Month: July 2026

In 1982, I fell in love with baseball.  In 1981, a major league baseball team ended the season near the bottom of its division.  The following year, they developed amnesia.  They started the season with 13 consecutive wins, a record that still stands (though two teams have since tied that record).  In many ways, the Atlanta Braves didn’t know any better.  At the time, I knew nothing about baseball, but I learned quickly.

Though I didn’t know it yet, those 13 games established a kinship that endures today, over 40 years later.  Ted Turner owned both the TBS network and the Atlanta Braves, and thus TBS aired most of their 162 games back then.  I watched every game that I could.  I subsequently learned the names of every position player and remember them today.

Continue reading “Rooting for the home team” →

In 19991, I started my professional career as a software tester at Microsoft.  I began as a Software Test Engineer and then transitioned to a Software Design Engineer in Test.  I also spent time as a Developer and Data Engineer, but I spent the vast majority of my time as a software tester.  The oversimplification is that I verify ‘correct’ behavior.  In my case, documentation and common sense define ‘correctness’.  If the documentation defies common sense, I may push back to change the definition of ‘correctness’.

Occasionally, there are conflicting corner cases. For instance, children can ride in Space Mountain, but only if they’re at least a certain height. That’s just one rule. However, determining which rules apply under which conditions can be complex. There are safety and compliance standards (accessibility, for instance) that we may choose to adhere to.

Continue reading “The threshold of our rights” →