People holding a CA checking account can’t apply a WA savings account in Washington Mutual

This October, I was surfing the website of Washington Mutual and suddenly I found if you have the existing WaMu’s checking account, you can link it to a new savings account with the rewarding interest rate 4.75% APR and without minimal balance. This rewarding deal attracted me to apply for a new savings account.

At that time, I had one thing in my mind: I opened my checking account some years ago in California; my current billing address is in California, but I live in Seattle now. Can I open a new savings account and let WaMu send my ATM card to my apartment in Seattle ? Therefore, I wanted to give it a try.

During the process of applying a new savings account, I was informed that I couldn’t apply because I have more than one residency. I called the customer service center and one of the representatives told me that I couldn’t use California’s checking account to apply for a Washington state’s savings account because they are in the different state. She told me that I needed to change CA address to WA address first and then I could apply.

According to WaMu’s MIS system, I can guess some points as follows:

1. Every state has their own database for customers.

2. People can withdraw money in 50 states, but they can’t apply for another state’s checking account or savings account online unless they change their addresses first.

3. WaMu’s employees in Washington State can’t have the permission of requesting the new debit card which was open in California.

America is the “United” States of America. I don’t know why Americans can’t apply multiple accounts in the same bank , but from different state. Is it related to the state law or does it only happen in WaMu?

Do you think it is an interesting issue?

Google Adsense-I don’t care!

Many people want to use Google Adsense to make money, but I don’t care. If you want to click ads here , welcome. If you don't want to click, I don't care. I only use it to know what kind of ads are in my blog. When I post some articles , I find that some ads are very useful. I can just enter URL by myself and know more information.


Why do people want to use Google Adsense to make money? Is the return of investment good? I don’t believe so. If you don’t click your ads but Google says they are invalid clicks, what should you do? Do you want to have any argument with Google? There is no such thing as a free lunch.

The best way for you to do is go with the flow. You should find another way to make money. Using Google Adsense to learn useful knowledge is my besy way.

The quality of Google Talk is getting worse and worse

In the past 2 weeks, I have found that using Google Talk to talk to people online always delays voice transmission. It is not reliable now. I can even hear my voice echo when talking to my friends online after 5 seconds. When this issue happens, I don't want to talk online any more because it wastes time and also lets people feel annyoed.What’s wrong with Google Talk now?


Google Talk provides the better quality than Skype in my mind. When a lot of people are using it and network traffic is so heavy, do you think Google Talk needs to increase its quality too?
If not, the loyalty of customers will be disappeared.


I really hope the quality of Google Talk is getting much better than ever.

Using Virtual PC to run Adobe products on Windows Vista

Christine and I have an idea of buying a PC to run Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. She also wants to learn Adobe products on Windows Vista. When I told her yesterday that only 3 Adobe products can support Windows Vista, she felt so disappointed.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. We can have 2 ways to do it.

One way is to install Adobe products on host PC with Windows XP and install Windows Vista on Virtual PC. If you want to use Windows Vista, just connect to that Virtual PC to have fun.


The other one is to use Windows Vista as the host PC and use MS Virtual PC to create many different PCs with different Adobe products. For example, if you want to learn Adobe Indesign, just connect to that machine with that software.

Now that Adobe is trying their best to let their products support Windows Vista, at least I can think of 2 ways now.

But when can all of the Adobe Products support Windows Vista? I think it should take a long time.


Other Articles:
Use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 as my test machine

A BVT is an important concept in modern QA field

A build verification test (BVT) is a very popular and an important concept in modern QA field. Many test cases are based on BVTs. Therefore, they can let you verify if all of the unit test cases can be run in your latest build. If your BVTs fail, it means your build is not reliable. You need to create another build as soon as possible.

For example, if you have Adobe Indesign CS3 now and you want to test the install and uninstall, what are your BVTs? “Installing all components, verifying all components, uninstalling all components, and verifying all uninstalled components,” are the basic BVTs. If it fails, it means your latest build has some problems.

Recently when I installed and uninstalled Adobe InDesign CS3, I had one thing on my mind: Does their test team have BVTs and UI tests? If yes, how come the UI is not so user-friendly for me? I should say their UI team didn't do it well . When I clicked Add or Remove Programs and wanted to uninstall Adobe Indesign, it showed me that I needed to insert a CD again. Is it by design? If it is by design, I want to ask: why do they want to design like this?

In the future when you get a chance, you can ask your test team to see if they know BVTs or not. If not, tell them to use it.

Adobe Indesign User-Expereince:
Comments on installation of Adobe Indesign and Illustrator

Using a script to install IIS on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

If you want to do the full install of SQL server 2005 or SQL server 2008 on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, before you install Reporting service, you need to install IIS first. This is the prerequisite.

