About Dante Gagne

Well, I've been in the industry in one form or another since about 1997, when I graduated from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. I worked with Cimlinc as an intern on the now defunct Envelop project when I got laid off and spent some time as a furniture salesman (Yeah, I know...) Before I finished my degree, I started working for Thedra, writing UI in Tcl/Tk primarily for Sun Solaric and some ancient little Unix boxes that I can't even remember the names. I moved to tech support for Altair Engineering, where I stayed until they discovered that I knew how to code. I was there as a developer for a couple years until the auto industry led to rounds of layoffs at Altair, and I was one of them. Then, after 3 months, Microsoft decided that they wanted to give me a shot, so in November of 2002, I went out to be one of the few testers on the newly built "Code Name: Sparkle" project. Sparkle eventually became the Expression Interactive Designer, and finally Expression Blend. Now, almost 5 years later, I'm still a tester with Microsoft on Expression Blend, but my 'reach' is extended through my Total Training series and here on my blog. Personally, I'm married (2007 was 10 years), and I have one son who is a Viva Pinata addict.

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