Today is June 24th, the day the iPhone 4 is set to release in stores. If you have been paying attention, these new phones sell for $199 and $299, depending on size, and people have lined up despite robbery, heat and exhaustion in order to get their hands on one. I, on the other hand, received mine yesterday in the comfort of my own home. And I still haven’t paid for it.

I ordered the 16 gigabyte black version to replace my 3G, using AT&T’s online pre-order form. The experience there wasn’t great. Due to understandable outages based on demand, I had to try many times throughout the first night of availability in order to place my order. After refreshing the page while keeping entertained with something else, I finally got through, and placed an order instead of seeing their pesky “server busy” error messages.

I thought, “Great, I have my pre-order in. Now to just sit back and wait.” This wasn’t quite so.

Upon placing the order, I noticed that AT&T requested an authorization on my debit card for the price of the phone. This was expected; I needed to pay them. What was unexpected, however, was that two days later, the authorization had been removed. I literally had 200 extra dollars in my bank account, and didn’t know why.

Fearing that, like many customers, my order had been canceled, I tried to contact AT&T to see what happened. I first went the ‘no-human’ option and tried sending them an email through their web interface. There, I ran into this. Oops.

Resolving that the human option was the only way to go, I called up AT&T, and to my surprise, was given a lovely lady in the Midwest who told me that, “AT&T has double-charged people due to errors in their system, and in fixing the double charges they had removed people’s single charge.” She said they were in the process of correcting all charges, and that she would put it on her personal calendar to follow up with me at 1 p.m. sharp on the 25th.

I was happy. She confirmed that my order was in fact being processed — it wasn’t canceled — and she took the issue personally in order to follow up with me. Of all things, I must commend AT&T for their customer service. She was a gem.

But back to the iPhone. I waited, I was excited. I watched the tracking number as it shipped via UPS from Texas to Tennessee and finally to New York. I got home after a doctor’s appointment on the 23rd to have the iPhone in my hand and ready to use. After a bit of confusion reading AT&T’s quick start guide, I had the phone restored from a backup of my previous device, and was using it as if nothing happened. Kudos to iTunes and Apple for such a clean upgrade.

Fast forward to today. Checking my debit account, I still don’t see a charge. I see the account dwindle down as I make smaller purchases, but there’s still a happy bundle of money sitting there for AT&T to grab. It’s like Geico’s Kash: It’s theirs, staring at them expectantly from outside their kitchen window. From a business perspective I’m confused on how this would happen, and the giggly kid inside me wants to scream, “software bug in conjunction with human error!” But I don’t always get what I want.

Regardless, I’m not the only one who had this experience. I made a couple posts on Twitter to find others, and at least one other person received the same reward:

From @MrJakk: @timothyjcoulter Nope. Checked my bank statements today. Says shipped, but no charge…

Are we edge cases, or a large loss for AT&T that has currently gone unnoticed?

In any case, when I receive the call from that lovely lady from the Midwest tomorrow at 1 p.m., I’ll let her know that I haven’t been charged. Though I could keep the $200 as profit with the iPhone in hand, I at least owe it to the company for following up, if not for letting me ditch the heat, the stress, and the long lines.

UPDATE, 6/25/10: I woke up this morning to find a charge on my account. It seems like they’ve finally fixed it. Good for them.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a month now. Or maybe two months. Well, let’s make it a month and a half. And what it centers around is a topic that most normal, average “any-collars” (i.e., blue or white, if you have a collar at all) wouldn’t care too much about. In fact, I’m finding that I don’t care too much about it either. And for those who know me… well, that’s a big deal.

The catch, the trick, the surprise — the all important lady behind the curtain and the thing behind door number three — is that recently I made a simple switch. I switched — are you ready for it? From Ubuntu to Windows 7.

Now I know there was a gasp in the back of the crowd, and a kind mother who covered the ears of her darling three-year-old. But I will say this: I’m impressed with the changes they’ve made, and I have no intention of switching back.

The main motivation for switching was simply because A) my new computer came with it, and B) Windows is simply an easier platform for consuming media. Two years ago it would have been a religious war: Freedom, hope, and such and such, and an attack against a corporate conglomerate. Now I’m simply switching to what works better for me on my home computer.

But I can’t write this post without hitting on that religiosity I once had, where, for a while… maybe a week… I was a bit torn. I mean, how do you define freedom? Freedom for the programmers, or freedom for the user? At home I want to be a user. I made that decision. So I’ll take the freedom that lets me more easily do what I want even though, theoretically, that means there’s a Schwarzschild radius. (I learned that from a YouTube video!)

So.

