Google to Bid 700 Mhz Spectrum

Release: Google Will Apply to Participate in FCC Spectrum Auction

Yay! Hope the new kid wins the bid. The playing fields is crowded by gangs of bullies.

Rainy Friday

Dashboard-NGS EOP
Conduct a small Dashboard-NGS EOP load test: sending 100 messages as quick as possible until the messages are queued and measure the time for the system to process all 102 packets and create the accompanying 385 packets.

Determined that it takes 6 seconds to process 1 message. Roughly the same to create the corresponding 385 packet.

eDoc SS combination search
Researching into result not found problem, looking at the log: the reason behind not finding the result POST ST DIRECTION equals to NE, it should be W. Implement screen capture after picklist action to see if the pick list action is being executed properly.

Also:

1. Researching into exiting WR when encountering context sensitive error.
2. IE Certificate error screen keeps poping up and WR doesn't handle it consistently, need to find a way to disable the sucker.

Chat Noir

From boing2: Chat Noir


Beware ... It is highly addictive.

Tires For Highlander

245/55P19
2007-11-30,Sears @ South Coast, Bridgestone, 180$

Jammed at 5 Freeway

This is the worst sigalert I have experienced in LA. Since it is raining in the morning and it hasn't been raining for a month, the roads are extremely slick. KPCC says: 'rash of accidents' happens. On I-5 south, around 3rd St exit in Santa Ana, an 18 wheelers and 4 cars tangled. It made such a mess, CHP has to close all of the lanes.

The are forced to open the HOV lane 1 hour later, to let people pass since the firemen haven't been able to retrieve a man stuck under the flatbed.

I missed the opening from I-5 to Main St exit when I came to full stop, and I have to slog for 2 miles in 1 hour (imagine that 2 mph @ 6 AM) to exit at the next ramp.

There goes my day, instead of 1 hour commute, I have to do it in 2.5 hours.

Links:
LaTimes.com
OCRegister.com

We are staying in Simi Valley tonight

Amazon Mechanical Turk for QA?

Researching into Amazon Mechanical Turk for QA purposes. I am getting tired of automated testing effort.

Something Is Really Wrong With eDoc Script

I parsed some log files this morning and sensed something is really wrong with the eDoc SS script execution, but there no time to inspect the execution, analysis of the EOP load test needs to be conducted too.

Give Me The Last X Records Ordered by These Criteria

While writing a script to analyze application log, written into Oracle database, I found that it is fairly hard to get the last X records using rownum after the records are ordered based on certain criteria.

Trupti Rajparia says:

[...] one should be careful when using the Order By clause along with Rownum. When Order By is used with Rownum to restrict query results, it works only if Ordered By is the primary key of the table.

Since I am not a great fan of PL/SQL (clunky POS), I decided to use Perl instead to slice and dice the matching criteria.

1. Get the INDEXED_CRITERIA from Oracle

SELECT
   INDEXED_CRITERIA
FROM logTable
WHERE
   filter criteria
ORDER BY
   INDEXED_CRITERIA


2. Get the last X INDEXED_CRITERIA (easily processed by Perl with three standard functions)
   

push each INDEXED_CRITERIA into array tempA
pop the last X records from array tempA into array tempB.
produce CRITERIA_TEXT by joining tempB with ',' as separator


3. Get the data from Oracle
   

SELECT
   REQUIRED_FIELDS
FROM logTable
WHERE
   CRITERIA_TEXT are met
ORDER BY
   INDEXED_CRITERIA


4. Process the data returned.

The Fixed Phone Has Died, Long Life Cell Phone

From The Economist: although the publisher hasn't proclaimed the death of fixed phone, I believe we know where the trends are going.

Slogging Along

Monday morning: Analyze and submit the test result of DEX Broker load test for November 2007 MS security patch.

Starter Search Combination test is launched at the end of Tuesday. After updating the downloadLogFile.pl script. Apparently the log filename renaming scheme when rolling for Maia framework is starterSearch1.log, starterSearch2.log, etc, with base file name of starterSearch0.log. This is an exception from the normal behavior of base file name X with rolling name of X.1, X.2 ...

