Howard was truly a man of boundless courage and optimism. One evening, well after he had received his diagnosis, he and Ros came to our house for dinner. His health was reasonably good at the time, all things considered, but he surely knew what his odds were. To see him that evening, you would never have known anything at all was wrong with him. I told him that our son-in-law had recently been hired at Business Insider and was working on a story about The Internet of Things. I confessed I had no idea what The Internet of Things was. Howard, while conceding that he himself was not entirely in the know about this either, nonetheless demonstrated what he was PRETTY SURE the phrase meant. Of course he was right, but the demonstration was a thing of beauty and quintessential Howard. It was a kind of dance. He got up from his chair and went over to the cordless phone in the kitchen. He made a comment about the phone and then went/danced to another piece of technology in the room, then to another, all the while gesturing extravagantly with his hands and smiling broadly and irresistibly--as if he were trying to SELL us on The Internet of Things. I remember thinking to myself, "How in heaven's name would I, in his situation, ever have the spirit and strength to throw myself with such pleasure and joy into an idea that came out of the blue from someone I was dining with?" But of course he did have the spirit and strength, because that's who Howard was.