I didn’t want to make this long. I didn’t want to compare two different operating systems. And I didn’t want to conquer or ridicule a religion. That’s unimportant. Instead, I wanted to focus on the value, and that something I once called “bad,” (Microsoft, Windows, etc., etc.) is now the foundation of my home computing experience. Pretty cool huh?

Alright. I’m done with this post. It’s time to get up and go do more important things, like eat cereal.

Update: As I was editing this post, my computer had a hard crash. I mean, a REALLY hard crash. Not even a blue screen. I didn’t like it at first, but then I thought for a second: maybe that proves the point. Maybe you take your good with the bad, and the freedom is just choosing which ones you want. Hmm. Good to know.

July 2009 will forever go down in the Coulter Encyclopedia of History as the month with the most extraordinary life changes in a single 30-day timespan. There is so much to tell that I’m forced to gloss over many of the details (many of which you can get if you ping me personally), but it all seemed pretty amazing considering I’ve kept my sanity intact. Or so I think.

In no particular order:

1. New job! Today was my first day as a Software Quality Engineer at Intent Media, Inc. in Times Square. I can’t tell you anything about the company yet except to hint at their awesomeness, but I can tell you I’m extremely excited to be a part of this team. They’re a great group of people and I feel very welcome.
2. New Apartment! I moved to the Upper West Side July 1st, the new job cutting my commute down to less than fifteen minutes! I also have a new roommate, and she’s female — that’s a first. Though my stuff made it to the apartment by the 27th of June, I didn’t officially unpack everything until the 18th of July because I was…
3. Flying off to faraway places! The first place I visited was my hometown, Portland, Oregon. Though it was great to be home, family details prompted my visit making the trip bittersweet. But moving right along –
4. The second place I visited was the much more earthy Colorado Springs, Colorado. Not only did I get to spend time with awesome people (you know who you are), but I’m now on the board of directors for the Association for Software Testing and I am officially a CAST keynote speaker! The speech went great, and thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions!
5. I’m now on Twitter! You can find me here: http://twitter.com/timothyjcoulter (timothyjcoulter is blogging about cool stuff.)
   
6. I’m now living in Apple-land with a work-provided Macbook Pro. Later I’ll sync my iCal schedule with my iPhone so I can be on time for meetings at my new iJob! (Jokes aside, this is all new and exciting territory.)
7. Annnnnnd lastly, WAMU has become Chase, grumble grumble. Though this isn’t particularly life changing, Chase’s website is drastically lower quality when compared to WAMU’s website (where, of course, “quality is value to me“), and because of the differences, it greatly lowers my perception of my banks’ goods and services. I loved WAMU’s website, and I used it often. I feel like I’m being forced to use Chase, which… well, is pretty much true.

And I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting. Regardless, it’s been a crazy month with big changes and lots of excitment.

This is it. You’re reading it right now. Were you reading it in your favorite fast food chain, you’d win a free milkshake.

I really had no plans for my 100th post other than to announce that this is truly my 100th post since starting the blog in 2006. With the fanfare, I thought it’d be exciting to look back on a few of my favorite posts and add commentary about how the blog and I have changed since its inception.

In total I’ve found nine biggies. Link to the ones I’m forgetting in the comments.

1. Frist Post!!!!!!!!!11!!1!0!11!

You know how good first posts can be…

This one was actually my second, though I think it qualifies. Read at your own risk.

2. Third Post!

This one might honestly have something to it. Topics covered: “Agile as a marketing term.” “What does it mean to be Agile?” “Agile from a student’s perspective.” Actually made it onto a “Top 10 Agile Analogies” blog post from someone I don’t know personally. Sweet.

3. Ruby Subversion Bindings: You heard it here first.

These two posts — this one and this one — are the two posts that drive most of the traffic to my blog. Usually they drive more than half the unique visitors per month, and that’s simply because official documentation for the Ruby Subversion bindings doesn’t exist yet (to my knowledge). Now they’ve the top Google hit. Go figure.

4. The Beginning of “Tim Bits.”

This post is my reaction to the workshop where the first Tim-Bit was born. A bit dramatic, but still delicious.

5. AST Certification Debate

This was a hot button at CAST 2007. Five representatives of major software testing certification programs graciously agreed to a facilitated debate. I’m sure you can imagine the elephant tensions in the room once the AST members got a hold of their K-cards.

6. CAST 2008

Hands down great professional experience. Response to CAST 2009 to come soon.

7. My Move to New York.

Though the blog doesn’t properly show it, the move was not at all what I expected — and it included a fictional misdemeanor on my credit report preventing me from getting an apartment. I am not a crook, guys. Sheesh!