Wednesday: Time to parse the log ... Write little script to pull logging information from the database. Need this to in order to plot the time needed between 102 and 385 packet creation.

N810: The GPS System May Not Be So Hot - Afterall

Freeman fished this article out from Arstechnica titled: Nokia N810: unboxing and first impressions.

Bad news:

• Free mapping software is disappointingly limited.
• Commercial mapping software (WayFinder) offers 36 months license. And it will be available this December
• Skype is inoperable.
• No FM radio
• No swiveling camera (for taking picture and video conference)

Unknown:

• GPS signal quality
• Power consumption with mapping software running.
  

The review of N800 cobbled GPS system itself is not very flattering. Now, should I march on with N810 or wait for the next generation of N800 with WiMax and GPS? I guess it depends on how expensive the WayFinder mapping software.

Verizon Wireless To Introduce ‘Any Apps, Any Device’ Option For Customers In 2008

Release: Verizon Wireless To Introduce ‘Any Apps, Any Device’ Option For Customers In 2008

What a baloney: any device that talks CDMA for sure. This only a ploy to get into the 700 Mhz game.

Preliminary EOP Load Test

Add finishing touch to the Dashboard-NGS project:

1. Add several bad packets (e.g.: invalid date, office code, transaction type)
2. Load test
3. Finding out why not all of the bad packets are not being logged to the database: to my horror, I found out that the dev inserts date and time into 2 separate DATE fields. The date information is inserted to one DATE field and the time portion into another one. It is not the inefficiency that irks me but the time portion is filled with mixture of 1970-1-1, 1900-1-1 or whatever as the date of the time. Sloppy code.

We are waiting for the final build for now.

BB8830?

It is a hassle to install software to simulate data modem on BB 7520 so I am looking into getting a new gear. Debbie informed me that upgrading to BB 8830 with tethered data costs USD 199.00 with no additional monthly payments. I am thinking hard now ....

Castaway

1250 E Harvard Rd
Burbank, CA 91501
Tel: (818) 848-6691
http://www.castawayrestaurant.com

Nice view at the terrace, weekend brunch ends at 3:00 PM, so it is great to lounge and eat liner instead of brunch.

I only took the side view to the hills, instead of the breathtaking view of Burbank/Hollywood since the sun was in that direction.

Black Friday

Nothing much for me, bought a belt buckle since the old one was ripped apart.

Hunting for Nokia 810 at big box stores by South Coast Plaza to no avail.
Thinking about getting MacBook but it doesn't sync with Nokia 6233 or Blackberry 7520.
Participate in Engadget Black Friday Fest and get nothing.

Bummer. Better have better plan and less expectation next year.

On the other hand, Ida was having too much fun ...

Mì La Cay

I couldn't find the address using Google, need to go back and get it.
Cross street: Westminster and Brookhurst, Garden Grove, CA

Place is a bit ghetto but the food is great. The menu is simple: on the left, egg noodles and the various sides, on the right white flat noodles with the same sides. Middle section is reserved for the non-fanatics.

I guess I am a commie since I love the egg noodles with duckling or bbq duck.

Brodard

9892 Westminster Avenue
Garden Grove, CA 92844
Tel: (714) 530-1744
http://www.brodard.net

Open:
Sunday - Monday 8:00 AM - 9:00 PM
Wednesday - Saturday 8:00 AM - 9:00 PM
Closed:
Tuesday

Get this info from Ida, we visited it for a quick break in Little Saigon. Location is tricky: the shop is located at the back of the mall. Best: spring rolls and vermicelli.

Thanks Giving Party at Simi Valley

We were celebrating Thanksgiving in Simi Valley.

Menu:
Turkey set for 6-8.
Costume made sponge cakes.
Hess Cabernet Sauvignon Select 2003.
I brought beef (couple of rib eyes and NY strips) and grilled them at Stanley's.

