A Little About Me
My name is Ramon E. Tristani and I am a Solutions Architect at
Ascentium, a Digital Agency located in the City of Bellevue in the State of Washington. I was introduced to computers at an early age by my father, a Tandy machine and a game of Lunar Lander that I never could seem to beat. I remember spending many hours in his home office glued to this huge machine, fascinated by all the things it was able to do. As the years went by, my involvement with these machines waned considerably, but still, I found them to be incredibly interesting. As the years went by, the success of the personal computer inevitably attracted me into what has been a very enjoyable ride.
I was always that kid that enjoyed taking his toys apart to see how they worked and why. As an adult, I am no different. My entrance into the computer business was a head first dive into the computer hardware business, building custom computers from scratch, software configuration, etc. After a few years of that and during that time, I flirted with the idea of learning how to actually develop software. It wasn’t until 1993 when I really began to “take the toys apart” to see how they really worked.
Serendipity
One would think that being involved in the computer business and living in the greater Seattle area that by some chance I would end up somewhere at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond. That time indeed came in the form of an invitation to a usability test seminar. Being that “
I am a PC” I was rather surprised that I was invited to test Office for the Mac. I am still wondering how that came to be, but regardless of the reasons why, the events that took place, however insignificant, played a major role in my development as a software development professional.
The Fluke
As it turned out, once the usability testing concluded, as a token of their appreciation for my time, the seminar presenters offered to give me a free software title; anything I wanted, but only one title. Immediately I thought I would get a copy of the Windows Operating System, but I quickly changed my mind. Once in the “the room” where the software was stored, a box on the top shelf caught my eye. Unable to reach it, I tried even harder to grab it when another box fell and hit me square on the head. In disgust, I looked up and saw that the box I was reaching for was a copy of Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. So there I stood, hit by a box on my head and not terribly excited about the software title I tried to get. It was then I looked down at the floor and saw what hit me. It was a copy of Microsoft Visual C++. So then it happened; I was introduced to software development by a fluke. I thought: “Why not? Let’s take this home and give it a try!”
Finally, after enjoying the two hour I-5 traffic experience, I got home and loaded the software on my faithful Packard Bell computer. Yes, I had one of those… After launching the application I felt rather desperate as I did not how to use it. It was especially frustrating that by my definition at the time, there was nothing that seemed “visual” about Visual C++. I thought to myself: How did anyone come to learn this? While tough to learn, it was something that I wanted to learn and did indeed learn. Fifteen years down the road I can say that what started as a fluke shaped my goals and a very rewarding career and I have never looked back.
