A Walk Down Memory Lane in the Owner's Box

Last Thursday night I experienced a rare treat.  My son and I watched the defending Stanley Cup Champion Carolina Hurricanes from the owner's box.  The owner of the Carolina Hurricanes is Peter Karmanos, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officier of Compuware.  I met a few of the good folks from CompuWare, including Adam Prokop (shown to the left).  Adam and I talked about Bounds Checker and SoftICE (ironic given we were at a hockey game) both made by Nu-Mega (a company CompuWare acquired).  It reminded me of the time I first used those products back in the early nineties.  BoundsChecker Suite is part of DevPartner for Visual C++ now.  That is some serious longevity in this industry.  In an industry where the software shelf life is measured in months and where languages come and go (the father of Fortran, John Backus, died just this week - I used Fortran back in the eighties) a product lasting decades is an amazing feat.

If I think back on what I was working on when my oldest son, Mitchell, was born it was the Q+E Database Editor.  Q+E was an add-in to the early version of Excel (think Windows 3.0) that allowed you connect Excel with databases.  Microsoft included a copy in every box.  While working there I worked with Craig Harry whose brother, Brian Harry, convinced the company to move to SourceSafe.  Now fast forward 12 years and here I am working on Team Foundation Version Control in Brian Harry's organization.  Small world.

Thanks goes to my good friend Scott Pelton from AT&T for inviting us in "the box". 

 

Three Amigos - Scott Pelton, Joe Ballard, and I

  

 

Joe with the amazing dessert spread in the background

Joe is the former drummer of Rude Awakening and still plays drums at our church and other venues.

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• Anonymous
  June 03, 2009
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