Erik Fair — 316 Ski Way (next door) — HOA PRESIDENT

Captured: 2026-07-27 (LinkedIn, provided by Shapor)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikfair/
Pronouns: He/Him
Connection degree: 2nd — mutuals: Paul (Vixie?) and Peter
Shared group: Information Security Community
Location: Incline Village, NV
County records: Owner-occupant of 316 Ski Way (APN 130-390-06) since 02/2002 ($772k, from Jackson); 3bd/3.5ba end unit
Confidence: Confirmed — county owner record matches LinkedIn location and name

Headline

Software Engineer, Network Engineer, Systems Programmer, Investor · The NetBSD Foundation · UC Berkeley · 500+ connections · 551 followers

About (verbatim)

Specialties: UNIX Systems Programmer. Internet Protocol designer. Systems & Network Design/Administration.

Experience

Apple Computer, 1988–1997 — Postmaster, Hostmaster, software/network engineer (Engineering Computer Operations). Ran Apple’s Internet connectivity (negotiated the BARRNET T1 era — cut Apple’s connectivity bill from $20k to $2k/mo for 5× bandwidth), built the Apple Engineering Network (a MAN across Cupertino), wrote + operated the AppleLink↔Internet email gateway — the 1991 STS-43 “first email from space” transited his gateway. Helped operate Apple’s purple Cray X-MP/48 (turned it into a Usenet batch-compression server for fun; saturated the campus Ethernet).
Usenet history, first person: the mod.* hierarchy and the taxonomy behind the Great Renaming were “partly my idea”; wrote and ran the ucbvax mailing-list↔newsgroup gateway at Berkeley; helped John Gilmore bootstrap alt.* by carrying alt.drugs from ucbvax. Programmer since 1973 (father: Caltech EE ‘43, FORTRAN programmer); attended the first West Coast Computer Faires; knew Dennis Ritchie from 1980s USENIX.
Developer, The NetBSD Foundation — 1996–present (30+ yrs)
Individual Contributor, IETF — 1988–present. “RFC 977 [NNTP], RFC 1627, RFC 1750, MIME, ESMTP, and a whole lot of random working groups, mostly focussed in the applications area.” Self-described “devotee of NTP & Dr. David Mills of UDel since late 1980s.”
Board Member, Country Club Centre (Incline Village) — 2010–2016, board president 2011–2016 — mixed-use HOA at 120 Country Club Dr. His war stories: bears in restaurant trash, drunk tourists. Sold the property 2016.
Investor, Wasabi Systems (NetBSD consultancy, 2000–2009); Investor, Terra Soft Solutions (2001–2008)

Education

UC Berkeley, Computer Science (1980–83) — CSUA treasurer/VP, founded the Undergraduate Computing Facility. Northfield Mount Hermon School.

Skills / endorsements

Unix (87 — endorsed by Jordan Hubbard, Paul Vixie), Distributed Systems (65 — endorsed by E. Dean Tribble, Paul Vixie)

Activity signal (reposts)

Vint Cerf (David Farber obituary), Mark Seiden (T-Mobile stolen-phone 2FA rant), Brian Krebs (Apple voice-phishing), Paul Vixie (“Go Static or Go Home” — web security). Reads as: internet-old-guard, security-minded, opinionated about systems done right.

Our overlap map (Shapor ↔ Erik)

NetBSD: Shapor ran NetBSD in the 90s — the exact years Erik joined the NetBSD Foundation (1996). Shapor literally ran the OS Erik was building. Strongest opener there is.
DNS: Shapor ran DNS at Google; Erik was Apple’s Hostmaster — the same job, 20 years earlier, at 1990s scale. And Erik’s visible LinkedIn mutual “Paul” is almost certainly Paul Vixie (endorsed Erik’s Unix + Distributed Systems skills) — BIND’s author, i.e., the man whose software Shapor’s Google DNS world descends from. Vixie is a warm-intro path, but next-door proximity beats it.
Friction point to deploy as humor, not credentials: Shapor’s first machine was a Commodore 64 — Erik proudly avoided 8-bit micros as “toys” in favor of minis. Expect a lecture; enjoy it.
Net: the conversation writes itself — NetBSD in the 90s → DNS at scale → NTP/time-sync at scale. Do NOT lead with Quora, the HOA, or Shimomura.

