Posts from — August 2006

Well, I try not to blog about work too much as you know. Doing so can go bad in so many ways. Maybe it’s gossip about the hotties, maybe it’s whining about a boss, or worse- complaining about the product. One of those things always does in a “company blogger”. In addition, the last thing I want to deal with is chasing down some goofball’s rant against our work product because his 18 year old cousin messed up a survey on MySpace or something.

But I wanted to break my barely-there rule today because I found a kick ass plugin for firefox. Actually I didn’t find it, it was recommended to me on an email list I’m on. The plugin’s called Selenium-IDE. There’s a link here on openqa.org.

Why do I care about a plugin? Well, normally I don’t- but a Project Manager at work announced to the company that we were having an internal contest to win an iPod. He didn’t write any real rules at all- which left it wide open for my group to, uhhh, test the limits of the survey tools, so to speak.

Anyway, I was well in the lead when the PM did something horrible. He emailed the company again telling them about the contest. You see, it turns out that no one reads the PM’s emails. Well, they scan them, but not more than a paragraph or two. His original contest announcement wasn’t well written. He found out the lack of interest in the contest and then shattered my chances by sending out a spreadsheet basically giving the staff a heads-up that I was kicking their asses. Uh oh, so then I had competition coming after me.

Then something bad happened. A woman on the fourth floor had a survey that was a bit out of control so I was asked to look in to it by other departments to make sure it was legit. This happens from time to time. Most are legit, but I’ve had a few people making weird surveys targeting weird markets. Long story that I don’t want to get in here (see paragraph 1).

Anyway, this woman had 2500+ completes to my 390+ completes. But the DB and Ops guys said that 1900+ of them came from 1 ip. ONE ip! (actually 90% of the results were from two ips, neither were NAT’ed). Hey, I’m not insinuating that her boyfriend in the QA dept has access to load testing software, and is helping her . . . but I’ll just leave it at that.

Oh I was mad then. I hadn’t been doing QA automated stuff and was reserving that technique should I need it- much like The Last Starfighter saves his last Death Blossom.

Well kids, it was time for that. It was time for Selenium. I can bend the rules better than all of them! No one out-cheats me!

I highly recommend testing it out after watching the video here.

It’s pretty easy to record a bunch of clicks and/or actions and have the system repeat them. For QA purposes only of course.

I’m a cheater, and I’m proud of it. I’d better win the ipod, or I’m going to close all of the other staff surveys and take my football home.

The sad thing is that I actually found some real bugs that I’ll need to research. Uggh.

If anyone wants one of my basic html files to import into Selenium, let me know and I’ll put them online. I didn’t put them up anywhere because I don’t want too much traffic hitting the work machines. Our submit buttons are weird though, so email me if you want more info.

I’ll have an update soon on my most recent visit to S3

Is that schmear on your chin ?

I keep seeing some gross pictures on bus stops. The recent ad campaign is for sex education. You know how they use bananas to show how to use condoms safely? Well, now they’re using bagels to instruct people how to perform either oral sex or rim jobs (depending on the ad). Don’t believe me? Check it out:

I’ll try to get the other picture for comparison.

But really. . . that’s a bit much. I don’t want my kids seeing those ads in the gayborhood. Eek!

By the way- I’ll give a prize to the person who writes a clever pun or tagline for the pic. Extra points if you manage to use the word “lox” in a rhyming lyric. . .

I’m still in the lead for my survey for work. If you haven’t taken it yet, please take it. Yes, this is a shameless plug, but what the hell . . .

Happy Birthday to:

Bryan!

Megan! (megan, keep your phone on at work!)

Angie!!!

Gretchen!

Elise! woot!

Celina!

MeiMei!

Cuatro!

Did I miss anyone?

Here’s your birthday youtube vid – Japanese Potty Training!

I think the kid at the end who imitates the cartoon is gonna pop his eardrums pushing that hard. . .

Josh Wolf is an idiot. Discuss.

I’ll concede the point that the police fund money from DC is a weak-ass argument, but the guy’s still a tool. Discuss.

I think this Fark headline sums it up:


Mel Gibson’s blood alcohol level was just a .12 — apparently the guy just needs a mild buzz before he starts singing “Heil to Der Fuhrer.”

In case you missed the news:

Gibson was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving early on Friday and was reported to have launched into a tirade against Jews, asking the arresting officer if he was a Jew and blaming the Jews for starting all wars.

The actor, who holds strong conservative Catholic religious and political views and whose father is a Holocaust denier, apologized on Saturday.

Long story, but on irc about two years ago one of our Norweigian buddies was chatting about the “Norweigian King of Pop” and this goofy video he had out. We had found some goofy online wmv version of it and laughed about the “Wot? Fred?!” lines over and over.

Now, you’ll notice there are many things wrong about me from that first sentence. IRC buddies – sheesh Kenneth, you really *are* a dork. Plus “norweigian king of pop?!?!” Wtf?

Anyway, the latest hit from Denmark is this lame ass song called Boten Anna by a goofball named Basshunter. What’s even LAMER is the song’s about IRC thereby completing the dork circle once and for all- – euro style!

What’s the point? The point is that Morten Abel is still the King that Basshunter can’t overthrow. Here’s Morten’s hit “The Birmingham Ho”, enjoy