Appendix E. About the Author

About the Author

Photo courtesy of Microspotting.com

Sara Ford is the program manager for CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting site. Prior to CodePlex, she worked on the Visual Studio team for six years, where she started the Visual Studio Tip of the Day on her blog. She began her career as a software design engineer in testing, where over the next four years she tested nearly every aspect of the generic Visual Studio IDE.

Shortly after the Visual Studio 2005 product shipped, Sara joined the Visual Studio Community Team as the program manager for Power Toys for Visual Studio. The power toys are small, lightweight add-ins to Visual Studio that were built as open-source projects on CodePlex. This is where her interests and personal education in the open-source world began, which would lead her to her current role on CodePlex.

It is a little-known fact that Sara ran a professional clown business named "Squirt, the Clown" (pronounced "Squirt Comma the Clown") throughout her junior high and high school years, where she juggled clubs and a diabolo and also twisted balloon animals. It turned out that the comma in the name was extremely important to clarify any confusion about the nature of her business. When Sara had been a professional clown for approximately two years, she arrived at a gig—a 10-year-old boy’s birthday party—to find that the large group of boys (30, at least) were over the top excited to see the clown. She couldn’t help but think their level of excitement was unusual for a group of that age. Then she noticed ... they were all holding water guns! The boys opened fire, and the oversized clown shoes prevented her from making a hasty escape to her car. The parents, bless their hearts, took the original business name "Squirt the Clown" quite literally. Sara swears to this day that her life is the mathematical proof of Murphy’s Law.

Aside from her clown business, Sara has had other interesting jobs as a soccer referee and a popcorn vendor at Walt Disney World, in the Magic Kingdom, directly in front of Cinderella’s castle. When not working on a computer or running away from water guns, Sara enjoys studying Shotokan Karate, hiking mountains twice in a row, and cycling on trails that do not allow cars.

Sara’s life long goal is to become a 97-year-old weightlifter, so she can be featured on the local news.

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
18.118.7.102