{"id":534,"date":"2012-12-15T19:34:37","date_gmt":"2012-12-16T03:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=534"},"modified":"2012-12-20T07:30:11","modified_gmt":"2012-12-20T15:30:11","slug":"2012-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/2012-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"2012 Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As 2012 comes to a close, I thought I&#8217;d recap the year. I think this little exercise is mostly for me, but I suppose new blog readers (or people with too much free time) may find some points of interest.<\/p>\n<p>Some more from the non-Microsoft front follows.<\/p>\n<p>My most popular blog posts from the last year are (were):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=502\">Musings on Test Design<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=496\">Orchestrating Test Automation<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=444\">Exploring Test Roles<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=412\">Exploring Test Automation<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=482\">Quick Testing Challenge<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=449\">New Testing Ideas<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As I look at those topics, something tells me I should write about testing more, and skip non-testing topics (like year-end recaps, for example).<\/p>\n<p>I spent most of the year close to home, hanging out with my family, and focusing on my job. I&#8217;ve been on the Xbox team for just over a year now, and I&#8217;m still having a great time. It&#8217;s a fantastic place to work, and I&#8217;m surrounded by more brilliant hard-working and passionate people than you could imagine. I will see if I can share some more stories and insights about the team in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>I was visiting my parents this summer when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I had committed to three speaking engagements in the fall, and in between those, work, and heading to my parents&#8217; house every weekend to help out, late summer and fall were exhausting.<\/p>\n<p>I was honored to be invited to be part of the STANZ tour of New Zealand and Australia in September put on by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.softed.com\">SoftEd<\/a>. I can&#8217;t say enough good things about the SofEd staff \u2013 they took care of every detail before, during, and after the event. It was a fantastic experience, and I hope I can get myself invited again some day. I had planned to take an extra few weeks off to travel after the conference, but given my mom&#8217;s health, I headed back early.<\/p>\n<p>In October I gave a talk (that I thought wend quite well) at Intel in Oregon. This is my second time speaking at Intel (I spoke in Israel last year), and would speak there any time.<\/p>\n<p>My next speaking event wasn&#8217;t planned. I was at my mom&#8217;s side when she passed later in October, and I gave the eulogy at her funeral a few days later.<\/p>\n<p>A week later, I was on a plane to Amsterdam to give the opening keynote at EuroStar (slides are in my previous post). The staff and program committee at EuroStar were well-organized, and the conference ran (from my view, at least) quite smoothly. In the end, I&#8217;m sorry to say that I delivered a flat (by my standards) presentation. I was thrilled that some people said they liked it, but I wasn&#8217;t happy with my delivery. Given everything going on at home, I flew home before the conference ended and began trying to get back into a more normal routine.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;normal routine&#8221; for me these days is work, family, and when I can find time, a bit of Xbox gaming (gamertag: A Weezil). I may start blogging regularly again in the new year \u2013 or I may not \u2013 I don&#8217;t know yet. I&#8217;ve committed to one conference next fall, and <em>may<\/em> do one other one. And that&#8217;s about all I&#8217;ve figured out.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m thankful for all of the new people I&#8217;ve met this year (I met too many testers at conferences this year to list their names), and for people I got to know better. For the first time in years, I have a bit of excitement about where testing is going (although some readers may not like where I think testing is going\u2026). If you&#8217;ve read this far, I wish you luck in 2013 (and for the rest of 2012). I hope to cross paths with many more of you in the months to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As 2012 comes to a close, I thought I&#8217;d recap the year. I think this little exercise is mostly for me, but I suppose new blog readers (or people with too much free time) may find some points of interest. Some more from the non-Microsoft front follows. My most popular blog posts from the last&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}