It was a lot of fun.

EOP Packets Generator

I don't accomplish much this week since I only work for 2 days...

On the Dashboard-NGS project:

1. Spend these two working days creating script to generate EOP packets for load test purposes.
2. Add SQL verification after script is terminated.

On another news: DEX Broker load test for November 2007 MS security patch is executed and the results are secured.

Porto's Bakery

315 N Brand Blvd
Glendale, CA 91203
Tel: (818) 956-5996
http://www.portosbakery.com

I drove for 2 hours from Santa Ana to Hollywood to pick up Ida and visited the bakery.

For some odd reasons I always get lost when I am trying to locate the shop. Remember: most parking spaces are located at behind the store at Orange street. Orange is located between Brand and Central. You have gone too far if you cross California or Wilson (assumed traveling south).

Love the cheese rolls, anything that has guava jam in it (refugi is one of them), and the meat pies.

Driving To LA From San Jose

Started at 1:40PM, armed with a couple of bottles of water, grapes, buns and shrimp balls. Arrived in LA around 6-ish.

Perl 5.10 for People Who Aren't Totally Insane

Perl 5.10 for People Who Aren't Totally Insane

From: rjbs, 1 month ago

| View | Upload your own

All the hype about perl 5.10 can sound a little intimidating. User-level pragmata! Overloadable smartmatching operator! Thread-safe refkey hashes! For Pete's sake, have you heard about lexically scoped pluggable regexp engines?

It's enough to make you think that 5.10's changes are just for the hard-core perl hackers, but it couldn't be further from the truth! The new version of Perl is full of changes that are easy to use and pack lots of useful benefits for doing plain old every day Perl programming.

We'll look at the new features, small and large, and see why you, too, will love 5.10.


SlideShare Link

BIX

56 Gold St
San Francisco, CA 94133
Tel: (415) 433-6300
http://www.bixrestaurant.com

Location: tricky (Gold is an alley not a street).
Beer selection: little.
Wine: wide on the bottles, skimpy on the glasses.
Bar: enjoy your company and the mural.
Ambiance: alright.
Appetizer: lamburger - interesting.
Main course: so-so.
The crew: amazing!

Hiking in San Jose

Went hiking with Ida and friends at The Hostel Trail.

Links:
Hidden Villa
Hostel information

Driving To San Jose

Started driving @ 3:00PM.

While driving to San Jose, I got an email that Matt finally landed on a job @ Nokia San Francisco.

Arrived at San Jose @ 9:20PM. Tired ...

What Did I Do This Week?

Did:

1. Create several modules for eDoc StarterSearch automation.
2. Research EOP packets and testing for Dashboard origination.
3. Troubleshooting LR scripts for Dashboard
4. Fixing machines in the lab
   

Accomplished: nothing. I need to get something done and back to developing the XML test file generator from XSD.

Racial Poll By Pew and NPR

Yesterday, I listened to the result of the poll conducted by The Pew Research Center and NPR at KPCC, it is an interesting report since the title itself is pretty striking.

Finally, Cosby is catching on.

Links:
Blacks See Growing Values Gap Between Poor and Middle Class
Poll: African-Americans Pessimistic About Black Progress

Playing Perl Golf

To keep my mind off (extremely miffed), I played perl golf ...

Good boy version (889 chars):

use strict;
use Win32::TieRegistry;
my $Machine = 'localhost'; # make sure the RemoteRegistry services is up
                          # and the script is executed with user within
                          # administrator group.
my $Register = 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows'.
              '/CurrentVersion/Uninstall';
$Register = "//$Machine/$Register";

$Registry->Delimiter("/");
my $remoteKey = $Registry->{$Register};
if (defined $remoteKey) {
 foreach my $appKey (  $remoteKey->SubKeyNames  ) {
   my $DisplayName = $Registry->{"$Register/$appKey/DisplayName"};
   my $UninstallString = $Registry->{"$Register/$appKey/UninstallString"};
   if (defined $UninstallString && defined $DisplayName) {
     $app{$DisplayName} = $UninstallString;
   }
 }
}
open LOG, ">$0.txt";
foreach my $appName (sort keys %app) {
 print LOG "$appName, $app{$appName}\n";
}
close LOG;

