I began testing software professionally in 1985, working for Ashton-Tate, the creators of dBase II/III/IV, and have worked for other predominant software and hardware manufacturers, service providers, and independent test labs since that time. I'm currently seeking employment, as living in the Antelope Valley in Los Angeles county seems to have a lot of aerospace jobs, but very little in the way of consumer hardware and software testing, especially after the crashed economy a decade or so ago. My last position was working for an entertainment management company, TrailerPark Inc., who created and tested software and advertising material for entertainment industry organizations, such as movie and television studios (Fox Home Entertainment, Disney, The Museum of Television and Radio - The Oscars, NBC/Universal, and several others). Besides it being a lot of fun working in that industry, it was just a train and subway ride away, dropping me off across the street in Hollywood, California, from the job site.

I've always taken a lot of pride in the work I do, and have loved technology and its evolution longer than I can remember. I'm often the one who gets to work early and sticks around late just because it's tough to pry someone away from something they love to do, especially when they're good at it and getting paid to do what they love. That's what quality assurance testing does for me.

I've worked with DOS, Windows, Mac OS, Solaris/UNIX, Linux, iOS, Android, Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and hundreds of software applications, hardware appliances, and peripherals, including LAN, WAN, and Wi-Fi technologies, throughout the years including most recently the rise of artificial intelligence and intelligent communications such as Siri, Google, Cortana, and other virtual assistants, and the tech just keeps getting better and more fun. Now we've got 3D printing, which is a step closer to a transporter than we've ever had before (not to mention the recent transporting of material recently in the news). All I ever wanted is to be a part of the evolution of technology to make lives easier (though there have been many hurdles that have made life more complicated for many in that endeavor - I know because I support so many of those users).

It seems that although Windows 10 is really a monumental OS for Microsoft and supports so many new technologies, my systems are moving further and further into the Linux world, while I evaluate the many distributions for their advantages and disadvantages, trying out all major families (distros based on Debian, RedHat - Suse / Fedora, Gentoo, BSD, and highly modified variations), and the many flavors within those families (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Sabayon, Open Suse, and on and on it goes, where it stops nobody knows)... I wrote more but had 1496 too many characters.

Cheers! HoundCat (Rob Mamede)