8. I start test managing!

Well… kindof. A good attempt in my context. I’m sure there’s a lot more to learn.

9. The Prestige

And last but not least: what I’d call my greatest post to date (i.e., well written, insightful… …modest. ). This represented a round of both career and soul searching that ended in an extremely pleasant result. More on that to come very soon.

–

As always, a big thank you goes to all my readers.

I received this one in my mail box today. Well done. Pulled on both my Barack and anti-spam heartstrings.

Subject: Good News

United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) In Affiliation With Barack Obama Campaign to Assist Scammed Individuals In The Settlement Of Disputes Through Intercontinental Bank plc .

Attention:

How are you today? Hope all is well with you and your family?You may not understand why this mail came to you but kindly read for your perusal and follow the giving procedures for your claim.

The United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) was created in 1991 as a subsidiary organ of the UN Security Council. Its mandate is to process claims and pay compensation for losses and damage suffered as a direct result of Internet Fraud.

We have been having a confederation meeting for the passed 7 months which ended 2 weeks ago with the then secretary to the UNITED NATIONS. This meeting was first held on the 8th of April 2003. You can view this page for your perusal.

(http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/ik344.doc.htm).

This email is directed to all the people that have been scammed in all parts of the world, the UNITED NATIONS in affiliation with Barack Obama Campaign have agreed to compensate them with categorical payment sum of US$ 150,000 each. In its decision 17 of 24 March 2006, the Governing Council established basic principles for the distribution of compensation payments to successful claimants.

This decision was made two months before the resolution of the first instalment of claims before the Commission.

As stated in the Secretary-General’s report of 2 May 2006,it was anticipated that the value of approved awards would far exceed the resources available in the Compensation Fund at any given time.

The Governing Council therefore devised a mechanism for the allocation of available funds to successful claimants that gave priority to the three urgent categories of claims and which, within each category, would give equal treatment to similarly situated claims. Only when each successful claimant in categories “A”,”B”and “C” had been paid an initial amount up to US$2,500 would payments commence for claims in other categories. Accordingly,the  first phase of payment involved an initial payment of US$2,500 to each successful individual claimant in categories “A” and “C”.

However,for humanitarian reasons, all category”B”claims will be paid in full of a total US$150,000. A total of US$3,252,337,997.09 was made available to 1,498,119 successful individual claimants in categories “A”, “B” and “C” under the first phase of payments.

This includes every foreign contractor that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc. We found your name in our list and that is why you are receiving this email notification.

You are advised to contact Dr Erastus Akingbola of Intercontinental Bank plc , as he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your approved bank draft of USD$150,000.

This funds are in a Bank Draft for security purpose, so he will send it to you and you can cash it in any bank of your choice.Therefore, you should send him your full Name, telephone number and your correct mailing address where you want him to send the Draft to you.

Contact Dr Erastus Akingbola immediately for your Bank Draft

Person to Contact: Dr Erastus Akingbola
Email: e.akingbola01@gmail.com
Phone: +234 80246 55800

Thanks and God bless you and your family. Hoping to hear from you as soon as you cash your Bank Draft.

Making the world a better place.

RegardsBan Ki-Moon.

(UN Secretary-General)

http://www.un.org/sg/

* Emphasis added.

Life is unexpected. Yep. If no other theme better permeates these Flash Forwards (of which there are only two), it would be that we should wholeheartedly embrace the uncertainty of the future. Unfortunately, that future at times means we cannot attend to our blog posts, and sometimes that’s a travesty. Here, however, I’m finally catching up.

The Dr. Coulter I meant to introduce you to — or at least one incantation of him, of possibly many — would look something like this: Aside from his stunning good looks, brilliant personality, admirable intelligence and, let’s rightly admit it right here and now: his deeply poetic romanticism (to which all the women swoon), Dr. Coulter would be a computer science or software engineering professor, likely more teacher than researcher, somewhere respected, holding a Ph.D. in microsociology.

“But why do they swoon? Charlie, tell me why they swoon!” — Knox Overstreet

Okay. I admit: I’ve embellished on some points. But the real kicker was supposed to be the microsociology.

I stumbled upon microsociology when I was thinking about an MBA, back when I wrote The Prestige. Many schools in New York City focus on finance, and beside their MBA programs offer classes in economics. A few clicks on Wikipedia gets you to sociology, or better, macrosociology, dealing with human interaction on a wide scale (such as with economics). A few more clicks gets you to microsociology, the inverse, dealing with human interaction on a more personal scale.

