Tech mentor to the stars (of Silicon Valley) Jim Gray is still missing after drifting off in late January to release his mother’s ashes on the Farallon Islands 27-miles off the San Francisco coastline. The latest issue of Wired takes us inside the man, the myth, and not so much the model of a modern major general.

The story of the high-tech hunt and Gray’s emergence as a programming legend is fascinating and all, but what really gets us is how programming gods delve into the mortal realm to pick up chicks. Hot Scandinavian chicks. The key – Lord of the Rings, proving that once a programming geek, always a programming geek, from Wired:

In 1984, [Gray] met Carnes, an articulate Norwegian-American beauty with master's degrees in history and education. An avid sailor and hiker, she accepted his proposal on their third date — on his boat, of course. She became an engineering manager in the Valley, and they spent their vacations sailing and reading Tolkien aloud to each other in the wilderness. When they bought the house on Telegraph Hill, they christened their nautically themed bedroom Gondor — the realm of the Ship-Kings. Courtesy Joel Bartlett

"I fell head over heels in love," Carnes says. "We'd both been married before, but we met our match in each other. He was intense, I was intense, and we were both raised by single parents. Jim was like a mountain man who was also a brilliant scientist." She liked to call him Mr. Database.

Of course, it helps when “Mr. Database” has untold millions to throw around. What’s elfish for “sugar daddy?”

Inside the High-Tech Hunt for a Missing Silicon Valley Legend [Wired]