Chuck Joined McNeel just shortly after me in 1997. He’s retiring from McNeel on June 30th. Please help me bid him a fond farewell, with gratitude for his years of working on really hard stuff.
Chuck came to work with our little team doing the same math and geometry work he’d been doing for a few years at Applied Geometry, Alias|Wavefront, and Silicon Graphics. He tackled some of the hardest problems we faced then (and still face) - Fillets, Boolean operations, and STEP import, among others.
I remember walking into the space he shared with Dale Lear, seeing him with his hoodie drawn tight over his head and reclined in his office chair. Over the years I came to recognize this posture to mean he was debugging code and algorithms he hadn’t yet started typing on (or maybe it was just “leave me alone”?). Chuck is a brilliant mathematician, programmer, and geometer. The way he has been able to wield C++ to solve very challenging problems is beyond me.
And, more importantly, he’s quick to laugh, and quick to forgive. I’m grateful for the time we spent working together, for the conversations about math, geometry, life, parenting, and fishing. I’ll miss you, Chuck. Take good care in this next phase.
Yep, congratulations, and thanks, Chuck, for all your work.And for putting up with all my my ‘how would you do this?’ questions on Slack - and always having a good answer as well.
Chuck lives not all that far from me, so I suspect we’ll find a way to have a beer now and then.
Thank you Brian. I’m not so sure I’m (or was) as brilliant as all that, but it seems the people taking over my projects are! It has been a pleasure working with you, and also getting to know you and your family. We will get together soon.
@dale Why do you have to remind me how young and fit I seemed at 40? 20 hours of soccer a week, daughters not yet teenagers… And yeah, looking forward to those pies, @mary !
Congrats on the retirement, @chuck! It’s safe to say that I have absolutely no understanding of what goes on “under the hood”, but I do know that you have been instrumental in creating all those lines of code that keep us all afloat, so for that I thank you. Take good care and enjoy!
-Jakob
As a “new guy” here (i’ve only been here 14 years now…)
I feel like the sands are shifting below my feet. You guys have all been the bedrock that my career has been built on and I can’t begin to say thank you in a way that adequately conveys how much the work you and the rest of McNeel have done has impacted my life.
But Thanks is all I have at this point.
Everyone who retires from McNeel fills me with appreciation and gratitude, but also the realization it’s up to me and the other “new folks” to carry on and drive the ship. It’s exciting and terrifying all at the same time as I got really used to being able to rely on the decades of experience you all bring to the table.
I wish you all the best, and as with the others, I hope retirement does not suit you and you return in a month…
Nothing to worry about-
If I know one thing about Bob, he very likely already has very well thought out, very detailed plan to make sure rhino lives on long after we are all gone.
The Dude is a grandmaster of 7 dimensional chess… Rhino will be fine.
I’m going to really miss working with Chuck…but I’m happy for him because he knows how to go fishing, dig shellfish, and watch “Beach TV.” I truly wish him the best and I’m confident he’s going to be very skilled at retirement (I plan to endorse him on LinkedIn for Retirement once he proves me right.)
Thanks for all the dedication and bulletproofing of Rhino through the years Chuck! I know of no other cad program that handles the same amount of punishment that Rhino handles. It’s strange having followed you guys since '96 and gotten to know the family from a far, and then see you leave one by one now. But I am sure you have put the same amount of care into future proofing McNeel as you have Rhino, so interesting times lies ahead! Take care and thanks for all the passion!
)!
