tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3136885989689036402024-03-13T21:51:12.410+11:00Baldpom Downunderbaldpomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00879630488454622470noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313688598968903640.post-44486347703947195192011-10-23T14:35:00.000+11:002011-10-23T14:35:58.501+11:00Vodafone , Vodafail more like- 1 store visit and several calls to do something simple.Here's the scenario:<br />
I have a Vodafone Prepaid number - registered in my name - which my Dad was using whenever he visited Australia. <br />
As he now lives here and has 100 points of ID we tried to change the ownership from me to him.<br />
<br />
Knowing that there would be an ID check I thought it best to go into a store and do it face to face.<br />
<br />
#Mistake Number 1 - don't do it on a saturday just after a new iPhone has been launched!<br />
<br />
Vodafone Chadstone - nice staff - they took my name and we were seen within 10 minutes. The store was busy - so I have no gripes about waiting my turn!<br />
<br />
The chap who served us was polite and appeared to understand what we were trying do - change the phone number from being under my name to my dad's name. <br />
<br />
To me this should just be a change to first name, last name, address and date of birth fields - as it's a pre-paid account there is no contract and history is hardly relevant.<br />
Okay - so Vodafone would rather create a new account. - No big deal.<br />
<br />
We provided all the ID and information as requested.<br />
<br />
Our customer service guy dialled up a number on his iPhone and held it to his ear with his shoulder - other than the odd "password", "date of birth" type question the next 20+ minutes were silent. Much typing from him and 3 disappearances into the back of the shop - I assume at least one of these was to do some photocopying.<br />
<br />
The visit ended with him telling us that:<br />
a) the transaction couldn't occur on a weekend<br />
b) the transaction would be processed on Monday<br />
c) it could take up to 48 hours to process<br />
d) we would receive a text on that phone number when it had happened - "sometime on Wednesday"<br />
<br />
We left and thought no more of it until Wednesday.<br />
<br />
<br />
#Mistake Number 2 - not having that exchange and proof what had occurred in writing.<br />
<div><br />
</div><br />
Wednesday - No text.<br />
<br />
Call to Vodafone on Thursday indicated there was no change of ownership - I wonder what that half hour in the store was for then?<br />
<br />
Assurance that it would happen within 24 hours.<br />
<br />
#Mistake Number 3 - not getting customer service to email proof that conversation has occurred and that an action is pending.<br />
<br />
24 hours later still not completed.<br />
<br />
1 more call and by 3pm on Friday - 6 days after we started the process the number is in dad's name.<br />
<br />
Surely the store visit should have been enough? Having to make a follow up call that similarly fails to get the job done is another step too far?<br />
<br />
Well I should have learned from my experiences with the various customer service calls I had to make in July that Vodafone Australia doesn't seem to get much right first time or second.baldpomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00879630488454622470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313688598968903640.post-78358524146375085742011-08-09T16:53:00.002+10:002011-08-09T17:05:59.263+10:00IE8 - Loadrunner 9.52 - Crashes & DEPSo at my new place of work I've just got admin rights to my PC.<br />
<br />
I was desperate to get on with things so I installed LoadRunner 9.5 ->9.51 and finally 9.52.<br />
<br />
I rebooted and ....<br />
<br />
Well that's when it all went south. When I tried to record IE8 (yes here it comes) in VUGEN - I kept getting DEP problems & either no records or crashing.<br />
<br />
I tried disabling DEP for Run DLL as APP - but to no avail.<br />
<br />
FInally after much Googling (where would we be without you Google!) - I discovered Martin Spier's had written up this exact problem. (<a href="http://martinspier.co.uk/loadrunner-ie8">http://martinspier.co.uk/loadrunner-ie8</a>)<br />
<br />
You need to hack the c:\boot.ini to explicitly make <i>/noexecute=alwaysoff</i><br />
<br />
Many thanks to Google and Martin Spier's for this timely fix!<br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
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</span></span></div>baldpomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00879630488454622470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313688598968903640.post-70327294608441338822010-07-28T19:46:00.000+10:002010-07-28T19:46:15.113+10:00Follow up on User Agent and how to test mobile sitesIf you long to see what a site that is optimised for mobile will look like but don't have a mobile device to hand what do you do?<br />
<br />
