Washington Apple Pi received this message from Nick Hrabak:
My mother Diane and I are sad to announce the passing of my father, Dale Hrabak on Saturday, March 26, 2022. Dale was diagnosed with a brain tumor in November 2021 and has been battling with it for the past several months. Even in his final days, he always remained positive and was able to make people laugh.
Dale was a man of many interests. He started his career at the Smithsonian Institution as a photographer in the National Air and Space Museum and later transitioned to a computer network manager when the museums started to digitize their photo collections. As an active volunteer with the Washington Apple Pi community, he had a love for anything having to do with Apple computers. He was a true do-it-yourselfer and there wasn't anything that he couldn't make or fix.
Graveside services will be held at 10:00 AM on Saturday, April 2, 2022 at the Norbeck Memorial Park in Olney, MD. A celebration of life service will be held at a later date.
Norbeck Memorial Park
16225 Batchellors Forest Rd.
Olney, MD 20832Nick Hrabak
About Dale: many years ago, someone came up with the idea of videotaping the Washington Apple Pi General Meetings (and some other special events). At the time, cameras had real videotape. Dale Hrabak, a regular General Meeting volunteer (helping set up sound equipment, sign up for prize drawings, and the seeming endless number of other tasks, routine and emergency), somehow ended up as the video editor, taking sound and video recorded by others and blending it into a coherent narrative. Dale protested that he was the wrong person for the job, claiming his expertise was elsewhere, but — he turned out to be a very, very good video editor. He also ended up acting as a "second camera" or "third camera," and using just iMovie (he did eventually look at Final Cut Pro, but was put off by the interface and complexity), created multi-camera recordings of General Meetings.
This was a major accomplishment, as Dale's finished videos looked very professional. Speakers and other participants frequently found the recordings far more coherent and sane than the actual meetings, which had to cope with microphone feedback, dropped audio, perplexing or just outright odd lighting, and speakers who wandered around, looked away from the camera, left their microphone in the bathroom, accidentally turned off the computer they were using for demonstrations, and other "interesting" events. As videotapes gave way to digital video tapes, then to SD cards, then to iPhones and iPads, Dale expanded his skill set to accommodate the new technologies, all the time reminding people that this wasn't really his forte.
Washington Apple Pi will miss Dale's quick wit, droll sense of humor, and willingness to help the Pi explore the complex, ever changing world of knowledge and information, and the tools to make sense of it all.