Networking hooks

Internet/UNIX history: NNTP, MIME, ESMTP RFCs; NetBSD; Berkeley CSUA — deep overlap with Shapor’s infra background
Infosec: shared LinkedIn group, follows Krebs/Seiden — QueryStory security topics would land
Local knowledge goldmine: 6 years running an Incline Village HOA board — knows IVGID, county, bear-proofing, and probably every contractor in town
Mutuals Paul & Peter can intro, but he’s literally next door — door knock beats LinkedIn

Quora persona (captured 2026-07-27 — he’s VERY public here)

Profile: 10.1K answers, 16.2K followers, Top Writer 2013–2018, 15.9M content views, admin of the Libertarianism space, active DAILY (answers dated within hours). “Lives in Lake Tahoe 2002–present” (matches deed), “Works at Self-Employment” — semi-retired, home a lot; jokes you might spot him on the Lake Tahoe webcams. Practical takeaways:

He is around. Full-time resident, self-employed, clearly time-rich. Likely the eyes-on-the-street of the complex. As neighbor+HOA president, expect him to notice things.
Engagement style: precise, definitional, source-citing, enjoys structured debate; suffers sloppy reasoning poorly but stays civil (patiently thanks even drive-by commenters). Bring substance; he’ll respect being corrected with evidence and will happily go 2,000 words on anything.
Worldview (his loud public persona, not our judgment): staunch free-market libertarian — Adam Smith/Mencken/Heinlein/Solzhenitsyn quotes, anti-protectionism, “capital goes where it’s well-treated,” notably PRO skilled immigration (“attract positive contributors”). Consistent with his HOA style: rules + state law, minimal busybodying. If economics comes up, it’s sparring he enjoys, not a sore spot — but don’t expect to change his mind.
Tech affinities (conversation gold): Apple ecosystem devotee (Apple Watch since 2017, will happily explain why it beats the entire Swiss watch industry); precision-timekeeping nerd — UTC, NTP, GPS time, HAQ quartz movements (this is OUR territory: infra people and time-sync people are the same tribe); “computer security is an avocation”; passive index investor who calls stock-picking a mug’s game.
Human details: tea drinker (steeping timers), cooks (timer complications), hates spinach with comic passion, Steely Dan reference in his bio, open-minded about EDM. Music + cooking + watches = three easy non-work openers.
Local-knowledge corpus: 48 answers on Lake Tahoe + 43 on Nevada topics — pre-move homework we can actually read (his takes on living here, weather, IVGID, etc.). Also deep answer counts on Unix (93), Computer Networking (200), Operating Systems (177), Internet History (59), Computer Security (109); contributor to “Ancient Digital Artifacts” (retro computing) and “Internet Economics” spaces.
Mild caution: he’s a prolific public writer — assume a colorful neighbor anecdote could become Quora material. Nothing sensitive over the fence.

The watch gambit

His self-declared unicorn: HAQ movement + electronic time transfer (“I’d love to see one of these HAQ movements mated to radio control”; hates that HAQ watches set by eyeball+crown). Escalation ladder:

Casio GW-B5600 / Oceanus Manta — solar + WWVB radio + Bluetooth→phone→NTP = “old-school quartz, network-synced.” He’d approve; knows them.
Citizen Caliber 0100 (±1 s/yr, ~$7.4k+) — his known grail; respect but no surprise.
The play: build a home stratum-1 NTP server (GPS+PPS on a Pi) + ESP32 WWVB micro-transmitter rebroadcasting our disciplined time indoors, syncing a cheap RC Casio to OUR clock. ~$250. Then invite him to “sanity-check the PPS offsets” — a Dave Mills devotee cannot refuse. Housewarming icebreaker of legend.

Notes

Current President of Diamond Ridge Owners Association — OUR HOA (NV nonprofit C17412-1997; registered agent = IPM; day-to-day manager = Canopy Property Services 775-831-3331). Officers: Fair (Pres, 316), Von Husen (Treas, 308), Pierce (Sec, 306). The HOA board is literally the neighbors — every rule question, fine, or approval goes through the guy next door. Triple-sourced: NV SoS officer list (via Bizapedia), NV-HOA.com directory, and his own Quora comment (~2020) — 16 years on HOA exec boards, once president of two simultaneously, calls Diamond Ridge “much smaller and purely residential - lots quieter.”
Temperament read (from the Quora thread): pushed back on HOA-bashing; views board work as routine home maintenance he has “time and inclination” for; handles cranky homeowners by “just following the HOA rules & state law.” Pragmatic rule-follower, not a petty enforcer — as good as HOA-president neighbors get. Don’t expect exceptions, do expect fairness.
Second HOA presidency (Country Club Centre 2011–16) — he clearly ends up running whatever HOA he’s in
Longest-tenured tech resident in the complex after Shimomura (318)