In yesterday's post I alluded to a couple of tools for switching your user agent so that smart sites that define their behaviour accordingly are fooled. Well it's probably a good idea to give you a some links to these.<br />
<br />
My favourite is a firefox addon called User Agent Switcher by chrispederick - and you can get it at:<br />
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59/<br />
<br />
Safari 5 has an easy built in User agent switcher, to activate you need go into options\preferences - under the advanced tab there is a mysterious check box that says"Show developer menu in menu bar"<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h_ieS9xl0_I/TE_2vfe0xXI/AAAAAAAAABU/nRlLSRWcIho/s1600/Screen+shot+2010-07-28+at+7.21.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h_ieS9xl0_I/TE_2vfe0xXI/AAAAAAAAABU/nRlLSRWcIho/s320/Screen+shot+2010-07-28+at+7.21.14+PM.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Once you've ticked this the menu bar will - as indicated - include a "develop" option.... see this image</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h_ieS9xl0_I/TE_3HseHy7I/AAAAAAAAABc/h3WLico2Hyw/s1600/Screen+shot+2010-07-28+at+7.14.25+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h_ieS9xl0_I/TE_3HseHy7I/AAAAAAAAABc/h3WLico2Hyw/s320/Screen+shot+2010-07-28+at+7.14.25+PM.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I rather like the Safari switcher - and if you size the browser you can get quite a realistic looking replica of an iPhone, and because the menu bars auto-hide it's easy to get good screenshots.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I haven't yet tried one for chrome - but have found one:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/aafciojnlamllgpkpdkbamkfgbofhgcj</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I'll try that tomorrow.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And finally the most pointless one of all is for IE8, which you can get at :</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/other/UAPick_UserAgent_Switcher/</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I say this one is pointless - because IE8 doesn't use webkit so from what I found today you get none of the groovy mobile functionality. No transitions, in fact, for me the site under test was not functional. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But then when you try and get IE to pretend to be an iPhone what do you really expect?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div>baldpomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00879630488454622470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313688598968903640.post-44324019069313413462010-07-27T14:48:00.007+10:002010-07-28T13:56:48.126+10:00Another day - another feature discoveredI've been getting ready to test a website that is being optimised for mobile technologies. To test this I've been using Safari 5, where you can spoof the User-Agent to be iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, and also Firefox with the excellent add-on of User Agent Switcher. <br />
<div><br />
</div><div>Both of these allowed me to see how the site was coming along - but when it came to recording for my load tests I had to think for a moment.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I've always just used Internet Explorer in VUgen, but now the super smarts of the website under test would detect it and... show the main website - not the mobile optimised site. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Not to worry - I installed Safari 5 and changed the settings in the recording options to use Safari instead.... No worries.</div><div><br />
</div><div>I already knew that I could set the User-Agent in the Runtime settings - but I wasn't to pleased with this as it is a little hit or miss as to whether someone checks them all before running.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Not to worry - I extended the use of the web_add_header which I have previously used for testing the website with and without HTTPZip compression.</div><div><br />
</div><div>So just by adding :</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;">web_add_header("User-Agent","Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543 Safari/419.3");</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3333ff;"><br />
</span></div><div>I was able to programmatically test as if I was an iPhone.</div><div><br />
</div><div>This pleased me and allowed me to run my tests , now I just need to figure out how to get Xenu Link Sleuth to pretend to be an iPhone too!</div><div><br />
