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By special request, here is my memoriam to John Dvorak @THErealDVORAK in full: In Memoriam: John C. Dvorak – A Titan, A Provocateur, A Friend As I process this profound loss, I am compelled to share stories that capture the full spectrum of John Dvorak: the iconoclast, the loyalist, the provocateur, and the rare friend who operated on his own uncompromising frequency. These are not mere memories; they are testaments to a life lived at maximum volume. All caps. The Unapologetic Iconoclast John didn’t just challenge norms—he dismantled them for sport and principle. When San Francisco banned fireplaces except on Fridays, he dumped coal into his hearth and lit it, sending thick black smoke through the neighborhood purely to incite. “Coal is the perfect fuel,” he declared. “It’s rocks that burn!” He hated ABBA, yet every Spanish tapas bar only played their music, so I sang ABBA songs the entire trip in deliberate defiance. He was fiercely competitive with fellow tech pundit Walt Mossberg, and on a transatlantic flight he jokingly speculated whether Walt was [REDACTED]—this, before a marathon debate that began over Jungian principles, Joseph Campbell, and archetypes, continued through baggage claim, and ended only at the hotel. During that same conversation, he admitted he used those very tactics to deliberately print that the mouse would never take off. Even as a Catholic himself, he left Montserrat cathedral in disgust after criticizing a woman’s charismatic worship, unable to separate his faith from his insistence on calling out what he saw as performative piety. He wasn’t seeking consensus; he was testing boundaries. Loyalty Beyond Reason His devotion was absolute, even when inconvenient. While at Berkeley, he befriended Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse (widely regarded as the first major organic/farm-to-table restaurant), and insisted on eating only there for media dinners—no exceptions. On our final day in Amsterdam, trapped in a mandatory product overview classroom, he looked up at me with a wry grin and asked, “What are you going to do to me?” He trusted me enough to invite me to Adam Curry’s Queen’s Day party; when exhaustion forced me to sleep through it entirely—the first time I’d slept all day in my life—he was genuinely hurt and annoyed, not angry, but wounded by my absence. And when another prominent reporter refused to join an Amsterdam junket because John “sucked the air out of the room,” it worked out: the original date 8/8/08 (his favorite number) fell on John’s wedding anniversary with Mimi, and he said she’d hang him if he went. We booked a separate trip just for him a few months later. He also held secrets that became shields for those he cared about. Once a year, he traveled to South America to check on his properties—the PC Magazine licenses he owned there—a fact he made me swear never to reveal. “If you ever need to launch something in that region,” he said, “I’ll take care of it.” Years later, when I launched a Google social media project out of deep stealth, he honored that promise without hesitation or fanfare. That was John: his word was bond, and his loyalty had no expiration date. This loyalty extended to protecting those around him financially, too: once back at HQ, Panda Security refused to pay the liquor bill from the Spain junket—it was in the thousands. I simply said, “It's John Dvorak. Pay it or suffer.” They rubber-stamped it immediately. When the Scientologist president of Panda Security showed me a Harry Potter-like tome on PR and I told him thanks but no thanks, relaying the story to John, he said with astonishment and admonished me, “What? You didn’t steal the book? You missed the opportunity of a lifetime!” It was classic John: seeing value where others saw absurdity, and expecting those he trusted to do the same. The Tech World’s Rock Star Almost every time we were together felt like being with the Mick Jagger of the tech world. People would freeze when they realized who they were looking at. He was always cordial, then turn to me and mutter, “Yikes.” At Ziff-Davis events, he was unforgettable: the most memorable was the year Bill Gates was named Time’s Man of the Year. John showed up at the black-tie Tech Excellence Awards in a tuxedo with a flashing light-up bow tie while Bill wore a tweed jacket. Iconic. During CES, he was offered dinner with Mark Zuckerberg and chose to have dinner with me instead, saying, “He’d have nothing to say. He’s a simpleton.” He also had a mad crush on Britney Spears. He founded CNET, and whenever I walked into that building on the Embarcadero with the yellow school bus in the lobby, I was treated like royalty—not because of his title, but because he had made it clear to everyone inside that I was under his protection. He grew up with Roger McGuinn, lead singer and guitarist of the Byrds, and they remained close friends for life, carrying that same rock-and-roll authenticity into every corner of tech. Vulnerability Beneath the Armor I was among the few who saw past the persona. Built on decades of trust, he let me witness moments no column could capture. Once, watching him sneeze on camera, I told him the trick was to think of lemons to stop it. He thanked me profusely. My 60-year-old mother watched Cranky Geeks religiously because he was that entertaining. Even Patrick, my husband, caught him taking pictures of my rear end on tour in Spain—I asked for the photos. Never received them. Similarly, after he double-dog-dared me to jump the turnstile at Bilbao train station (resulting in police swarming me, nearly confiscating my passport, while he ran off taking pictures from a safe distance and laughed), I requested those photos too. Also never delivered. The only time I ever saw him lose an argument was with Patrick over politics; when it became evident he held the losing hand, he simply looked up, stunned, and walked away. It was the sole moment his armor cracked—and it revealed how deeply he respected those he loved, even when they bested him. A Partnership Forged in Fire Our bond began in 1993 when I approached him after a PC Mag editors’ day presentation and bluntly told him his columns were riddled with errors, offering my editorial services. He took my card—and we were inseparable thereafter. I gave him counsel when he was competing with Walt Mossberg for the Fox tech pundit role; he listened and followed every word to the letter. We hit every Michelin-starred restaurant we could across Europe, ordering so much wine we had to hide the bottles under the table, only for him to demand a nightcap in the hotel lobby. He drank wine like he had a hollow leg; we ran out of cash in Madrid and had to hit the ATM. The only way I kept up was mixing Coca-Cola with the wine—Tinto de verano remains my favorite cocktail to this day. In the early days of social media, he called me and said, “Hey, let’s join this Twitter thing.” We signed up together. I was his first follower. He was mine. As fellow chemists, we shared a unique intellectual bond. He studied history and chemistry at Berkeley, and we had long, slightly alarming conversations about what you could still buy at Home Depot to do all kinds of terrible things—a testament to his insatiable curiosity and willingness to explore the edges of knowledge, even the dangerous ones. Our connection was rooted in mutual respect for precision, evidence, and the courage to question everything. John Dvorak was not merely a columnist. He was a force of nature who reshaped tech discourse through sheer will, wit, and an unwavering commitment to truth—even when that truth was uncomfortable, controversial, or deliberately provocative. His legacy isn’t just in what he wrote, but in how he lived: fiercely, loyally, and without apology. Rest in power, John. The world is quieter now—but infinitely less interesting.