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.

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

And not only me — there are better, more qualified and exciting speakers making this CAST the best yet. If you’re interested, sign up now! It’s not too late.

Here’s a sneak peak at what to expect:

CAST 2009: The challenges of regulation, an interview with Jean Ann Harrison
CAST 2009: Understanding how much responsibility a testing team should have, an interview with Gerald M. Weinberg
CAST 2009: Challenging a classic idea in testing, an interview with Doug Hoffman
CAST 2009: Taking a closer look at scenario testing, an interview with Fiona Charles
CAST 2009: Test gurus Sabourin, Coulter preview keynotes

Complete personal plug, I must admit, but a recent interview with Rob Sabourin and I just made it to the web! Check it out:

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/software-quality/cast-2009-test-gurus-sabourin-coulter-preview-keynotes/

The author and interviewer was Mike Kelly, a director for the Association for Software Testing and a “sometimes independent testing consultant” working from the midwest. He interviewed Rob and I about our upcoming speech titled, “Tim Bits: What I Learned About Software Testing at CAST 2009,″ which will likely be the most exciting thing for me since that time I went skydiving. I can’t wait for the speech — and in fact, the whole conference! — and I look forward to seeing you all there.

From here:

The Association for Software Testing is pleased to announce its fourth annual conference, CAST 2009, to be held July 13-16. The meeting will be held in sporty Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the Antlers Hilton Hotel.  The Antlers Hilton offers stunning views of the Rocky Mountains and Pikes Peak, which serve as a dramatic backdrop for this year’s theme: “Serving our Stakeholders“.

[...]

The CAST 2009 Program Committee is seeking proposals for papers and presentations that explain how testers can serve stakeholders. Both academic research papers and industrial experience reports are welcome.

In addition to presentations that demonstrate service to stakeholders, we’re looking for personal experience reports that clearly demonstrate skills and practices of seasoned software testing professionals. We are looking for rich, diverse experiences and ideas that illuminate the theme.

If you have hands-on experience, and a fascinating story to tell, contact us and we will assist you in evolving your tale so it will be ready to present at CAST.

Read the full CFP.

And if you check out the speakers list, you may just find someone you recognize.

Author’s note: This post is wildly overdue.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. I was thinking about how I’d write it — how creative I could be while introducing it — to the point where I never actually got to writing it. And you know what, ladies and gentleman? That’s simply atrocious, considering how absolutely awesome CAST 2008 was.

I enjoyed this CAST more than the other two previous CASTs. Though CAST 2007 sported a fun and enlightening certification debate, and CAST 2006 paved ground with an interesting but heated discussion after the first keynote, this CAST seemed different.

The biggest difference, I think, was that I wasn’t a student.

Rob Sabourin likes to talk about people going out in the world and being “blooded” after many years experience. I am by no means a blooded professional — I’m still getting dirt under my nails — but in the last year, I’ve gained a new appreciation for the “people” aspect of our industry. Whereas in college I focused on code, exams, homework and text books (to the greatest degree of perfection I had time for), in the real world I can focus on people.

At this CAST, I made an effort to talk to as many people as I could. Not only would I talk to them, but I did my best to find something interesting about what they had to say. Though I could have simply shied away or given into nervousness or not even cared, I met so many interesting people that I’d argue meeting people was the single best part of CAST.

Though the “people” aspect was likely the part of CAST I enjoyed the most, it definitely wasn’t everything. Here’s a few bullets that highlight my CAST experience:

• Getting on a plane with absolutely no sleep, making it to Toronto in good spirits and then exploring the city.
• Meeting people that I met at previous CASTs (shout out to Henrik, who was the first recognizable face I saw).
• Going to Jerry Weinberg’s tutorial, and meeting him for the first time.
• Being told I look Irish.
• Being told I look like Wolverine.
• Being given a staff badge by Paul Holland, making me feel as if I was part of the group (though I’m sure he just wanted to make me available to help ).
• Seeing Cem and Becky again.
• Going to a small Irish pub to see Michael Bolton & Nick Wolf play traditional Irish music.
• Getting tested by Ben Simo through his use of children’s toys.
• Seeing RobSab and his wife Anne’s presentation. (Absolutely beautiful, and even more beautiful that they can do it together.)
• Having a new analogy for manual test scripts that deals with diseased rats.
• Meeting the Dorset House Publishing people, who literally work right across the deck from The Open Planning Project in New York City.
• Being gently pushed to give a lightning talk. (Dawn, thank you for that.)
• Noticing as people took notes when I gave my lightning talk.
• Getting handshakes afterward when people told me it was a good lightning talk.
• Getting told that I could have a quarterly Tim-bits column in The AST Update (or another soon-to-be named AST magazine).
• Getting told by Scott Barber and others that I should publish a book of Tim-bits a few years down the road.
• Being told I look Irish, again.
• Being told I look like Wolverine — again.
• Going out to a pub with Michael Bolton and many others, and teaming up with Louise Perold for his bouncy-ball testing game.
• And finally, Hanging out with Carsten, Louise, Henrik, Ben and Chris during most of my CAST off-time.

And there’s more items I can list. Much more.

Overall, this CAST was a great experience, and I want to thank everyone who shared in that experience with me. Thank you, all.

This is gonna be a quick one, because, well… I gotta go spend my Loonies!

I’ll be in Toronto tomorrow for CAST 2008. For those that don’t know, CAST is the Association for Software Testing’s annual conference. On the docket this year is Jerry Weinberg, Cem Kaner, RobSab and many others. I’m excited.

Among the coolness of hanging out with Testing aficionados this week, I get to use the flight from NY to Toronto and back to further my testing history lesson. A few books mentioned to me finally made it to my doorstep, and the flight will give me a great time to read them. So much better than the subway.

What’s also coming out of the pipe (hopefully) soon is a personal project aiming to give a bit of stability to the crazy world of Javascript. I’ve spent the last year writing Javascript for The Open Planning Project, and after a bit of reflection, I feel like I, we, and the collective Javascript writers around the world are back in the relative stone age. Put bluntly and likely inappreciatively, Javascript is the C of browser languages. That’ll change soon, but in the interim — I’d guess four years before it reaches critical mass — we need a bit more stability.

Oh, and let me plug some Obama volunteerism real quick: If you’re interested, a couple volunteers and I are creating voter demographic maps using OpenLayers and Geoserver for Obama’s campaign in North Carolina. You can see a quick (and recent) hack-job here, though it will be password protected soon to accommodate sensitive data. If you’re interested in helping this mapping effort, or you know Obama campaign workers who could benefit from their own instance, feel free to join the OpenPlans project here.

And with that: CASTaways, I will see you tomorrow. Everyone else, goodnight!