HoundCat - Rob Mamede

Just an introduction...

I'm Rob Mamede, and I've been working in the software, hardware, and game testing field for over twenty-five years. It all started when I was young. I used to take everything apart and put it back together again, such as clocks, watches, radios, etc. I used to visit my great grandmother who never wanted me to leave the house, but I had to get away for a little while and would go down to Radio Shack when the TRS-80 (aka Trash 80) was in the stores. I'd sit behind the computer with the BASIC programming book open next to me, type in entire programs just to see what they would do. I never saved them, but began absorbing the information as most with an aptitude for such things would do.

When I was in Jr. High School (they call it Middle School now), my friend had an Atari 800. I pleaded with my parents to get one for me, but they refused, only to surprise me on my birthday with a Commodore 64. They purchased it at Adray's in W. L.A. for $495 for the computer, $495 for the 1541 SSSD floppy drive, and bought a Toshiba Blackstripe TV along with it (a month and a half later the system and floppy drive together were a little over $500). I still liked the Atari better than the Commodore, but learned how to Peek and Poke the advanced graphics that the Commodore offerred.

After graduating from High School in 1983, I worked in three different computer stores in Glendale, CA while going to college. I got a "D" in my BASIC programming class, because the version of BASIC that the school was using was not as advanced as what I was using on the Kaypro, Osborne, Epson QX10, Atari, Commodore, and the first IBM PC systems in the store. A year later the college upgraded their computers, and the BASIC programming language along with them.

I worked for my dad's company, Merrill Lynch Commercial Real Estate, as their sole IT department, Accounting Department, and Financial Analyst, since I was the only non-agent, and was employable at just-out-of-college rates (the agent that stood in before I arrived charged $50/hr in 1984). While working at the computer stores, I made friends with a few computer people such as myself, and got my foot in the door through one of them into the software industry. After performing several Beta tests, I interviewed and was hired as a Quality Assurance Test Engineer at Ashton-Tate, the makers of dBASE II, dBASE III, dBASE III Plus, and the dreaded dBASE IV, among other applications such as Framework II and Framework III.

I later moved to independent HW/SW/Game testing labs, working or XXCal, Inc., then to Western Digital and Symantec, then to another lab, VeriTest, Inc., a division of L10NBridge Technologies, 20/20 Labs, Inc., and finally to EarthLink, Inc. until the 900+ employee layoff. I worked a few IT jobs between those positions, working for smaller companies and large ones such as GTE/GTel and Provident Investment Counsel. I've gone back to college to pursue my degree while performing Beta testing on the Sony Playstation 3 of their Playstation Home VR environment, although I spend more time playing games on my Xbox 360 Elite system and will be getting a Nintendo Wii system soon just to become fluent in the differences of the UI and controls of each system.

Anyway, I've spent a lot of time working and testing in the DOS through Windows environments, as well as my share of time in the MAC environments, and can't seem to shake the computer bug. It's about time that I hop on the band wagon here at the Windows BBS site and absorb and share more info to help and be helped by others in the know.

Have fun, rock on, compute, and game on!

Rob aka HoundCat