Testing For Diamonds

Raiders win two, Diamonds struggle at Stars & Stripes tourney

The weather forecast Friday called for unbearable heat and unrelenting sun.

It was supposed to wipe out softball players and umpires like lab rats testing Ebola virus.

The Stars & Stripes Tournament at Stuart Sports Complex prepared accordingly, installing temporary rule changes for pitchers and catchers to keep them rested, as well as setting up hydration stations for the men in blue.

It was all for naught with cloudy skies, 80-degree temperatures and 25 mph winds keeping everyone cool, upright and alert.

“We just wanted to protect the umpires, the pitchers, the catchers, that’s why we put in the special rule,” said AFSA president Ron Lindstrom, also the Aurora Raiders coach. “No one complained and it turned out we had good cloud cover and a good breeze. It’s been a good tournament and it’s just the first year.”

The 8-team 18U USSSA World Series qualifier commenced with two four-team pools and two spots up for bids to the big tournament in three weeks in Tulsa, Okla., although three of the tourney teams already have bids.

The Aurora Raiders are one, and they slid into a pool with the Naperville Diamonds, Schaumburg Sluggers and Lemont Sizzlers.

Lower-tier Naperville found themselves overmatched in the A-level competition on day one.

The Diamonds struggled to wake their bats at 8 a.m., getting combined no-hit by Benet pitcher Allyson Staats and Romeoville’s Melissa Guzior in an 11-0 loss to Lemont.

Then Aurora beat them 11-3 before they fell 11-0 to Schaumburg.

“I have 16-, 17-year-old girls here and we’re playing against 18-year-old girls here,” Diamonds coach Vince Diaz said. “We’re trying our best. We’ve held our ground the first 2-3 innings and then we put our sad face on and can’t do anything.”

The Raiders, however, got off to a quick start with their win over the Diamonds.

They followed that win with a hard-fought 2-1 victory over Lemont, won on a play at the plate in the bottom of the seventh.

Stef Miller reached second on an error by the left fielder, and a sacrifice by Yorkville grad Nicole Hersam pushed her Foxes’ teammate to third.

West Aurora’s Julianna Evischi then chopped a ball to short and Miller beat the ensuing throw home.

Helzberg Diamonds Finds a Gem of a Partnership with Original Software

29 June 2011 , – Original Software, a leading Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, announced today that it has signed a deal with Kansas City-based Helzberg Diamond Shops, Inc., for managing and automating the testing of its business-critical retail systems. Original Software’s complete solution suite for quality management, manual testing, test automation and test data verification has been selected by the retailer to address its system testing challenges and improve overall quality and timeliness of application software delivery into production.

A leading fine jewellery retailer, Helzberg Diamonds, a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. operates 234 stores across the United States plus an online store. Building a successful retail business since 1915, the company is committed to attracting new customers and maintaining customer loyalty as it grows through its multiple distribution venues.

The “customer always comes first” at Helzberg Diamonds. Steve DeMott, Director of Application Development & Support at Helzberg Diamonds stated that he was impressed with Original Software’s shared customer service philosophy. “I was impressed at Original Software’s willingness and responsiveness to our specific needs. Our applications are quite complex and Original Software was the only vendor reviewed that could work with all mission critical systems. Other software solutions evaluated couldn’t give us the level of integration we required for testing our critical applications,” said DeMott.

“Our retail applications provide the business with complete information visibility to operational performance for both our traditional and online businesses. It is therefore critical that these applications are functioning correctly with the most current processing enhancements and at the most current release levels” added DeMott. “In the past we’ve only had manual testing processes in place and with the business growing at such a fast pace, we had to look for a way to make our testing efforts more efficient and start automating the testing process. With more frequent application updates, we didn’t want to delay the release of new functionality or employ more QA resources.”

Implementation will begin in June in order to be ready for major releases of our key applications in September. Once implementation is complete, Helzberg Diamonds will be using Qualify, a complete Application Quality Management (AQM) solution, to help unite all aspects of the software quality lifecycle and provide an integrated approach to solving the company’s quality process and management challenges.

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