I’m fairly new to this whole blogging thing. My boss at work, Mike Zintel, has been telling me for a while that I need to do some blogging so I can share some of my “expertise” in the software testing space, so here goes.
I thought it would be a good idea to introduce me to you as a first order of business. The real question right now is how far back should I go? Do you want to know about where and when I was born? Do you want to know just the relevant stuff about college and afterwards? Do you want to just stick to the here and now? What the heck, let’s start from the beginning; it might give you a little better insight into my where I'm coming from.
Pre-Microsoft
I was born and raised in Honolulu Hawaii. It was a great place to grow up. Our house was in Manoa valley where it was very green (rained quite a bit). My mom’s side of the family had a house on the other side of the island in Kaaawa where we went almost every Sunday after church. When people find out I was grew up in Hawaii, they invariably ask me “why did you leave and come here?” Suffice it to say I really like the Pacific Northwest.
Since I was fairly athletic and did ok academically I wanted to go to a university that had a good wrestling program and a good engineering school. I chose Oregon State University (the Beavers, not the Ducks!) because it was good in both areas. I got married to my high school sweetheart Deanna after my sophomore year (technically she wasn’t my HS sweetheart because we went to different schools, but I dated her all the way through HS). I wrestled through college and ended up with around a .500 win/loss record. I graduated with a degree in Mathematical Science which was combined Mathematics and Computer Science.
Microsoft
During my senior year, I found out that Microsoft was coming to OSU for a recruiting trip. I thought that doing an interview with Microsoft would be good practice for when I really needed to get a job so I signed up. I must have interviewed ok, because they invited me to come up to Redmond for more interviews. I figured that it would be more practice for when I really interviewed to get a job so I agreed. I came up and did a round of interviews and went back home thinking that I got a lot of great practice. You can all see where this is going… Microsoft turned around and offered me a job, so I ended up being hired straight out of school.
I started at Microsoft in the DOS / Windows team. I was on the DOS side doing software testing. Our team worked for a couple of years on a product that was eventually released as MS-DOS 5.0. By then I had years of experience [:)] so I was ready to lead my own team. I worked on a couple of other projects for a while and then was put on a project that was code named “Chicago.” I was working as a test lead on this cool new technology called “Plug and Play.” Well as you all know, “Chicago” was eventually released as Windows 95 and Plug and Play was the runner-up technology to this thing call the World Wide Web, whatever that is… After that I worked as a test manager on the Java VM, Broadcast PC, WebTV for Windows, Direct Show and much of the media stuff on Windows 98 SE. And so we come to where I am today. I am the test manager for the .NET Compact Framework team.
As you can see, I’ve been in software testing my entire career. I’ve learned a lot over that time about the art of testing, team building and project management. Hopefully I can provide some good information and suggestions in those areas.
Other interests
Along the theme of giving you a better insight into my perspective I should probably mention some of the things outside of work that I’m interested in. I enjoy dirtbiking, snowboarding, wakeboarding, waterskiing, surfing (behind the boat), coaching football, doing triathlons, mountain climbing, being involved at church, and hanging out with family and friends; just to name a few. Looking through that list I guess you could say that I’m extreme. I prefer to say that I am intense. I think the following quote from my Campus Crusade for Christ discipleship leader at OSU, Alex Kettles sums it up pretty well for me:
“Go hard or go home!”
That’s all for now… thanks for reading!
Paul