Microsociology, to the extent I understand it, extremely interests me. I like paying attention to personal communication, almost overly so, to the point where I reflect on it as it happens; in fact, I wouldn’t mind researching it for its own sake. However, I want to keep using the degree I received from Florida Tech, and I still want to focus on software, namely testing. Thankfully, microsociolgy fits right in; that is, if we swap some humans for computers.

Some might not call this microsociology and instead call it human-computer interaction — which it probably is — but I don’t intend to focus on haptics interfaces or better UI design, etc. At least, not directly. Instead, I hope to research the more personal side of computing (i.e., “What makes users angry,”) and try to use that research to improve how we develop software and what bugs we decide to fix first.

My hypothesis is that, based on human social expectations with other people, we may place similar expectations on computers. And if so, the bugs that “break” these expectations may be the most damaging, eliciting the most emotion from the user. Perhaps the reason we personify computers at all (I’m sure we’ve all proclaimed, at one point, “it’s thinking”) is because we have unconscious expectations that they (they???) are thinking entities. And that they’re stupid. And that they don’t do what we tell them to do. And maybe — and this is only a hypothesis: If we study this phenomenon, it may help inform our design decisions up front as well as help us decide which bugs to fix after the fact. And if James Bach is right, and a bug is truly “anything that bugs you,” then we may really be onto something.

But, of course, life is unexpected, and the beauty of the future is, to quote greatness, “[that] you never know what you’re going to get.” Still, this research would be exciting in it’s own right (assuming it hasn’t already been done), easily earning its candidacy as my next Flash Forward.

Note: Flash Forwards are only flashes. I’m hoping someone corrects me on the things I take for granted, as I have a tendency to unintentionally hurt books I read, and my microsociology books are currently unscathed.

Update: See comments thread for more discussion.

I’m going to start something we’ll call a Flash Forward.

Whoa Doc. This is heavy. — Marty McFly

That’s right. In an attempt to flesh out some career possibilities I’d be interested in pursuing, I’ve decided to blog about the ones that may have actual footing in reality.

The first is Medill’s (Northwestern University’s) Knight Foundation Scholarship. It seems the Journalism program at Medill has recognized the ever-increasing influence of the Internet, and has at the same time realized the opposite decline in print media. To keep up with the times — or to boldly go where no one has gone before (let’s face it; this is cool stuff) — Medill is giving away full rides to students interested in fusing technology and Journalism.

What’s great about these scholarships, and what makes Medill a clear candidate for my first Flash Forward, is it’s an actual possibility. Given my technical background, my interest in writing (this blog) and the timeliness of the opportunity — the deadline for January 2010 is this June, and the program is only a year long; I can see myself jumping for it.

But it’s true: As Doc Brown said, the future hasn’t been written yet. Stay tuned for my next Flash Forward, where I introduce you to Dr. Coulter (in training) and a few ideas for graduate study in Software Engineering.

On the heels of James Bach’s Buccaneer Scholar, a new idea, book and blog where he details his experience with exploratory thinking and learning, comes my own wrestling, not only with how I learn, but what I should learn. Due to recent events I’ll make clear in a few weeks, this question has begun to capture all of my spare CPU cycles — and it won’t quit.

The crux of the question, I think, is this: When I was thirteen, I set a goal to go to college, get a degree, and work for Microsoft (then the most popular software company in existence). While in college, I latched onto open-source software and the free software movement — happily ditching Windows for Gentoo, Mandrake, then finally Ubuntu — and gleefully traded Microsoft for a slightly newer and more exciting company called Google. Google had free food, funky office chairs, and they fit the goal I previously made when I was thirteen. My sense of self was intact, no harm done.

When it came time to interview, though, things were messier than I expected. I was still trying to finish school — to graduate, move out of the dorm and wrap up all the extracurriculars that consumed most of my spare time; and I was, on the more personal side, simply trying to grasp what was happening as I made the transition from college life to real life.

It was all too fast. Not only was I not accepted by Google (that’s a story for another time), but I didn’t know where else to go from there. In magicians terms, I made all but the prestige of my childhood goals, and I was left like a confused audience member contemplating whether I should stand up and applaud.

But, prestige aside, I realized my longstanding goals ended after college, and whether or not I was employed by Big Popular Company mattered little to anything but my ego. Even if I did achieve my goal, I’d still be left with the same question: What happens next?

When I learn, I need to know the big picture. I like to know where I’m going, why I’m going there, and in general, how to get there — but not always. I know the devil’s in the details, but I like figuring out the details as I go along.

