Michael Kloss

A friend of mine just used this word and I couldn't stop laughing. For the english-readers this word could be translated with "Competence-Dummy" and it is meant to be used for a person that really is NOT competent. To me the german word sounds better so I will keep saying "Kompetenz-Attrappe".
Maybe an interesting study: How often do you meet a "Kompetenz-Attrappe" in your real life?

Well, working now for several weeks with the Rational Performance Tester I found Brian's Blog really interesting. But yesterday there came up one post. The post was based on the post of ScaffaDaffa and I surely agree about this cite:

"There is NO single excuse for a support system to NOT BE AVAILABLE on cutover. If your entire database is not available, you RUN THE OLD AND NEW SYSTEMS CONCURRENTLY. We did this three times at GE just in the time I was there. This is how every single reputable software support group in this country and abroad does it. Apparently, HP is the only company bold enough to take this radical new step of denying support to their customers who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for support. Push that envelope guys – way to think outside the box."

For myself I was annoyed too some months ago when I wanted to try out WinRunner as a commercial alternative for Testing UIs and found that Mercury was acquired by HP and no longer Demo Versions were available. So the post fits perfectly into my experience.
But what I am really confused about in Brian's post are the following lines:

"Here at Rational we’ve been converting Mercury customers by the dozens.[...] Many of the converted have said they would never have gone with LoadRunner had they evaluated Performance Tester - typically, it’s the script editing that gets’em. Script editing is much simpler and faster in Performance Tester than in any performance testing tool out there today.""

The first statement may be true if so congratulations. But it hits me really hard on this part "typically, it’s the script editing that gets’em". What? Ok, I am working for 10 years now in the IT and have tried a lot of tools. Maybe I am the fool in front of RPT but what Script editing? All files are saved in binary in RPT no way to get anything out or in. Fine, you have the ability to write custom code in java an use the API...
But intuitive usage of this... ERROR...
Then another annoying Point:
RPT only offers you a recording of URL-Requests, nothing of HTML...
I just tried the Demo of LoadRunner and say what you like about Mercury and/or HP but the LoadRunner was much easier on the HandsOn. Starting by choosing wether to use URL, HTML or UI recording, everything was saved in text-files. And these are editable, could be generated etc. Having a Step-Through-Assistent always in view when working with LoadRunner, it was more than easy to create, parametrize and customize your first recordings. So maybe I need to be set up to RPT and all of its so impressive features, but for the moment I haven't found them. To express it with my favorite Metric (just my current impressions):

Tool	WTFs/min
Rational Performance Tester	8
LoadRunner	2

---

So I am really open to figure out that I am wrong with the RPT but at the moment...
Feel free to leave comments...

Update: WTFs/min, take a look here

... of famous Tech Companies. (via 37Signals Sunspots)
I found the evolution really interesting but take a look for yourself. It's amazing to see how Logo's of some Tech Companies looked like at that time.

... from people why they are performing GTND (Getting Things NOT Done). My favourite excuse why someone couldn't finish his/her task(s): "Sorry, I had meetings the whole day, but I try to finish today" - means, I try to get on as many meetings today to use the same excuse tomorrow

Sounds hard but I have seen a lot of people performing "meeting hop". Another cite: "Oh, my scheduled meeting for now is cancelled, I will take part in yours..."

What are your favourite excuses you have heard so far, any similar experiences?

Feel free to leave comments...

P.S: Anybody there knowing what this "Decline" Button in invitations is for?

Exactly what I was waiting for: If you have already upgraded your Leopard to 10.5.2 you can now disabled the automatic switch between spaces if using Command-Tab. I was really NOT using spacing because of the automatic switch, but I tried the disabling and it works like a charm! Great thing, thanx Just open your terminal and put:

defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO

then you have kill your Dock with

killall Dock


Found here: macosxhints.com - 10.5: Disable Space switching on Command-Tab in 10.5.2

Tags: macspaces leopard

Philip sent me a few weeks ago the following metric: wtf/min See by yourself, it's my new favourite metric in software development (from osnews):

Letztes Wochenende war ich in New York. Neben einem beeindruckenden Besuch im Madison Square Garden zu einem Knicks Spiel, konnte ich mir den Apple Store an der Fifth Avenue natürlich nicht entgehen lassen. Irgendwann gegen 22:00 hab ich dann überlegt, hmm, hat der überhaupt noch auf? Das Internet weiss ja bekanntlich sehr viel, also schaute ich einfach nach und war perplex, typisch Apple: Alle möglichen Firmen werben mit 24/7, nicht so der Apple Store an der Fifth: 24/365!
Tja, und da streite sich hier wer will, aber die Mitarbeiter dort waren auch um 23:30 noch super freundlich  und der Service war echt gut.

Tags: oeffnungszeitenapple store

Das Thema Last-Test kommt so ziemlich in jedem Projekt irgendwann auf der Tagesordnung. Ich habe heute einen recht guten und ausführlichen Vergleich der Tools LoadRunner, JMeter und Grinder gefunden. Der Vergleich geht zwar nicht im Detail auf die Benutzung der Tools ein, bietet dafür aber eine umfangreiche Gegenüberstellung der wichtigen Funktionen die für Last-Tests benötigt werden. Inhalts-Auszug:

• Comparison Tables
• General Issues
• Agents
• Controller

Ausserdem finden sich in den Appendixes eine Reihe von Links und speziellen Pros/Cons der drei Werkzeuge. Vergleich

Some weeks ago I found a very nice widget to handle the Leopard Feature of Mails and iCals Todos. Even without having Mail or iCal started, you can edit, finish or delete your todos via Dashboard. Get the widget

Pipes von Yahoo sind zwar schon etwas länger online (ich hab es glaube ich vor knapp einem Jahr schon mal ausprobiert) aber trotzdem immer ganz hilfreich. Und wie ich finde auch ein schänes Beispiel, was so heute alles im Web möglich ist. "Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor."

Pipes: Rewire the web

Tags: web2.0pipes yahoo feed-aggregator

Wie Mactechnews soeben berichtet hat, gibt es Steve's Keynote von letzter Woche jetzt auch in HD: Keynote zur MacWorld in HD-Qualität ansehen

Einen Tag nach der Keynote von Steve Jobs habe ich das kostenpflichtige Update für den iPod-Touch gekauft. Interessant war, dass man zuerst das Update auf die Firmware 1.1.3 installieren musste (165MB) und das kostenpflichtige Update nur mit der neuesten iTunes Version funktionierte. Leider schlug das erste Update auf 1.1.3 fehl, woraufhin ich den iPod wiederherstellen musste, hiess halt 45min kopieren. Allerdings hat es sich gelohnt, Mail funktioniert einwandfrei, wie alle anderen Funktionen auch und es ist ein echter Benefit für jeden iPod Touch Besitzer.