Paul and Erin

Paul Horvath and Erin Johnson got married on April 20, 2002. Yea for them!

The first time my wife and I met Erin was when Paul had gotten sick with a migrane. We found a message on our answering machine from this woman who wasn't even sure if he was calling her "girlfriend" yet -- that Paul was sick, they were at the hospital, and she did not have much of the medical history that the doctors wanted.

I also get migranes (knock on wood -- not for a while) so was able to discuss/describe his symptoms with the doctors and concluded that he was, indeed, suffering from a migrane common to our family. We ended up driving out to the hospital to check in/up on them.

"OK, so far, no big deal" you're probably thinking. What happened before the phone call was that they were supposed to go out that night, they spoke on the phone and she felt something was (medically) wrong with him. He was house-sitting for our parents while they were out of town. She had never been there nor met any of the family. She tracked down one of Paul's friends (left over caller-id). The initial suggestion was getting the police/ambulance to him but figured that they might overreact. So she got the address from the friend, got directions via the web, and got to the house along with that firend.

From there they got him kicking and almost screaming (light and movement are painful) to the hospital. Where he was taken care of.

The doctors initially were thinking head injury, ingestion of a toxic chemical or drug overdose. Fortunately for Paul's insurance company, we got there before they ran the CAT scans. Sitting next to Paul looking very worried was Erin.

The point of all this was that she made a tremendous effort to get care for someone who she wasn't sure cared enough for her to use the "girlfriend" word with his family.

We figured he'd be an idiot if he let her go. He wasn't

For anyone who is interested, you can view my dedication to them in the book "Red Hat Linux 7.2 Unleashed" (published by SAMS) here.

You can also see the book at Amazon.com. I won't get any royalties if you buy a copy (it was a "work for hire" -- I wrote chapters, they wrote me a check) but would be happy to sign it for you...



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