The IDG veterans here in San Francisco are stumbling around in disbelief over news that Rex Farrance, senior technical editor at PC World, was shot dead in his Pittsburg (California) home on Tuesday night by four masked gunmen. To say this is a tragedy and grotesquely unfair is merely to state the obvious. Rex was one of the good guys: a family man, a popular and cheerful co-worker who gave his all to his job. I worked with Rex at PC World (InfoWorld and PC World are both owned by IDG) starting in 1990 and promoted him to tech editor 1999. It was an obvious job for Rex, since his greatest joy at work was always explaining, as clearly as possible, how technology worked. As tech editor, he was fastidious in his role, examining the way manuscripts spelled out the technical details, and insisting on changes when an explanation didn’t meet his standards. And he simply would not be rushed when issues of accuracy were at stake, even under deadline. He took his role as reader advocate seriously, almost religiously. Rex was quirky, opinionated (but not overbearing), and almost invariably upbeat. When I returned to the IDG fold in 2003 after a three-year stint at CNET, Rex was one of the first people I bumped into in the hall, and he greeted me with his classic ear-to-ear grin. We immediately picked up where we had left off, conversing whenever we saw one another and sharing company scuttlebutt. We weren’t particularly close, but I valued our interactions. Rex had a way of making people feel welcome; his enthusiasm for his work, for technology, and for his fellow employees was genuine. So too was his devotion to his family. For years, his PC desktop image was a silhouette of his wife Lenore, very pregnant with his son Sterling (who is now 19). Police reports of the crime suggest there may have been drugs involved and that Rex was not a random victim. Frankly, that information doesn’t gibe with the Rex I knew. The details of this heinous act will no doubt roll out over the coming days and weeks. Whatever the findings, I will cherish my memories of Rex Farrance. Technology Industry