testing interview questions

How do you test an office stapler!!
How do you debug a broken stapler!!

Bring a stapler to the in-person interview and have the candidate provide test cases. No one approach/answer is correct. Look for thought process. First make sure the candidate understands an office stapler and it's general features (or else it might not be productive discussion).

What skills are required for your position

Flexible
Networking protocol
Qwik to learn
absorb
Not Afraid
Solid BackGround
Solid team work
cross team communication

network computing -> enterprise computing

In the 90s and 2000s, there is so much dependency on networking that it has churned out lots of skilled professionals in this domain. These professional move in to other similar domains and reuse nomenclatures used in the networking domains. Example: the enterprise security companies seems to have significant influence from networking. Or, may be the networking brought in lots of hassles along with it's benefits. So, the networking experts recognized the trouble and started working on it's solutions. Borrowed word
PM: Performance Management (monitoring)
FM: Fault Management

prs - Performance, Reliability & Scalability

Looks like companies are recognizing the need to do the right thing to get more reliable juice on the existing hardware/software. Business community has started putting money where the mouth is. Check out the trend in job req in early Jan 2007 for these terminologies and yo will notice that there are job titles with one or more of these words in both Dev and QA organizations. Also, some of the big troubles bubbling up most likely due to these factors - read RIM service down or Intuit servers going down during it's peak load.

IP aliasing

IP aliasing is the process of adding more than one IP address to a network interface. With this, one node on a network can have multiple connections to a network, each serving a different purpose.

howto

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 up
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 172.16.3.1
/sbin/ifconfig eth0:0 172.16.3.10
/sbin/ifconfig eth0:1 172.16.3.100

MySQL tables - file extension

File Purpose
tbl_name.frm Definition (format) file
tbl_name.MYD Data file
tbl_name.MYI Index file

ssh - with no password

The technical terminology sees to be "public key authentication".
ssh - with no password requires the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys contain the public key of the client stored in the ssh server.

~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub - contains the public key of the client

$ chmod go-w $HOME $HOME/.ssh
$ chmod 600 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys

Why India for outsourcing

1. Indian S/W folks read/write/speak/understand English
2. Unlike Romania, India has a larger pool of talent and also the engineering institutes churn out more engineers each year. In Romania, if large enterprise like Cisco (Already done) goes and recruits 500 s/w professionals, smaller companies will not get any one...
3. Weather in India is favorable as compared to many countries (No snow in most places - year round)
4. India is a nice place to visit (for ages!! haha. It is considered a place to visit if possible)
5. With more NRI returning, the Indians at large now understand the expectations from international companies.

interview questions

* What types of projects (academic or otherwise) have inspired you in the past?
* What are some self-directed missions that may have influenced your career direction?
* How does our company fit into your vision?
* What are some things that excite and motivate you?
* Describe a time you had to work with someone you didn't like.
* Tell me about a time when you had to stick by a decision you had made, even though it made you very unpopular.
* How would you handle a boss you suspected of performing unethical actions?
* Would you describe yourself as an innovative person? Give us an example of something particularly innovative that you have done that made a difference in the workplace.
* What was the last time you were late with a project?
* Putting you on the spot: How do you feel this interview is going?

language dependancy of good tools

Expect: tcl/tk
Watir: Ruby/WET

There are not many good reasons to nail these good/powerful tools to specific languages and restrict it's wide spread usage. On the other hand, nailing them to language gives the marketing muscle to tag on to existing bandwagon. Both products (Ruby/Watir - Expect/tcl) get cross promotion benefits. From a person who don't know both, it is additional thing to learn - instead of reusing sh and perl...

ssh tunnelling

On the receiving server edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file. Replace AllowTcpForwarding yes. restart sshd (or reboot) for this setting to take effect.

On the receiving server say
ssh -L:localhost: @ -N

On the sourcing/originating/'client' machine say
sh -L:localhost: @ -N

Now you can use any tool on the 'client' machine as though the server is running locally - only caution is to know that you have to use the credentials of the remote machine as needed. For example, if you want to use MySQL query browser on the client, you have to give the credential of the username of the machine on which the MySQL server is running. This will be the machines account - not mysql account.

soundid

Currently, the price of SoundID products are on the higher range of the spectrum compared to similar mobile phone products in the market - hopefully, they are superior in sound quality as compared to inexpensive ones.
Company founded in Jan 2000
SoundID uses csr bluetooth module
Potential for WiFi taking over bt
Company seems to have strong medical background (notice the founders and investors background)
Possibility of some one breaking bt encryption and putting audio in all available ear pieces around - devastating impact (as the modules might be useless or costly upgrades)

Investors' exist strategy:
Texas Instrument buying
IPO not likely until the sale of minimum 100K/Year.
Dependency on overseas manufacturing

Alviso

Ghost towns in the bay area:
Drawbridge, California (Near Alviso) and
Holy City, California (on HW 17)

Alviso north of 237 is a old Mexican town. Many homes & establishments are old and having Mexican flavor all over. There is a train track and the trains go on them ones a day or so (actively used).
The southern part of Alviso is modern and have newer companies like other areas in the south bay. Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek flood here... Last big flood was in 1983. The levee has been strengthened since.

http://alviso.com/

Mexican restaurant visited: Marie Elena's Restaurant in Gold Street.

Alviso is currently part of SJ (not too sure).
An electric generator came to the town during the fall of Gov Davis - California energy crisis.

