Quick Testing Tip Du Jour

A coworker admires my attention to detail, as observed by him in my testing that an old application still works after migrating it to a new server. He wondered whether I’d have time to help him test the various web forms on a set of pages he had just migrated to another new server. I gave him this one tip, which he felt was worth several hours of work possibly saved:

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Save Water – Shower With A Bucket!

Shortly after moving into our new-to-us 1954 single family Cape we of course started discovering issues. One was that the water pipes inside the house were all only half-inch diameter – smaller than more modern houses.The result is that in order to get sufficiently warm water for my 6am 2nd floor shower I must run the shower for up to a minute or more before I dare to step in.

One feature I like is the older 3.5 gallon size toilet – even though modern low-flow toilets use only 1.5 gallons per flush I found myself needing to snake through clogs in the ones we installed in our old house at least once a month.

But after a full 3-month water billing cycle showed we were using the maximum amount in the lowest price tier (up to 15 CCF per cycle – “CCF” = Cento Cubic Feet = 748 gallons per CCF) I decided to work on offsetting the inefficient toilet and shower routines.

By implementing a few small changes to my bathroom routine, in the first week I cut my net water use in half, saving nearly 100 gallons! Here’s how:

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WBK is Also on Facebook

A reminder/notice to new followers: in addition to this blog I also have a What Betty Knows Facebook page where I post additional tidbits that are useful but not necessarily complex enough to require a full blog post. Follow/”Like” me there (and also check “get notifications”) to catch extra tips like these:

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Hassle-Free Comcast Cancellation

I’ve been over my head with packing/purging/moving to our new house, but here’s a quick tip:

You may recall last summer a recording of a Comcast customer’s frustrating attempt to get their service cancelled went viral. With that in mind I volunteered to try cancelling our old house’s service since I’m better at dealing with BS than my partner. I just did so, and not only had no hassles but found we didn’t need to stand in line at a service center to return the set top box and remote either! Here’s the trick:

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