Attention To Detail

As a software tester, I have to pay attention to the smallest details. If the spec says that the toolbar should include a blue button labeled Red and the bar contains a red button that is labeled Blue there is a problem and the test fails. This attention to detail has not always been a talent I have had.

Yesterday’s blog entry for example contains an error that very few observant readers have pointed out. While the story of the bear eating Schatzie specifies that Schatzie was a bitch, the pictured daschund is a male. This was not, however, a mistake. It was a direct segue to this entry.

You see, when I was a child, we always had daschunds. I remember three of them. There were two black ones and a brown one in-between. They were, by design, all named Schatzie. You see, Mom thought that it would be less traumatic (or perhaps she was just thinking that we wouldn’t notice one of them had died) if they all had the same name. So when one of them went off to that great beyond, she’d get a new one and name it Schatzie.

This worked better than she had expected. Not only did the change occasionally escape notice, it stayed out of my express notice. I know, you’re thinking that nobody could fall for that. But I did! IT worked so well that I failed to realize that one of the brown Schatzies and at least one of the black ones had been males!

At least is saved my parents from using the “Schatzie has gone off to live on a farm.” euphemism for death. That line would never have worked in the long term anyway. They tried it with the first of the Schatzies to fall along the way. When we all asked why Schatzie wasn’t at the farm when we went to visit my uncle on the Bergquist homestead dairy farm in Minnesota, I think they realized that this was not a euphemism that would work in the long run.

We (I) may have been unobservant, but we weren’t dumb! So, the came up with the “name every dog Schatzie” strategy. What can I say, it worked!

I hope that you fail to notice the sad things that happen, or at least quickly forget them and have a great day today wherever you are!

Don Bergquist - 21st June 2006 - Lakewood, Colorado, USA