Fresca
As explanations go, that raises more questions than it answers.
Archive for December, 2003
Filed under Veteran Testimony Posted on December 24th 2003
The Web App: imagining the next version
This is not a show-stopper, but since every tester found the screen difficult, it’s going to give our support staff headaches.
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on December 23rd 2003
A Dabbler’s Powerbook: finding my way
When I wasn’t shopping this weekend, I was trying to move past the “what a neat toy” phase with my new laptop. OS X is enough like XP to be familiar, and enough different to be both annoying and fascinating. That’s been covered elsewhere; I’ll likely leave it alone….
Filed under Semi-Geekery Posted on December 21st 2003
Web Project: catching up
Sarah and I completed our run through the User Acceptance tests yesterday, too. It’s my well-considered opinion that the best test sessions are pretty boring; this one qualified. We found a “feature” which a reasonable person would say works better than the spec; unfortunately, we need it to work like the spec, which echoes the relevant law. We also found a couple places where the forms we’re creating are missing some data the app actually requests, which is the sort of thing you expect to find in this environment. I documented those this morning.
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on December 18th 2003
Rough Stuff: a difficult day at the testing center
Ugly. Tony’s not happy, I’m not happy, no one’s happy.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
December 10th 2003
Meantime: the call center
What we’ve got at this point is less a plan than a notion that change is necessary, and that upgrading the CRM package is crucial to that effort. If we can find a way to focus the notion, this has a good chance to work. I’m hoping for the best; the consultant’s an old friend and a bright guy.
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on December 9th 2003
Stress Testing: our web app, design issues, and the real world
When we were planning this project, we met with a mixed IT/vendor team to discuss the potential network impacts. At the time, the state’s web infrastructure was fairly immature, and it took only a few minutes for the folks across the table to become alarmed. If our lowest traffic estimates had any basis in reality, our application would certainly stress, and perhaps break, the connection between our servers and IBM’s web server farm in Boulder. They were particularly concerned that we were unable (they probably thought “unwilling”) to define a maximum file size.
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on December 8th 2003
Progress: slow changes
Spent more of the day than I’d intended reworking the site’s index pages; first I had to figure out how to code the changes, then there was a lot of manual labor involved in implementing those changes. Most of the time was spent moving files.
Filed under
Dabbler Notebook
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
December 7th 2003
Finally: web app testing resumes
Tony, Stacy, Subhash, and the IT coders are satisfied with the web app I’ve been discussing here. So I’m expecting we’ll be testing that web application later today. Finally.
Filed under Bureaucratic Whimsy Posted on December 5th 2003
Pepys: of diaries and bureaucracies
Pepys was a delightful diarist, and worth reading for all sorts of reasons. One which (naturally) appeals to me is that he was a professional bureaucrat in a time when bureaucracies were new to European government. Bureaus were small, too; they seem to have run the Royal Navy with just a handful of clerks. (I seem to be ignoring the admirals….) Part of the fun when I read Pepys is watching him feel his way around the organizational issues.
Filed under
Bookworm Alley
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Posted on
December 1st 2003
