Monthly Archives: December 2003

Fresca

As explanations go, that raises more questions than it answers.

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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.

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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….

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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.

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Rough Stuff: a difficult day at the testing center

Ugly. Tony’s not happy, I’m not happy, no one’s happy.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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