Expensive Manpower HSA plans of 2016

I am a W2 consultant in Manpower (Experis) in WA.  Some colleagues and I complain about the Manpower HSA plans of 2016 because it is really expensive.

After looking into their insurance plans of United Health Care in 2016, I would say the Base HSA plan is really expensive compared to individual plans in WA such as Premera, Lifewise and even United Health Care.

If I compare 2 plans between United Health HSA 6500 (HSA6500) and United Health Care (Base HSA Plan) in Manpower, I get the following result:

For the family size, we need to pay annual premium $15230.28 for Manpower, but the out of pocket is still high. If I shop by myself, I just pay $9,498, but the out of pocket is similar. Paying $5,732 annually gets the similar result. That’s really bad. If I use Premera’s plans, I get the same result. 

If you are W2 consultants in Manpower and you are healthy, plan to have the major surgery or pregnant in 2016, don’t enroll in Manpower’s Plan because you need to pay $15230.28. You can just shop individual plan in Premera , Lifewise or even in the State Exchange . You will save a lot of money.

Everyone says employers sponsor 20-50% of insurance, but in Manpower, I don’t see it at all.

They are trying to let consultants in 50 States pay the same price (bi-weekly). Different State has the different rate of insurance. That’s the common sense.

Manpower, if you expect to hire consultants to work for you,  please make them happy and treat them nicely. 

Fixed the issue- Find someone feature in Microsoft Lync 2013 didn't work

Last week, I noticed that when using “Find someone” feature in Microsoft Lync 2013, searching was pending forever and the names were never showing up.  

The interesting part was that when opening MS Outlook 2010, the color of the presence indicator in my name was not green, but it was green in MS Lync 2013. I was still available.

After looking into this issue, just repair Microsoft Lync 2013 in program and features. After the reboot, find someone feature in Microsoft Lync 2013 is working.

Fixed the issue of yellow triangle network icon in Windows 7 laptop without local admin right

 I use my windows 7 work laptop to connect to corporate Wi-Fi in the office without any issue. This week I noticed that for some reason, when I connected to Wi-Fi in my home network, it didn’t work. It was connected, but there was no Internet access.  It showed the yellow triangle network icon. However, there is no issue in other devices such as iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro and another windows 7 laptop.

The main issue in my windows 7 work laptop is that I don’t have the local admin right due to the corporate policy. I can’t look into the issues such as View the property in Network Connection and firewall settings.  

I tried to make it work, but I couldn’t.

• In device manager, all are looking good.
• In manage wireless network, remove the home network and re-connect to it: it doesn’t work.
• Restart the router and re-connect to it : it doesn’t work
• Ipconfig command: it doesn’t work
• Netstat command : it doesn’t work

Finally, I removed the home network and manually created a network profile. After connecting to Wi-Fi, opening IE to go to google.com is working. 

The Parasoft SOAtest 9.9 upgrade means side-by-side installation with SOAtest 9.7

We have used SOAtest since last July. We were told we needed to upgrade SOAtest 9.7 to 9.9. After the installation, we found that it is not really the upgrade. It is called side-by-side installation. SOAtest 9.9 and SOAtest 9.7 are installed together in my laptop.

Here are 2 main issues after the “upgrade”:

• We need to reconfigure everything in Parasoft->Preferences.

• If we create new tests in SOAtest 9.9, we can’t use SOAtest 9.7 to expand the test scenarios in the individual .tst file. It is not backward compatible.

Why let users reconfigure the settings in SOAtest after the upgrade? It is not user-friendly. 

Fixed the issue of Parasoft SOAtest: XML assertor didn’t work

Today I noticed that in SOAtest,  the XML assertor of validating the elements in WCF response always passed even if the elements returned were wrong.

After looking into this interesting issue, I was not sure why another tester set up the following flow type: While pass/fail=1, which made the XML assertor passed all the time.

After changing the flow type to none, the test failed. 

Fixed the issue: the language bar is missing in the task bar after the downgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 7

I bought my acer laptop 5 years ago. Before upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, I would not install any software in this laptop from my testing experience. This is the best way to prevent any software incompatibility. If I have a lot of software installed, it takes a long time to finish the upgrade. That’s not what I want.

I downloaded the Media Creation Tool to install Windows 10. It was easy and fast. 

