Gregs Japanese Auto

I had heard a lot about Gregs service center at my work place. My wife also mentioned the same from her friends. We always went to a nearby Car Dealer for our car service. This time around, we thought of giving a shot at another service center. Now that we had a new data plan on our phones, we did a look up on internet and found the number. Called them up. Made an appointment immediately for the following day. The people were friendly on phone. I went there the next day, an individual came up and noted all the details, asked me to wait at the lounge. the possible wait time was about 30mins. He came back and explained the issue that I went there for. He drew a picture and explained how the engined and the tensioner belt worked etc etc. I had to make an another appointment to get it fixed for some reason.

 Went there the other day with my wife and my kid. I asked them if they had a shuttle service to drop us off to a nearby mall. They do have a courtesy shuttle, and the driver (I forgot to take the name) was very courtious and kept us engaged with talk while driving to the mall. he came back again in couple of hours to bring us back to the service center.

Things were done in promised time and explained again all the things they had perfomed on my car.

Here is the store I visited:

425-644-2798: Phone
206-621-9560: Fax 
Hours 8am-6pm 
Email: Bellevue@gregs.com
Address
13421 N.E. 20th
Bellevue, WA 98005
 
for now, it was great over all

what does “I will miss you all…” mean?

I often see emails or hear from people departing the group or company – “I will miss you all”.

What exactly does this mean?

• really really sad that i need to leave due to unavoidable circumstances?
• just for the sake of saying something before I leave from here
• an exaggeration
• I am happy that I am heading out for better things in life that’s waiting out there for me
• thank god i am outta here

It is ok for the 1st bullet. however, in my mind it is ok to say that the stop has come to drop off and catch another train in this journey. Everyone has their on goals and destinations to reach. One train does not everybody to where they want to go. People do make their own choices (most times) and having chosen one, why even feel bad about missing the past?

Or i think the phrase “I will miss you all …” is not complete – it can possibly be completed as “… I will come back if I do miss you all so much”

Communication – Words, sometimes embarrassing

most part of the communication in human being is with words. It is interesting, most times, the words so fluently with perfect grammar and the thoughts flow so free like water, however, on some days, it so happens that I tend to search for even simple words during the conversation. I feel so embarrassed that I struggle to get the words, shuffle subjects and objects in my phrases pretty much all day long. After a meeting, I get back to my desk and recollect the conversation and guess what – I just laugh at myself on what I just did.

attempting to post via mobile phone

trying to post via mobile phone. Interesting, title text doesn’t appear wide enough to type in. Content area seems to be better to type in pqwwqq text. i am usung MotoQ on att service. Any tips posting via mobile phone ?

Second Place is the first loser…

… was the signature quote I noticed in one of the emails today. Don’t you think it is confusing in life as to what is Winning and help each other meet the finish line – or help each other win. I am sure you must have heard these statements with regards to win-win strategy. But what do we usually see in life? What is that we were always taught at schools and homes?  We still get the moral stories read by parents, teachers, etc with various examples of how to help others also to win. Etc. one classic recent example is “Cars” movie where LighteningMcQueen would draw from the finish line when he was just about to cross it and push the one struggling to reach the finish line to reach it and still be applauded for that.  However, when it comes to self, don’t you think it is always about Winning. If a child didn’t win a game at school, it is not treated as same. Parents and teachers always taught us to win the race in any games (be an athletic or cricket or baseball or else). Ending a game with a tie-breaker is still not considered as a win.

So,  

a.       why we parents and teachers complicate this to the children?

b.      Why do we conflict our messages to the children?  

Quote worth reading… you become what you think…

I noticed this in one of the emails I received today. Reading this comments, I recalled the words from one of the books by Brian Tracy about this. I have a book “Eat that Frog” in queue to be read in next couple of months. I believe this quote was from his book, Goal Setting.  

You become what you think about most of the time. It is not what happens to you but how you think about what happens to you that determines how you feel and react. It is not the world outside of you that dictates your circumstances or conditions. It is the world inside you that creates the conditions of your life.

Enough Time and Buddy Testing for a quality output

Give time to your team to be creative and teams do the miracles. Well, it depends – you may say. This was my recent experience and I have experienced a few times before in our application development processes. Several years ago, when we first implemented the buddy testing for couple of applications, teams followed these steps

a.       Both dev and test get-together to discuss about the approach

b.      Dev team wrote the code while test team wrote the various scenarios to test a piece of application

c.       Dev completed the code with a unit testing as much as possible (no, it was not a TDD back then)

d.      Test team did a buddy testing on that piece of code

e.      Code integrated later on and released to the functional testing.

f.        Functional test team did a thorough testing on a new environment à resulting in no defects found in this environment .

5 key positive things happened during this course:

1.       Dev and test collaboration increased

2.       Dev and test teams were on the same page with respect to requirements

3.       Most defects were found as part of the buddy testing and the feedback was passed on to the dev team right then. This resulted in quality code released to the functional test, and saving the cycle time during the functional testing phase.

4.       Since dev folks been open as part of this collaboration, and increased the thought process and increased the programming quality over time.

5.       Built a Trust relationship between dev and test teams à resulting in more open and honest in accepting criticisms and better feedback comments.

Apparently, we had our team members going through similar exercises lately, and seeing better results in building the quality code. I could tell, there was more sense of satisfaction between the teams for getting things done in right way than keeping eye on the bug counts and keeping the defects slip through different functional phases.

Guidelines for Buddy Testing:

We didn’t have any specific guidelines however, we did make it up during the process.

a.       Scripted test scenarios with necessary steps and prep data

b.      Used a Heuristics cheat sheet [link] for data type scenarios

c.       Performed more functional work flow scenarios than we had scripted for.

d.      Run through the scenarios to cover the code path to some extent (note: it is a fine line, but we had scoped it for mere UI testing)

Outcome:

a.       Quick turnaround during functional testing phase

b.      User Acceptance Testing team was happy

c.       Ultimate end users were satisfied with the product they received

Next Steps that would be ideal to these dev/test teams:

a.       Other area to explore into would be TDD (Test Driven Development)

b.      Agile project management viz., SCRUM

c.       Leverage code between dev and test teams and build better automation