I got my start at Xerox working in their photocopier "QA" department. I say "QA" because it was more a factory setup than quality assurance office. Anyway we ha

I got my start at Xerox working in their photocopier "QA" department. I say "QA" because it was more a factory setup than quality assurance office. Anyway we had test cases in folders with instructions on the front to configure the copier. Just the usual things like two-page scan to offset or collated with staples and a cover sheet, etc. Every now and then a "strange" case would be sent down of a certain job type that would cause the copier to break and hit "UM" or "unscheduled maintenance" exactly like this story. Had some interesting things pop up such as very creative ways people managed to bypass the currency detection to prevent printing (totally crap) currency copies or causing the printer to fail correctly printing the Machine Identification Code, even one scan to email job that caused a crash in the SMTP client so it would endlessly loop sending the same scan to the same email address every 5 minutes (300 second timeout) until you rebooted the machine. Fun times! This was actually how I got started with software development. I was interested in the copiers ESS (Electronic Sub System) which was a very basic Intel system running LynxOS essentially bolted to the back of the copier. I was chatting to some of the OS devs about RTOS and how it differed from a "normal" OS so learnt C with books they gave me and answered many of my questions. From there I managed to get a job up in the "real" QA department testing the printer drivers for Windows 9x, NT4, 2000 and the "soon to be released" Windows XP (or Whistler as it was known during development). I learnt how to use the Windows Debugger and about printer driver development which almost made me want to leave humanity and live in a cave somewhere in South America (: Luckily I got to move into the "nicer" world of C++/MFC and then .NET (anyone remember Managed Extensions for C++ aka C++/CLI?!). Like I said, Fun Times!