Why Testbaudson?

Sometimes people ask why my nick is Testbaudson. Here's the story. It's quite stupid but what the hell.

A few years back we were working on a geospatial cemetary application. We needed some mock data for plots in that cemetary, so my collegue Astrid created some plots with fictional names for the dead, like Testmüller or Testmeier, common german names with the prefix "Test". From then on I used Testbaudson as my nick. Maybe the application was so painful to work with, and death had lost its sting.

On the one hand I found the nickname very funny. I imagined how that mock data could end up in the real application, and suddenly you would have an actual funeral for Testmüller, like in the Seinfeld episode "The Susie".

On the other hand, it reminds me of death, which will occur to me one day, no matter what. For me it's important to deal with it, as it puts things into perspective: If life as a resource would be endless, it would have no value. But with death, it suddenly becomes valuable. And with death possibly being just around the corner, even more so. It's good to be reminded of that value.

Furthermore it's also an interesting stylistic device for the story of Testbaudson, just like in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard", which starts with the protagonist found dead, and the whole film being a flashback.

So while the idea behind the nickname might seem morbid to you, it actually has a positive, life-affirming meaning to me.