After the installation, I noticed the performance in acer laptop was really bad. When using Microsoft Edge to open Internet Explorer or using Chrome to search online, the laptop was in the heavy load, which caused DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION screen all the time. 

One day later, I decided to downgrade to Windows 7. It has “Go Back to Windows 7”  feature. After the downgrade, the performance is really FAST and one issue happened:

The language bar was missing in the taskbar even if my keyboard setup looked good in Regional and Language. I couldn't switch to Chinese language via Ctrl+ Space. Ctrl+ Space has been used for more than 10 years before Windows 8 was released. In Windows 10 & Windows 8, we need to use Win Key+ Space. I believe it is the downgrade bug. I finally found a way to make it work.

Go to the registry key : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Right Click to create a new String Value on the right side.

Enter the value:  ctfmon=CTFMON.EXE 

Reboot the laptop.  I can see the language bar in Windows 7 again

If you have the old laptop, upgrading to Windows 10 is not a good idea. 

Parasoft SOATest issue: Assertion tests still pass when the data returned is all blank in WCF response

Today I find one interesting issue in SOATest tool. Our developers have recently updated the namespaces in the data contracts that support “http”. For example,

Old: <ns1:Addresses xmlns:ns1=www.XXX.Com/member/06/01/2015

New: <ns1:Addresses xmlns:ns1="http://www.XXX.com/member/06/01/2015"

We have so many tests that it is not easy to tell which one has refreshed the WSDL in WCF methods. Our tests are using Value Assertion to validate the data elements in WCF response. After running all tests, all tests passed.

I noticed that in some tests, the data returned was all blank in WCF response. I could not believe that all assertion tests still passed.  That’s really surprising.

After updating WSDL again, the data returned can show all elements in WCF response. 

The appraisal tool called CoreLogic ValuePoint4 is not persuasive!

I applied the HELOC in BECU in June and finally noticed that BECU uses CoreLogic’s tool called ValuePoint4. After reviewing the report, I felt very surprised and disappointed.

The comparable sales section is totally not persuasive because all properties are from my neighbors. We bought the houses and moved in between last May and last Sep. We knew sales prices of the houses very well.

A lot of properties have been sold nearby in other communities in 3-6 months. I don’t see them in comparable sales section. What a surprise! This is very basic real estate knowledge. I can't believe CoreLogic does it this way

If the tool itself is not tested well and not persuasive, why give the appraisal report to customers? In my opinion, don’t waste the money to buy this appraisal tool- Core Logic ValuePoint4 .

Parasoft SOAtest: Exclude the data of carriage return char (13) in SQL query

Today one test failed in SOAtest. After looking into this one, I noticed that if I invoked one WCF method using the same scenario, it returned the following data in WCF response.

"INSERT\r TEST\r TESET\r \r REASON"

But In SQL server, it showed “INSERT TEST TESET REASON"

That’s because the data contains Carriage Return CHAR (13).

 

If I add Where [ReasonCode] like '%'+char(13)+'%' in SQL query, I can find the data of Carriage Return.

 

If I add Where [ReasonCode] not like '%'+char(13)+'%' in SQL query, I can’t  find the data of Carriage Return.

In order to avoid these kind of data, after adding Where [ReasonCode] not like '%'+char(13)+'%' in SQL query, the test passes all the time.

How to transfer data from iPhone 5 to iPhone 6 Plus via iTunes?

I got a used iPhone 6 Plus from my wife. If I would like to transfer data from my iPhone 5 to iPhone 6 Plus, here are the easy steps. I transferred the data successfully.

Reset iPhone 6 Plus.

Use USB to connect to iPhone 5 and Windows 7 laptop. It opens iTunes automatically.

Backup data in iPhone 5 first.

Use USB to connect to iPhone 6 plus and Windows 7 laptop.

Follow the instructions in iPhone 6 Plus and do step by step.

You will see Restore from iTunes backup.

Choose the name of iPhone 5 to restore and it takes about 10-20 minutes to transfer the data.

During the credit card setup in Apple Pay, I was not aware that my credit card in my apple account was expired. The setup was not working.  After I updated the credit card in my apple account, it was not working either because iTunes was not smart and didn’t sync well to iPhone 6 Plus.  I skipped the setup and did it later.

Follow the instruction in iPhone 6 Plus again and finally you will see all data is transferred successfully.