Is There A Problem Here?

Facebook down

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 05:31:00 +0000

There were reports of a Facebook outage yesterday, May 31st. However, I seem to have encountered another outage this morning. Facebook was down for me this morning, June 1st, for at least a half hour.

Was it down for you?

“Let me tell you the difference between Facebook and everyone else,

we don’t crash EVER!”

– an actor reciting a script,

pretending to be Mark Zuckerberg,

in the movie The Social Network

Bing, why you so silly?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Wed, 30 May 2012 18:57:00 +0000

This morning, Bing began returning some odd search results. So, I then tried searching for some things for which I had some expectations for results.

How about HP Quality Center? Bing certainly has something about Quality Center. In fact, it was my looking for licensing information that started my questioning of Bing's results. Not what I expected.

So, I continued my testing with "testing". Certainly Bing can direct me to some web pages about testing.

Kiwi mold removal.

Bigfoot.

American Society for Nondestructive Testing.

Obama.

Moolya Software Testing!

While I'm sure my friends at Moolya would be pleased to be on the first page of search results for "testing", something doesn't seem right with these results.

Perhaps I need to be more specific about what kind of testing I seek. After all, testing is a very broad topic.

I try to narrow it down with "agile testing".

Hmm... Perhaps the folks at Microsoft aren't familiar with agile testing.

And, I'm certainly not interested in going to Alaska for some agile uterus or prostate testing.

Now, what's something else for which I've previously seen results? Oh, yeah; the Lewis and Clark expedition. Perhaps Bing can help me explore the web for information about these explorers.

Hmm... Not what I expected. And, I don't think I can find them on MyLife.

Given that Bing doesn't seem to know much about testing or exploration, I wonder if they know anything about their founders. So, I search for "microsoft founder". Bing says "No results found for microsoft founder." However, in spite of having no results, it does see fit to tell me that Bill Gates and Paul Allen are the founders of Microsoft.

I expected a few more links when asking Bing about its founders.

So, if Bing has so little information about its founders, I wonder what it knows about me.

It seems to have found my Facebook profile; and apparently, I am on sale at Yahoo! Shopping: "Amazing Deals on Ben Simo".

So, what might Bing know about? Let's try something a bit less intellectual.

Sorry, "No results found for fart."

Perhaps, I should try some related searches. Bing suggests "Loud Farts", or "Listen to Farts", or "Do Lizards Fart". I always wanted to know if lizards fart, but I think I'll first click the link to see Regis Philbin fart. That's the high quality web content I seek when I use Bing.

These results are making me think I must be the victim of a cruel joke.

So, while I'm thinking of jokes and farts, I put them together.

Again, Bing disappoints. It has no results for fart jokes. Instead, Bing trys to show me fat jokes. It doesn't even have any of those; unless the Raspberry Ketone Diet is a fat joke.

Every darn time...

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Mon, 21 May 2012 04:08:00 +0000

Perhaps I'm just weird, but I am of the opinion that a failed database connection should not cause Excel to crash and lose my data.

Don't delete the first

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Sat, 19 May 2012 20:26:00 +0000

If you have multiple phone number or IM accounts in your Monster.com profile, you may delete old/unwanted items; but you may not delete the first.

BTW, I'm looking for new work.

Deleting Toy Story 2

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Sat, 19 May 2012 03:41:00 +0000

You don't know if your data is really backed up if you don't try to restore it. Test your backups.

Sorry, no jobs for you

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Sat, 19 May 2012 02:46:00 +0000

CareerBuilder.com sends me periodic emails listing jobs that its recommendation engine determines to be a match to information in my resume.

When I click the "See All Jobs" link at the top right of the list in the email, the CareerBuilder site opens in my browser. However, it says "You have no matches." and "Sorry, we couldn't find any jobs to recommend at this time. Please try again later."

Every time. Every email links me nothing.

While the presence of a software bug doesn't tell us whether or not the software's maker is aware of the problem, perhaps CareerBuilder.com could use some help in testing their site. Perhaps they could make use of my services. I am available.

Insufficient Funds

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:55:00 +0000

A friend received the following insufficient funds notice from her bank. Is there a problem here?

The bank returned her rent check due to insufficient funds when there was sufficient money in the account to cover the check. The notice from the bank also indicates that there were sufficient funds in the account.

If bank software can't do simple math, we're in big trouble.

Authorize the unknown

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:09:00 +0000

Trillian prompts me to authorize or deny the unknown. Trillian offers no option to see the requester's profile. Trillian offers no option to chat with the requester in order to find out who they are. Trillian does not display the requester's avatar image. Trillian does not even show the instant messaging service from which the request comes.

Why prompt software users with a decision if you are not going to provide the information necessary to make an informed decision?

Maximum Sun

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Sat, 05 May 2012 04:12:00 +0000

I seem to have found a limit in the number of sun I can collect in Plants versus Zombies. Clicking on suns does not increase the count, but healing walnuts decreases the count.