</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></span></div>baldpomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00879630488454622470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313688598968903640.post-90090814086367686942010-07-15T08:48:00.006+10:002010-07-15T09:09:18.489+10:00I love discovering a new feature in Loadrunner<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h_ieS9xl0_I/TD5Bv6VOEOI/AAAAAAAAABE/QBgLVG_dKBw/s1600/add_attri.png"><br /></a><br />It's not often you get a "wow" moment when you're running performance tests, but yesterday I had one.<div><br /></div><div>I'd been running tests using vugen and Loadrunner controller - but everytime I wanted to shift environments I would recode the script either with a "Hostname" parameter file or by using lr_save_string to store the base url for the environment under test.</div><div><br /></div><div>No big deal really - except I've just built an all singing all dancing Hour in the Life of scenario. A scenario with 20 different scripts all set to run at different rates - comparable to a single servers expected load on our site. </div><div><br /></div><div>Again not particularly earth shattering.</div><div><br /></div><div>However....</div><div><br /></div><div>I have just received 3 new servers with Windows Server 2008 R2 - and</div><div> I wanted to run the same HILO test against this to get a comparative benchmark of the better hardware , running with a newer O/S.</div><div><br /></div><div>Suddenly it dawned on me - I was going to have to change each of the 20 script files everytime I wished to change the target of my test.</div><div><br /></div><div>But then while fishing around (really I was googling) and playing around in the run-time settings on the controller I discovered a mysterio setting - that I've been overlooking for years...</div><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_h_ieS9xl0_I/TD5C1LM-RII/AAAAAAAAABM/1bx9V78YhEA/s320/add_attri.png" style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 236px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493902076746286210" /><div> Additional attributes.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>To use this all I needed to do was to change the lr_save_string command to read the additional attributes and then all would be good. </div><div>For example : lr_save_string(lr_get_attrib_string("ServerName"),"Hostname");</div><div><br /></div><div>Now I realise I still need to update all 20 files with this - but I was going to have to do this anyway. But when I want to change it next time I can make the change in the controller in the run-time settings, rather than having to open each file in turn, make the change and then save it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Okay, I understand it's a little win - but it's just made my day so much easier.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>baldpomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00879630488454622470noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313688598968903640.post-66218866294319784712009-10-07T21:24:00.004+11:002009-10-07T21:41:34.034+11:00Raving about Farmstays!I know it's been a while since my last blog - and that's just not really how they are supposed to work, but I've really had nothing much to say.<br /><br />But now....<br /><br />I need to rave about Farmstays - we have just returned from Kyneton (only an hour from Melbourne now) - the place we stayed at was http://www.laurimarglenfarmstay.com.au/<br /><br />Our hosts were Janet and Eric - that and paddocks full of llamas, deer ( couple of different types) an alpaca or two - some stags. Did I mention cows, pigs, donkeys, goats and chickens too.<br /><br />Every day Farmer Eric let us help out with the feeding and general well being of the animals - Tessa loved collecting the eggs and feeding the alapaca and llamas from her hand.<br /><br />For me the highlight was a pig who we were told was pregnant - next lunchtime she had given birth to 12 piglets and was just giving them their first feed - 1 hour old piglets are just so cute!<br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyQvy28BG_Q51u8o9CfjYD0yPtg3nx_yuQ7ttN_ZDHFtyStVL1Ho1MjJTuAeHt5k4bsVDYl9xtm65h7qZX37g' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br />So in summary...<br /><br />If you've got kids, probably older than 18 months old, or you really like animals maybe you should check out a farmstay.<br /><br />I'm sure Eric and Janet would be pleased to see you.baldpomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00879630488454622470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313688598968903640.post-80302669157520368382009-01-15T17:40:00.000+11:002009-01-15T17:45:10.130+11:00Another day almost done.<br /><br />Going out to my best mates place for dinner tonight.<br /><br />Hoping our kids will behave after their first day in creche.<br /><br /><br />baldpomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00879630488454622470noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-313688598968903640.post-27015570343767697662009-01-15T10:54:00.000+11:002009-01-15T10:55:44.063+11:00First PostOh it's so exciting!<br /><br />I'm a n00b at this blogging stuff.<br /><br />Still can't work out why anyone would care about what I say......baldpomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00879630488454622470noreply@blogger.com1