During the Windows 95 project, we had a super-sized whiteboard in the hallway outside the build lab in order to keep track of the most critical bugs that were blocking the release of the build. I remember one day I was walking past the board, and two of my colleagues were particularly interested in one of the bugs. Its current status had recently been updated to something like “Problem understood, fix coming, ETA 2pm.” But they weren’t as interested in the bug itself as in the identity of the person who made the update.

Janice asked Rachel, “Do you know who wrote that?”

“No, but it’s clearly a woman’s handwriting.”

“Obviously, but who could it have been? I would have guessed Laura, but I know her writing and that’s not it.”

“Ahem,” I interjected. “I wrote that.”

An awkward silence.

“Oh, it’s very nice handwriting, really.”

“Yes, very graceful.”

Looking back at my penmanship through the years, I think that era was my peak. It has been declining steadily ever since. Sometimes I stop to try to recover some of its former glory, but at best it’s just holding its ground.

(While you’re checking out TechNet Magazine, why not drop into the current issue’s Blog Tales written by our own Betsy Aoki.)