a station and then find the catch point - again and again till he trips over the daylight accidentally. This is also true of the the nose of maximum cut or fill, which is another useful point to know. BTW: That one semi-good program won't let you enter a precise alignment like D'zign, just a "spline curve" approximation. So yes; "job driven" is fine indeed.

Brian; Re: sharing information. You & me probably don't know the half of it. One example of that was Ted giving away his 41 program books to any apprentice in our union, while he was still selling them through stores like International Calculator in Florida & Educalc in Ca., and in the professional magazines.

[Brian Walsh]

Very sorry to hear this. Ted was an example to all by the way he openly shared information and helped others. He was down to earth, easy going, and quick to smile.