Clarke Ching's Rocks and Snowballs

accidentally

My 2 kids just came inside to tell me that they'd "accidentally had a
picnic" with "meringues" that they'd accidentally found in the
kitchen.

And there was me deliberately preparing them a nice dinner which they
accidentally won't now eat.

Amazon FAIL

Thanks to Campbell & Barry for their emails confirming that Amazon is charging $9.99 for the kindle version of The Goal in the US.

As I wrote they’ve suddenly bumped the price up for me to $18.36 since I live in the UK.

I don’t know if this is Amazon’s doing or the publishers doing.  I’m sure this is legal and legit.  I’m sure it’s just bitterness on my part. 

But, I feel screwed. 

I paid a lot of money to buy my Kindle from the US store and get it shipped to the UK. 

Agile Data – 3 Patterns

Adrian Mowat has written a nice wee blog article about 3 agile data patterns: http://adrianmowat.blogspot.com/2010/09/fundamentals-of-data-testing-setup-and.html.  Worth a read.

Amazon Kindle’s dodgy pricing …

If you live in the US would you mind checking the price of Goldratt’s The Goal on Kindle and getting back to me?

Here’s why: it looks like Amazon has started, deceptively, charging different prices for the Kindle books depending on where you live.  They’ve just DOUBLED the price of The Goal in front of my eyes, though I can’t prove it.

Here’s the story.  I live in the UK but I bought my Kindle before the UK Kindle store was open so I use the US Kindle store.  I have the option to switch to the UK store but before I do that I decided to compare prices.  A kindle book from the US is, after all, the same as one bought from the UK.

• I started by checking The Goal on amazon.co.uk.  It is £11.89 which translates to about $18.57 (according to google).
• But then when I looked on amazon.com for the book the price on the search results page was only $9.99.  About half the price.  Big difference.  It looked like I should stick with the amazon store.
• But then – and this is where the plot thickens – I clicked through to the books page to discover that the price was actually $18.36, not $9.99.  Huh?  The price had gone up.
• But then, I thought, maybe I’d made a mistake when I did the search … so I did it again on amazon.com and the price was no longer 9.99.  It was 18.36.  Was it my mind playing tricks on me, or amazon?

I’ve noticed this a few times now but I’d like a little more evidence.  So, If you live in the US would you mind checking the price of Goldratt’s The Goal on Kindle and getting back to me?  If' it’s $18.36 then I made a mistake and I’ll apologise.  If it’s 9.99 then this sucks. 

This is the first time in 13 years of shopping with Amazon that I’ve ever felt like they’re screwing me.  I hope it’s just my mind playing tricks on me but …

Help ... On managing a bug fixing team.

Despite spending 5 years or so working as a maintenance programmer at
the start of career, all of my management experience in software
development has been spent working on development teams. I'm now
helping out a support and maintenance team and although most of the
stuff I know from ToC and Agile is useful (ToC more so) and although
the way the devs work strikes me as exactly the same as I used to work
way back then I've got a few questions cropping up which I can't
answer ... Yet.

In thought is that it is much much harder to estimate how long it will
take to fix a defect than it is to build a new feature. In new dev
work, nowadays, I find that writing test scenarios before writing the
code not only prevents a lot of rework but it also makes estimation
much easier. But that approach only helps a little when fixing old
bugs. Bug fixing seems to spend a lot more time in the "just one more
day to go" or "95%" complete state.

I guess what I'm saying is that the distribution curve for estimating
how long it will take to fix a defect has a very long tail.

Any hints or article/book recommendations as to make predictions and
promises in these types of environments?

As always ... I really appreciate the help I get through this blog.

Smoking Nuns

Many years ago a group of Nuns went to see the head Nun with a strange request. 

“Can we smoke while we pray?”, they asked her. 

The head nun paused to think then said, ‘No.  That would be wrong.’

Several months passed by and they they decided to try again.  With a twist.

‘Can we pray while we smoke?’, they asked.

The head nun paused, thought, then said, ‘Why yes, of course.’

 

Sometimes it’s not what you ask but how you ask for it that matters.