Looking back, I had more or less achieved my goal — college, degree, employment — but I didn’t have the big picture telling me where to go next. I still don’t. I’d assume even James’ Buccaneer Scholar, with his exploratory state of mind, would have some type of charter, though I can’t believe he’d always know where he is going. James, I’d like to hear you expound upon that if you haven’t already.

This leads to the more practical dilemma: Of my interests, which path do I choose? The following is a list of career paths I could be interested in taking. Though I run the risk of taking the totally incorrect approach to, well, life, of these career paths, I can’t help but be interested in their prestige. Here goes:

• Independent test consultant.
• Product Manager/Test Manager for large software engineering projects.
• Ph.D in Software Engineering or Cognitive Science, researching and teaching software engineering and/or software testing.
• Software Developer for cutting-edge, Web 2.0 technologies (I am that now).
• Entrepreneur for my own software development company. (I’ll probably need an MBA).
• Entrepreneur for my own software testing firm. (Again, an MBA).
• Tech Journalist for popular blogs and magazines. (I’ll probably need to study journalism).
• Politician. (I’ll probably need to study political science, though this brings me to my next interest…)
• Something in the arts, say, acting.

And as an aside, this whole process feels like one big game of Twister.

James Bach just started a new blog called How I Learn Stuff where he depicts the life of a Buccaneer Scholar. I’ve yet to fully understand his use of the term, but the posts and comments there are quite moving. This is likely a blog to watch.

A recently-made mockup of The Open Planning Project’s website, released only within the company, shows an about page with a sub-heading and description that says we as a company are “driving best practices.” I haven’t made my distaste for this phrase known yet — and by no means is this post an announcement, though I wouldn’t mind if they read it; but I am a bit surprised we use the term. Though some have said it better (well, one at least), here’s my impression of the phrase and how it appears to be used in our context:

1. First, I agree fully with James Bach. Bias aside, best practices are like best friends: You never know when you’ll have a falling out. That’s sad, I know, but since I was little, I never wanted to choose a “best” friend because I thought it devalued the qualities of the other friends I had. Perhaps I’ll choose one when I’m old?
2. Through conversations with coworkers, most on the programming side, there seemed to be this implicit understanding that “best practice” really meant “the best practice we know of right now.” This still doesn’t pass the context argument, but there seems to be an understanding that “best,” here, is not absolute over time… though it sometimes seems to be touted as so. There also seems to be this notion of, “Most bridges are built in way X, and therefore, way X is the best practice.” This might actually hold some weight in the development side of software engineering just as I assume the phrase holds in some contexts within structural engineering — I mean, let’s not forget Tacoma Narrows. But in testing, I’d assume stakeholders’ interests (among other variables) are too fickle and disparate to choose one “best” way of managing them. (I’d love to hear more from structural engineering folks to see how this phrase is used, if at all.)
3. In my company, “best practice” feels like a marketing term. This is one of James’ arguments. If the quality of the software produced is a measure of the practice (this isn’t always the case), I wouldn’t say our practices are “the best.” That said, if there’s truth in advertising, maybe there’s a context — perhaps a geospatial one, an area where TOPP excels — where we really are leading the practice. Does that mean we’re the “best”? I don’t know.

I talked to the CEO of an optics-based software company recently, and he described his product not as the “best” product on the market, but as the best for a certain context — in his case, the high-end precision optics market. Not the low-to-mid end, where software is of lower quality but is much cheaper. I felt his description and use of the term “best” worked because he gave a context, though he was sampling over a single variable, quality, which to each person is fairly subjective — that is, if you subscribe to Jerry’s view, described here.

As humans, though, we seem to place the label “best” by ignoring variables we think are uninteresting, all with the intent of rallying behind a common leader. At one point, the software industry was led by IBM. After that it was Microsoft. Now it’s probably Google. Which is the best, you ask? That’s like asking which is the best car company. Maybe what you’re really asking is, “Which company hasn’t turned into an 800 lb. gorilla?”

I’ve probably belabored the point already, but the word “best,” in my opinion, is simply one person’s perception of the environment in which things exist, sampled at a certain point in time. They choose variables that they’re interested in, explicitly or implicitly, then find a leader amongst those available. What they don’t take into account when assigning their label is the concept of time, or that over time perceptions change. Or maybe they take time into account, but the “best” label simply doesn’t hold as things change. And we all know how fast the software world changes…

But again: The variables they sample over may not have value to others, even if the label holds, for them, over time.

My last analogy, simply because I had to hit home while making a cheap shot at Britney Spears, is that maybe the concept of “best” in “best practice” is just as fickle as “’til death do us part” in 50% of American marriages. Perhaps we assign the term too quickly. Or, maybe, we’re just looking for social status in a world that rewards that sort of thing.