Now you can use a script to run the following command in the command prompt.

start /w pkgmgr /iu:IIS-WebServerRole;IIS-WebServer;IIS-CommonHttpFeatures;IIS-StaticContent;IIS-DefaultDocument;IIS-DirectoryBrowsing;IIS-HttpErrors;IIS-HttpRedirect;IIS-ApplicationDevelopment;IIS-ASPNET;IIS-NetFxExtensibility;IIS-ASP;IIS-CGI;IIS-ISAPIExtensions;IIS-ISAPIFilter;IIS-ServerSideIncludes;IIS-HealthAndDiagnostics;IIS-HttpLogging;IIS-LoggingLibraries;IIS-RequestMonitor;IIS-HttpTracing;IIS-CustomLogging;IIS-ODBCLogging;IIS-Security;IIS-BasicAuthentication;IIS-WindowsAuthentication;IIS-DigestAuthentication;IIS-ClientCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-IISCertificateMappingAuthentication;IIS-URLAuthorization;IIS-RequestFiltering;IIS-IPSecurity;IIS-Performance;IIS-HttpCompressionStatic;IIS-HttpCompressionDynamic;IIS-WebServerManagementTools;IIS-ManagementConsole;IIS-ManagementScriptingTools;IIS-ManagementService;IIS-IIS6ManagementCompatibility;IIS-Metabase;IIS-WMICompatibility;IIS-LegacyScripts;IIS-LegacySnapIn;IIS-FTPPublishingService;IIS-FTPServer;IIS-FTPManagement;WAS-WindowsActivationService;WAS-ProcessModel;WAS-NetFxEnvironment;WAS-ConfigurationAPI

After a while, IIS features will be installed and you can move on to installing SQL Server.

It is a very useful command.

Windows Live Writer is still not reliable for Blogger Acount

In the blog world, I haven’t found a useful tool where you can easily add your own texts, drag and drop your photos from any location, and publish your articles to your blog successfully. When I heard that Microsoft wants to release a new product, Windows Live Writer many months ago, suddenly in my mind, it will be an excellent product in the future.

My expectation is so easy. It should be user-friendly. It can let users launch Windows Live Writer and add an existing account in blogger.com, spaces.live.com or whatever blog it supports.
Only you can do is to use Windows Live Writer as follows:

1. Add/modify texts.

2. Drag and drop multiple photos from your PC.

3. Modify your photo size that fits your blog.

4. Click “Publish”. Finally you can publish one article with many photos to your blog successfully.

Today I downloaded Windows Live Writer and tested it.

1. The first test: Add some texts, drag and drop one photo. Click “Publish” . Pass!

2. The second test: Add some texts , drag and drop 5 photos. Edit the photo size (width =400). Click “Publish”. No-ops! The following errors show up:

WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Client.XmlrequestHelper....()
WindowsLive.Writer.BlogClient.Client....()


I think the main problem in my test is the photo size. I enter width=400 and it is not in the dropdownlist. But finally I still can't publish one article with multiple photos using the default setting.


I really hope Windows Live Writer Team can make users easily publish articles with multiple photos soon.

Google blog search engine is not reliable.

Everyone knows that Google is very famous for its search engine. But I want to mention one fact: Why is the search engine in blogger.com not so reliable?

Just imagine the situation: After Mary posts a new article in her blog in blogger.com, she wants to search her article. Therefore, she goes to the Google’s official blog search (http://blogsearch.google.com) and enters the key word; unfortunately, she can’t find it. After one hour, she still can’t find it. Even after 1 week, she still can’t find it. Is that user –friendly?

You can also add another search function in your own blog. Just go to
https://draft.blogger.com/draft , copy the codes to your own blog. But in your blog, when you enter the key word to search your articles inside your blog, sometimes it doesn’t work.

What happens to the search engine? Many people will say: you should go to another website to register for your information or you need to wait until people click your articles. That’s the joke!!

User-friendly! User-friendly! User-friendly!

I really hope search engine in blogger.com will be reliable soon!

Choosing a cursor strategy

This is my key note of choosing a cursor strategy when I studied Microsoft 70-442 exam. Hope it can be very helpful for you


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Error 1721: Installing AdventureWorksDB 2008 is not working

Today I went to the following website to download the AdventureWorksDB databases. I wanted to attach it to my SQL Server 2005 in my windows XP with SP2. Finally it was not working for me.

http://www.codeplex.com/MSFTDBProdSamples

When I installed, it had the following error.

Error 1721. There is a program with this windows Installer package. A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Action: InstallDatabase, location:..\AdventureWorks_log.ldf) FOR ATTACH;”

After the install, the sample files were really under C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100. They were not useful because when I opened SQL Server 2005 and tried to attach it, it didn’t work. There is nothing to do with windows installer package. It proves the latest AdventureWorksDB is only for SQL Server 2008.

If you really want to use it in SQL Server 2005, just download AdventureWorksDB of SQL Server 2005 as follows:

http://www.codeplex.com/MSFTDBProdSamples/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=4004

You can finish your task.