The property was owned by an old short lady who died recently.

wsdl studios

AboveAll Studio from www.aboveallsoftware.com
StylusStudio from www.stylusstudio.com
SOAtest™ from www.parasoft.com
soapUI from www.soapui.org

watir good and bad

Ruby : What I liked
1. installed just fine on my Windows XP machine
2. It has interactive command-line interpreter and compile version (interpreter excellent for quick and dirty jobs as well as prototyping - where compile is considered extra step..)
3. Ruby is new and hot - there seems to be more momentum (Folks looking for the next big thing - after java)
4. Ruby seems to be small foot print and can be compiled on many platforms - portability
5. Ruby implements package management, RubyGems, to distribute components efficiently.
6. Ruby Application Archive (RAA) and RubyForge are repository focused on Ruby.
7. 'Ruby on Rails' is application framework
8. rake is the ruby build system available on rubyforge

Watir:
1. SilkTest and WinRunner rule the webUI funcitonal/regression testing/automation arena - for good reason. They both do a good job at what they claim.
2. The price is on the higher end for people who look for open source as their default search. Evaluation copy/free copy is not easy to get for small/'not so serious' players.
3. Available only for Windows and I belive only for IE.
4. Now comes the Watir, a framework running on Ruby.
5. Tried installing it and it went smooth.
6. Tried the google example - went very smooth
7. Tried Hotmail login that uses cross domain cookies - it just wouldn't work
8. Checking the forums - looks like if IE complains, Watir will complain too. But, this statement don't look right to me as IE don't actually complain (even though it is doing things that IE might not like...)
9. Willing to risk using Watir expecting it to mature eventually.

bub road companies

http://www.bluelane.com/
http://www.luminousnetworks.com/ - take over?

Bay Shore Tech Park companies

http://www.bayshoretechpark.com/ Bay Shore Tech Park
http://www.btcommercial.com/ NAI BT Commercial
Harvest Properties

http://www.i2cinc.com/
http://www.qwikker.com/
http://www.wideray.com/
http://www.novawavetech.com/
http://www.centralitycomm.com/
http://www.strongmail.com/
http://www.planetweb.com/
http://www.clickatell.com/
http://www.wherifywireless.com/
http://www.shutterfly.com/

Iain's company

// Iain Huxley
// President
// Mindspike Technologies
// http://mindspike.com
// Ph: (510) 339 7789

activity noticed around Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 22:44:23 -0800

hr-xml open source

Open Source/Collaborative Projects

Trevor Harmon saw my reponse to a comment concerning “candidate-centered” HR-XML and the various related open source and collaborative initiatives leveraging HR-XML.

Trevor tells me that a new release of “HR-XSL” is available. “HR-XSL is a Source Forge project providing a set of command-line tools that transform a curriculum vitae or résumé in XML format into PDF, HTML, or plain text format.

The HR-XSL Source Forge site also provides a list of related open source projects. Combining that list with a few open source or collaborative efforts of which I’m aware, I’ve come up the list below, which will be maintained in HR-XML’s members wiki.
.

HR-XSL The HR-XSL project provides a set of command-line tools that transforms a curriculum vitae or résumé in XML format into PDF, HTML, or plain text format.

Open Source Recruiter (SourceForge) - A Java toolkit for creating and manipulating HR-XML résumés.

Jerimoth (SourceForge) - A Java-based web service for posting HR-XML résumés.

Open Human Resources (SourceForge) - An open repository for various Human Resource components that communicate using HR-XML via SOAP.

OpenSkills (Wikipedia) - A global non-profit association that provides a freely searchable database of résumés based on HR-XML.

xmlresume (SourceForge) - An open source project that defines both the data layer and the presentation layer of a résumé. It uses a custom (non-HR-XML) data format.

Sample solution for Recruiting (GotDotNet)

XML Forms Generator (AlphaWorks)

HR-XML is pleased that communities of imaginative developers are leveraging HR-XML standards in open source and collaborative projects. Of course, HR-XML isn’t affiliated with any of these initiatives and cannot recommend or warrant the suitability of the work for any purpose. However, we’d like to hear your opinions if you’ve tried to apply any of the above resources.

main article

Invisalign SQA activities

Invisalign is invisible way of straightening teeth. The company behind it is AlignTech in SantaClara. The competitor (claimed as patent infringe) is OrthoClear is based in SFO and manufacturing in Pakistan. AlighTech has requested for stopping the import.
The web sites for these 2 companies are similar looking. The doctor/orthodontist certification program is looking identical. Ormco is another competing company.

VIP - Virtual Invisalign Practice, a web page for hosting Doctor's info
ClinCheck - Electronic manufacture of invisiallign. Custom made - more than 20,000,000. This is considered as mass manufacturing of custom made item in any category.
vip.invisalign.com
aligntech has offshore component to testing (from their hiring)

Few HR providers for AlignTech collected from the job boards are ATR International and Xoriant. There is a SQA Manager position available with this company but there is a goof up in the web page, where it is not indexed - getting less visibility to this opening.
Invisalign manufacturing process is outlined in the pdf doc that outlines 6 step process 1) Capturing tooth anatomy with impressions 2) creating 3D image 3) planning virtual treatment (computerized movie on ClinCheck) 4) Creating stereolithography (sla) 5) create alligners 6) Ready to ship

outsourcing backlash is noted in Annual Report 2005 where the party 1 to 2 switch made in 2005Q4 and swich back from 2 to 1 in 2006Q1. Incidentally this was not also as per plan check Form 10Q for period ending Sept 05.

Cecilia Claudio, CIO and vice president of engineering for Align Technology, a Santa Clara maker of orthodontic products, and a board member of RampRate LLC, an IT outsourcing advisor in Santa Monica, Calif seems to have promoted the outsourcing effort per infoworld. AlighTech got a new CIO who started as of 12/12/05 (from google finance).