Perl golf version (388 chars):

use Win32::TieRegistry;
$R = '//local/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft'.
    '/Windows/CurrentVersion/Uninstall';
$Registry->Delimiter("/");
my %app = map {
 $Registry->{"$R/$_/DisplayName"} => $Registry->{"$R/$_/UninstallString"}
} $Registry->{$R}->SubKeyNames;
open LOG, ">$0.txt";
map { print LOG "$_, $app{$_}\n" if defined $_ && $app{$_} } sort keys %app;
close LOG;

Automated Deployment, Part I: Uninstall The Olde Crap

To harvest the command line to uninstall an application, launch the regedit application and browse the registry tree to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall, each key afterwards is a application key, a string of characters that means nothing if it is coded by baboon(s). The crucial items are these value name of the application key and it's content:

1. DisplayName: the name of the application
   
2. UninstallString: the command line to uninstall the application.

To get all of the useful information using perl:

use strict;
use Win32::TieRegistry;
my $machine = 'localhost'; # make sure the RemoteRegistry services is up
                           # and the script is executed with user within 
                           # administrator group.
my $register = 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows'.
               '/CurrentVersion/Uninstall';
$register = "//$machine/$register";

$Registry->Delimiter("/");
my $remoteKey = $Registry->{$Register};
if (defined $remoteKey) {
  foreach my $appKey (  $remoteKey->SubKeyNames  ) {
    my $DisplayName = $Registry->{"$Register/$appKey/DisplayName"};
    my $UninstallString = $Registry->{"$Register/$appKey/UninstallString"};
    if (defined $UninstallString && defined $DisplayName) {
      $app{$DisplayName} = $UninstallString;
    }
  }
}
open LOG, ">$0.txt";
foreach my $appName (sort keys %app) {
  print LOG "$appName, $app{$appName}\n";
}
close LOG;

Usually, there are two kinds of command line, the first one is an executable binary and customized MSI script (the command line starts with msiexec.exe). If you happen to encounter the later one, you are in luck, if not, pray that the baboon put in the quiet mode in the binary.

If the uninstallation string uses msiexec.exe, just put in /quiet at the back of the string to launch quiet installation.

Half and Half

Half fixing LR scripts, half fixing/writing modules for automation. Who says live couldn't be interesting?

Moving My Junks Back, Part Deux

It was cold, drizzling and grey. What a great day to move in the furniture from the Relo Cube into the house. Also, most of my stuff is back and crammed in Arcadia. I need to start sorting out the real junks from goods.

Murakami Exhibition @ MOMA

Lisa had to work in the morning, so we started late and missed the
shabu2 line. Instead, we went to the sushi house next door and
visited the Murakami exhibition @ MOCA.

Don't be fooled by the happy colors, the message could be grim. The picture above, for example, is titled: Ton Ton Ba Puking.

Full coverage here

LOL

"All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out." - I.F. Stone

Reason #1 To Get SUV

One of the reasons why I buy SUV. Two more trips to go.

Unpack The Container

Surprisingly, the delivery truck shows up only 30 minutes late. The amazing thing is the fork lift that they use to move the container. It is small, yet it packs a lot of pneumatic power.

The orange straps work as expected, they keep everything from falling on me when the container is re-opened. Everything is intact, although some items have bruises.

Sleepy Day

Last night I went out with Chris, Carlon and Ruth (from Jacksonville) and people from the Santa Ana office. The dinner and conversation were good, Carlon paid for everyone.

Dan suggested me to work from home, since I am going to waste of a lot of time driving from my place to Santa Ana and up to Simi Valley to pick up my junks. Thank god that I could stay at home today, since I wasn't feeling very well from staying up all night and the gloomy, cold weather didn't help either.

