Today we welcome to the show Scott Louvau, twice retired from Microsoft and now focused on his Relentless Optimizer blog, he is our second twice retired from Microsoft guest. If his last name sounds familiar, it should be. Several weeks back, his partner, Darinee Louvau was our guest. Her absolute enthusiasm caused us to seek out the other half of the equation and invite Scott to share his take on life at and after Microsoft as well as his data origin story. How exactly did Scott go from a small vineyard in North California to being twice retired from Microsoft and what set him on the technological path?

Like Darinee, games were Scott's gateway drug to technology. While growing up in a home with software programming parents, Scott was exposed to how programs work and most importantly, granted access to tinker with the hardware side as well. Frustration with slow gameplay or loading freezes led to the educational process as Scott learned to free up resources, jettison drives, and optimize the remaining parts to make the gameplay better, faster, and longer.  In a time when there was no internet full of resources available, debugging issues was both more challenging and more intense. Back in the day, if you wanted to play, you had to make it work on the system you had.

Scott used these hard-earned skills between high school and college as he started working as an internal software developer before switching to a programming track at college, falling in love, and joining the dream team at Microsoft. He found joy in automation both for Microsoft's clients and for his team, going on to reduce frustration in debugging while increasing optimization in the process.  It isn't all programming and coding today though, as we also delve into Starbucks Cold Brew Refill Hacks and using AI to dominate game levels.  Stuck on a level of Kingdom Rush? You can find a solution for that and more, in this episode.

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Also on this episode:

Tinkering is a way of life w/ Darinee Louvau

Apple IIGS

Luggable Computer

Power Builder

Paper Games of Kids in the 90s

Terminator gets squashed

STUXNET: The Virus that Almost Started WW3

Visual Studio

Visual Slick Editor

Inverted word index

A most generous mentor w/ Microsofts' Dany Hoter

Ballmer's Peak

Google eats RAM cookies

Scott's Relentless Optimizer Blog

Try xForm

Kingdom Rush

Kingdom Rush AI

Boom Beach

World of Warcraft Subscription Fees

Vanguard ownership/profits