Wednesday, October 27, 2004
A recent Keynote study ranked Dell.com tops for Customer Experience beating out the other sites in the survey (Amazon.com, Apple, Best Buy, CompUSA, Gateway, HP, IBM, PC Connection and Sony).
My favorite quote was "Dell users were the most satisfied and least likely to look to another site", which I'm especially happy about, given the late nights the teams put in to get it right.
To bring the point home, my director just got promoted to VP, and the same day my manager made director (she was the Dev Manager for www.dell.com amongst other things). Goes to show good things can come to those that wait (especially if they also work their butts off). We also got a congrats smiley face email from Michael, which is always better than the alternative.
As for me, I celebrated by ordering a new iPod Photo, as my old 2G iPod has funky battery problems. This new one is supposed to be good for 15 hours ... we shall see.
My favorite quote was "Dell users were the most satisfied and least likely to look to another site", which I'm especially happy about, given the late nights the teams put in to get it right.
To bring the point home, my director just got promoted to VP, and the same day my manager made director (she was the Dev Manager for www.dell.com amongst other things). Goes to show good things can come to those that wait (especially if they also work their butts off). We also got a congrats smiley face email from Michael, which is always better than the alternative.
As for me, I celebrated by ordering a new iPod Photo, as my old 2G iPod has funky battery problems. This new one is supposed to be good for 15 hours ... we shall see.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Things have been quiet around here ... but not a moment too soon I've updated RUnit to the final NUnit 2.2 build.
Click here to get RUnit 1.3
I also split the Page class into a Page and a GUIControl ASP.NET control class (where the Page does nothing but host the GUIControl). The reason for this is that some ASP.NET applications have a common base class for all their pages (some class derived from System.Web.UI.Page) that may provide app-specific state for the lifetime of the page request. As your tests (or more importantly the code in your app that your tests are exercising) may require this state, you need to be able to get RUnit to use your base class, not its own.
Should you need to do this, here's what you do:
1. Copy the new runit.aspx into your app.
2. Open it up in your editor. The runit.aspx in v1.3 looks like this:
3. Change the inherits= to your application's common base page class.
Note: Runit will run fine out of the box. You only need to tweak the runit.aspx if you use a special Page class and your tests won't run without it.
Click here to get RUnit 1.3
I also split the Page class into a Page and a GUIControl ASP.NET control class (where the Page does nothing but host the GUIControl). The reason for this is that some ASP.NET applications have a common base class for all their pages (some class derived from System.Web.UI.Page) that may provide app-specific state for the lifetime of the page request. As your tests (or more importantly the code in your app that your tests are exercising) may require this state, you need to be able to get RUnit to use your base class, not its own.
Should you need to do this, here's what you do:
1. Copy the new runit.aspx into your app.
2. Open it up in your editor. The runit.aspx in v1.3 looks like this:
<%@ Page language="c#" AutoEventWireup="false" inherits="System.Web.UI.Page" %>
<%@ Register tagprefix="runit" Namespace="Ruxp.RUnit" Assembly="runit" %>
<runit:GUIControl runat=server />3. Change the inherits= to your application's common base page class.
Note: Runit will run fine out of the box. You only need to tweak the runit.aspx if you use a special Page class and your tests won't run without it.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
They are doing a little show-and-tell with the just announced Axim X50v handheld downstairs from my cube.For those of you that haven't heard, its a PocketPC with a full VGA screen ... and it looks awesome. At first I thought it would be a bit gimmicky, but with ClearType switched on, the text on the screen looks like its printed - you can't see the pixels.
I only got to play with it for a few minutes, before the person in line behind me started to get impatient, but I was very impressed. The X50 also comes with a 3D stunt car racing game that looked amazing on that screen (the game is Stuntcar Extreme from Vsara Games)
For me the only downside is that its still using Windows Mobile Edition. I've never gotten along with the Calendar and Contacts apps in that OS. Thats why I traded my Axim X30 for a Palm Tungsten T3. Still, with Palm's new T5 still being based on OS5, not the new OS6... and with OS6 not supporting VGA (which means vendors have to write their own extensions, whereas MS built VGA support into Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition), the X50v certainly is tempting to switch back...
Came across the Two Things website (via Mike Pope)
Glen Whitman:
The Two Things about Dell
1. The company is growing like crazy
2. No one person who works there can tell you why
I'm sure you could come up one for almost any company. Care to comment?
Glen Whitman:
A few years ago, I was chatting with a stranger in a bar. When I told him I was an economist, he said, "Ah. So… what are the Two Things about economics?"Glen has a long list on his site, but I thought I'd add one of my own...
"Huh?" I cleverly replied.
"You know, the Two Things. For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important."
"Oh," I said. "Okay, here are the Two Things about economics. One: Incentives matter. Two: There’s no such thing as a free lunch."
Ever since that evening, I've been playing the Two Things game. Whenever I meet someone who belongs to a different profession (i.e., a profession I haven't played this game with), or who knows something about a subject I'm unfamiliar with, I pose the Two Things question.
The Two Things about Dell
1. The company is growing like crazy
2. No one person who works there can tell you why
I'm sure you could come up one for almost any company. Care to comment?
