At ProChain we are developing the capability for our software to be installed on operating systems using languages other than English. Naturally, I am called upon to test this capability. I chose to test in several languages: French, for the latin alphabet, Russian for Cyrillic, Hebrew for the right-to-left orientation, and Chinese for the massive character set. Unfortunately I am a monolingual guy, which poses some issues. For instance, I have no idea how to run a Hebrew language Windows XP installer.

Which does not daunt me, because I have confidence in my network. I contacted a tester with whom I’ve corresponded on a software testing Google group who works in Israel, and asked him to help. My teammate Anoop emailed him screen shots when it was time to click the next button and he responded with a note on which to click. It seems to have worked fine. Now I owe him a solid, and will gladly help him when he needs me.

I the same vein I have several cousins who are fluent Russian speakers, and a teammate is French. I will need a lead on someone to help with the Chinese setup, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. I count on my friends to be there for me when I need them, and just so you know, I’m here for y’all too.

Last Saturday night I played guitar, both solo and accompanying my friend Rob Balder, at a gig at Balticon, a sci-fi/fantasy/gaming convention in Baltimore. It was not one of my best performances. Rob and I did a new arrangement of a tune we had done before, and it never hit its stride, it felt slow and square. Another tune I sang well but my guitar work was kind of iffy, it was the first time I’d done it in front of an audience. (I did a fine job on one song, where all I did was play guitar instead of having to sing as well, and I just executed the song.)

I can pick out greater and lesser reasons for my struggles.

My first testing job I was a temp at a DOD contractor, assigned to curate the test library on the “RCAS” project. One of my duties was to take notes in the daily meeting between testing and development, and report the issues and status that came out of the meeting to the rest of the team. This was 1994, before email was a popular tool, so I printed up the “Test Daily” newsletter, with half a page of meeting notes, and the rest of the page (plus the back if I wanted) to use for other things. I mostly put Far Side cartoons and Dilbert cartoons on there, when Dilbert especially was fresh and edgy, and usually people laughed. The project was under some pressure and an edge had started to creep in, and I was trying to help them blow off some steam.

One time I did a lightbulb joke contest to see who came up with the best punchline to the classic setup: How many RCAS testers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? The prize was a packet of saltine crackers and a spork from the cafeteria. I reminded everyone about this contest all week leading up to the big department meeting that was going to happen to learn the state of the project.

At the meeting I revealed the winning punchline: “None. It’s a known issue.” The author got her crackers and spork. The team got the news that after 2 years, the project was going to start over again on a new operating system. And I got a private lecture on corporate morale, and was told that even though I had been asking for a while about coming on board full-time, “for you, there’s a hiring freeze.”

One little lightbulb joke, and boom, I’m out on the street.