Dean "Kreij" Kortenhoven, our dear friend, and one of TechPowerUp's most respected community members, moderators, and contributors; who not only contributed to TechPowerUp, but also
held a key editorial position in our sister publication NextPowerUp, passed away yesterday (Wednesday, early morning Central European Summer Time, Tuesday evening, Wisconsin USA local time). He passed away peacefully, in the august company of his family. He was 54.
A true cyber-citizen, Dean made his presence online strongly felt, in each forum post, each slap on the wrist as a moderator, and each richly worded article he wrote for our publications, despite constraints from a crawly satellite ISDN connection, which he joked, rather than complained about. It goes to show that willpower beats infrastructure, in an age where we're constantly surrounding ourselves with increasingly powerful infrastructure, often without pausing to ask ourselves, if we're able to make the most of what we have by empowering it with our wisdom and willpower, before moving onto something more powerful out of the box.
Dean also contributed to the Jeep online special interest group, and often talked about the benefits of the frugal, effective engineering Jeeps offer, in comparison to modern SUVs. Before we spun off
GeneralNonsense, our off-topic forum, into a
full- blown forum website, we remember Dean making motivational posts to cheer up fellow users who faced personal tragedies, or who were plain stressed out and needed a release, even if that came from someone sitting thousands of miles away. It enforced his personal belief - which we strongly share - that behind every gamer, and online forum member, is a human being, with human achievements and shortfalls, and that if the Internet marked a breakthrough in human evolution, it was because people powered it, not just websites.
Farewell, Dean "Kreij" Kortenhoven, we will miss you.