I miss the coffee machine in the office... yawn... and the QA BRIO server feels that way too. Greg has to bounce the daemon to make it working again.

Deploying AV

Spend a couple of days deploying AV and the accompanying electronic policy enforcer. This experience serves as back up plan if the SMS plan doesn't pan out.

GPhone a.k.a Android

Today's big disappointments:

1. No hardware, HTC is on board but not Nokia. Sigh....
   
2. No carriers, FCC still pockets the 700Mhz until next year.
   
3. Only software (just like my prediction).
   

Well, I should wait for OpenMoko.

Decaying Code

I was presented with several problems due to software upgrade:

1. The SharePoint file upload feature using shared folder is not working anymore, and I need to upload lots of small files, the quantity kills me. Currently, uploading through explorer view in IE is not reliable.
   
2. On DashBoard project, the LoadRunner script for Contact Manager function is broken due to fixes.

Who says that code couldn't decay? Well, time to update the code.

Little Tokyo

We started our weekly pilgrimage to Little Tokyo again this morning with a little hitch: the traffic to City Hall is choked by city employees. Dunno why, but it caused major heart burns and Lisa provided detour using 3rd st. It is nice to have a living GPS system.

We went through a tunnel underneath an apartment complex using the 3rd. Interesting: I might have to come back and take some pictures.

Total wait time for shabu2 is .... approx 1.5 hour.

China's Missile Range

Very interesting graph from The Economist: China's missile range. It was presented in several The Economist articles, one of which: The long march to be a superpower.

I Thought I Only Have To Turn In EPK Today

The day started with me testing Wei's order placement script using short form, it worked great but Wei didn't input all of the data into all of available fields, causing me to second guess there might be object(s) that trigger HTTPGet somewhere. Wei did the full field recording but I didn't have time to take a look at it. Will do that once everything is delivered.

After that, for the rest of the day, I was working on correlating script (create contact) from Latisha, I didn't want to try to find out where her problem with the script lies, instead, I decided to do it again using my method. I have already recognized this problem since I have been in her shoes before. I guess it takes one to two weeks for someone to be trained to correlate LR script, and a couple of months to understand the underlying intricacies of the tool.

I guess I pay for the fact that my team is under-trained, only two people in my team (not counting the manager) know how to properly record, correlate and script LR thus we are a bit behind with the Dashboard project. My bread and butter is writing Perl/WR, it was 2 years ago I created LR script properly. The others are mainly writing in Java for FT, hardly touch LR at all.

It doesn't matter, we delivered 4 out 5. I believe I could make it by testing the fifth script this Sunday.

Price and Market Penetration of Consumer Electronics Over The Past 50 Years

From Wired magazine: Price and market penetration of consumer electronics over the past 50 years.

Check out the steep drop for DVD player.

Creating LR Scripts for Dashboard Project

Since I am going to be working solely on one project this week, I decided to lump everything in one entry instead.

Tuesday: Writing C function for parsing JSON-esque response. Since LR supports C (and other imitation of languages), I have to work with the limitation of the library. I am beginning to miss Perl's RegEx/split function.

Wednesday: Login/Logout, and OrderSearch(by Address or Order Number) scripts are done. Negative testing the scripts against available data and fixes all discrepancies found. Get feed back from Craig and implement them.
Determining work flow for updating Escrow tasks, found out that document uploading function is not working.

Thursday: Sorting out problems encountered by the teams. Record, parameterized and merge updating Escrow tasks script to the main script. Consolidates all functions that drive open order (long form) work flow into one script for simplicity. Create proper work flow from creating order, find the order within a timeout loop (take some time for the SoftPro server to process and assign order number), and update escrow tasks. 3 out of 5 scripts are done. I have overcome my quota but the target is not met.

BlackBerry Drives Me Nuts This Week

For weird reason, BlackBerry doesn't display reconciliation in the mail menu this week. The problem is solved after upgrading BlackBerry Desktop to 4.2SP2.