WinTask - CleanString$

'
' CleanString$ - replace all occurences of < and > in a string,
'                with < Lower> and < Greater> respectively
'                so it can be safely used with SendKeys()
'
' Author - Joe Strazzere
'

 

Function CleanString$(StringIn$)
    StringIn$=Replace$(StringIn$,"<","{{lt}}")
    StringIn$=Replace$(StringIn$,">","< Greater>")
    StringIn$=Replace$(StringIn$,"{{lt}}","< Lower>")
    CleanString$ = StringIn$
EndFunction

 

'
' For example
'
KeyString$="a < b and b > c"

 

UseWindow("NOTEPAD.EXE|Edit|Untitled - Notepad|1",1)
    SendKeys(CleanString$(KeyString$))

Perhaps They Should Have Tested More - Starbucks

For a couple of days in May, coffee giant Starbucks ended up double charging about 1 million of their U.S. and Canadian customers.

• More than 1 million transactions at 7,000 Starbucks locations on May 22 and May 23 were double billed
• The one-million Starbuck transactions involved both credit and debit cards
• The POS charges—and the receipts given to customers—were perfectly in order. The problems kicked in hours later, in the settlement processing area
• Starbucks has declined to say how the glitch happened
• Starbucks has declined to say how they plan to prevent it from happening again
• Starbucks says they've had some customers call whose accounts were not fixed
• Any customers with questions should contact the company's customer relations hotline at 1-800-23-LATTE.

Starbucks spokeswoman Trina Smith didn't seem to think the double charges were a big deal, just a minor confusion:

"We sincerely apologize to customers who were confused,". But, she adds, in a world of digital transactions, "Consumers are accustomed to these kinds of things."

Others disagree, and think the Starbucks image may have been tarnished by the error:

Starbucks patrons pay more not just for a better product, but for a perception that it treats consumers better, says Bradford Hudson, assistant marketing professor at Boston University. "You expect a company like Starbucks to do everything flawlessly, or to do something extra special to recover." He says it could have given a free drink to all affected.

Perhaps they should have tested more.

Just wondering - On the Starbucks Annual Report, will this screwup be categorized as a "Short" bug?  A "Tall" or "Grande" bug?  Or is it actually a "Venti" bug?

See also:

http://www.truveo.com/starbucks-glitch-sends-up-red-flag/id/3090346023
http://www.11alive.com/money/consumer/story.aspx?storyid=131231&catid=24
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Starbucks-Memorial-Day-apf-15494050.html?.v=6
http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/payment-systems/starbucks-confirms-one-million-transactions-double-charged/
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2009-06-09-starbucks-doublebills-accidentally_N.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31190577/

Project Completion Lunch and Awards

After many months of hard work, we recently completed a big project.

We released a new version of our system with support for 529 Plans (tax-advantaged college savings plans).

And we were able to time it so that our 529 release occurred on 5/29! (Ok, so while we started releasing the 529 code on 5/29, it took so long that we actually finished on 5/29 at around 54 o'clock - it was still quite a nice accomplishment.)

Recently, we have started celebrating some major releases by taking the project team out to lunch and handing out awards. They are meant to be humorous, and are usually accompanied by a bit of ceremony and a little story about why that particular award was chosen.

For this release, the awards were selected by the VP of Development. She did a great job.

There were some very funny awards. The graphics designer got a mini Etch-A-Sketch. The lead developer got a toy Iron Man. I was the sole QAer on the project. When it came my turn, I was presented with an "Extreme Bug Vacuum". Very nice!

I like this new tradition.