Once I replaced the walnuts and sunflowers with frozen watermelons, the game turned into a near perpetual motion machine -- killing zombies as fast as the game added them. I let it run for about an hour. ;)

Is there a problem here? Probably not. Anyone playing this Seeing Stars game to win would have added the last star long ago; but as a tester, I wanted to see what would happen. ;)

What's happening, Facebook?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Perhaps it is just me. The Facebook header bar is behaving just like Twitter's header bar: they scroll down with the page.

What's happening, Twitter?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:46:00 +0000

The further I scroll down a Twitter page, the further the header bar drops down the screen.

Word did not save the document.

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:33:00 +0000

A couple days ago, it was Excel that would not save documents. Today it is Word. Microsoft Word's error message identifies the name of the file that it failed to save, but still provides nothing useful in correcting the problem.

Document not saved.

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:41:00 +0000

I have an Excel document that I cannot save. Every time I try to save, Excel displays the above dialog stating "Document not saved." While I'm glad to be informed that the unsaved document was not saved, I'd prefer to be given ~~more~~ any information about the cause and required remedy.

The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:53:00 +0000

Dear TortoiseSVN,

A single file in a Subversion repostitory that does not have a valid Windows filename should not abort updating of all the other files.

kthxbai.

Ben

Can we make troubleshooting any more difficult?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:12:00 +0000

Please tell me, Excel: Did you fail to connect to the server or were my access credentials denied?

Blockbuster is careless with customer credit card info

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:46:00 +0000

It appears that the Blockbuster Total Access "Rent It, Like, Keep It" payment processing system does not encrypt credit card information submitted by customers.

After seeing "http", and not "https", momentarily flash on my screen while making a purchase from my phone's web browser, I confirmed this from a computer.

As can be seen below, the purchase form is loaded using insecure HTTP instead of encrypted HTTPS.

Firebug shows that pressing the "Submit Purchase" button sends a request over HTTP (not secure) that contains all the information I entered into the form -- including the credit card number.

And, just to be sure there wasn't something encrypting the data that I wasn't seeing, I tried again through a proxy server. The proxy server recorded the following HTTP request body passing though it.

I can't help but wonder what leads to a national company being so careless with their customer's personal information.

Note: Other purchase forms/pages on the Blockbuster web site appear to use SSL over HTTPS to encrypt financial transactions.

Insert disc to quit

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:53:00 +0000

I press the Quit button. I get an error telling me the wrong disc is in the drive. Why should I need a disc in the drive to quit?

Choose less data

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 22:23:00 +0000

But, I only tried to format 2 columns that contain a total of 4 cells with data.

The Sequel Is Rarely As Good As The Original

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:52:00 +0000

When even CTRL+ALT+DELETE fails...

noreply@blogger.com (IsThereAProblemHere.com) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:53:00 +0000

... Windows must be in a really bad state.

Either button?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 04:43:00 +0000

The button? There are two buttons. One implies authorizing payment; the other does not. The text says clicking "the button" authorizes payment.

Consistency people. Consistency. Descriptive text should match the GUI controls. Why is this so difficult for so many GUI developers?

Skype mobile does not currently work on WiFi

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:46:00 +0000

I've had my Android phone configured to use WiFi when I am at home and other WiFi-equipped places I frequent. This reduces my wireless phone data usage and usually gives me faster data transfer.

However, I've just discovered that doing so stops Skype. Enabling WiFi on my phone disconnects Skype. There is no warning about this when I disconnect. In fact, I the "Ongoing" status information continues to display "Skype mobile: Signed in". The warning comes when I manually open the Skype application that is supposedly already actively connected and running.

For what technical reason should my using WiFi instead of Verizon Wireless' network to access the Internet disable Skype?

Prior to the Verizon Wireless Skype Mobile partnership deal, I had a Skype Mobile application that worked well regardless of how I connected my phone to the Internet. Now users have the choice of using the slow expensive Verizon Wireless data connection or having no Skype on their phone while at home. They can't have both.

Incorrect Format

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:37:00 +0000

Why should users be forced to correct and resubmit a form because they didn't properly format an otherwise valid phone number?

We have the technology. I can think of no good reason for a company with net profits of over a billion dollars per month to not create software that doesn't force users into entering contact phone numbers in the format required by a back-end software system.

And why did they ask me for my phone number? They have my phone number. I've been a customer for over 20 years. They should know how to contact me.

Y U NO STOP TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:40:00 +0000

My son locked his session on the shared family computer and left it blaring annoying music. I tried to kill his Windows session to make the noise stop.

Windows 7 seems to have been coded to not allow administrators to logout non-administrators who leave sessions running on the computer. This, my dear Microsoft, is not acceptable.

Targeted Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Simo) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:53:00 +0000

I'm not sure my 2-year old daughter is their target audience - Imgur