Five for Friday – October 26, 2018

I recently re-read (skimmed) Steve McConnell’s Software Estimation, Demystifying the Black Art. When I met with Microsoft Press to pitch HWTSAM, they gave a hot-off-the press new copy, and while some of the book feels “old school”, it’s still filled with foundational estimation knowledge. I work at home, and absolutely need a quiet PC –…

Another dreary wet day in the pacific northwest. Here are a few things I found interesting this week. FocusMate is an interesting idea. It connects you with an anonymous person over video, and you each just work on your stuff. The idea is, that if someone is watching you, that you are less likely to…

I wrote a bit of a career retrospective just a few months before I joined the Communicator team at Microsoft (the series is captured in these posts: (part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, part 4 is here, and part 5 is here). June 6, 1995 – exactly 15 years…

I thought it would be worth writing this up and sharing. Last week was, for me, at least, time for another Windows update. With this one, my mouse stopped working – or to be clear, it started becoming unusable. The x coordinate speed was 1/3 of what it should be. With three monitors, it was pretty…

On twitter, @SeanNoxious asked me about my most memorable bug. The answer is way too long for twitter, so I thought I’d document one of my favorites here. When I first joined Microsoft way back in 1995, I was a tester for networking components on Windows 95. One of the areas I owned was testing…

If you read my blog, you’re probably already sick of me, but I’ll share a few links anyway. I gave a webinar a few weeks ago for the fine folks at EuroSTAR. Embedded recording is below. It’s a twenty minute ramble on ideas in testing. My laptop with the presentation was in front of me…