# \[ANN\] Calgary Ruby Users Society (CRUSERS)

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-calgary-ruby-users-society-crusers/54104>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [February 23, 2006, 6:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-calgary-ruby-users-society-crusers/54104 "2006-02-23T06:31:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![alexeyv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/46a35a/32.png) [@alexeyv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alexeyv)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 6:31am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-calgary-ruby-users-society-crusers/54104/1 "2006-02-23T06:31:02Z")

</div>

Calgary Ruby U. Society (otherwise known as Association of Anonymous  
Java Programmers, Calgary branch) had it’s first meeting today. After a  
round of introductions, we discussed our interests and brainstormed  
possible activities for the group. Paul R. did a presentation on  
Watir [[http://wtr.rubyforge.org/](http://wtr.rubyforge.org/)]. Watir is not just a great tool, but  
also a way to sneak Ruby into your day job. ThoughtWorks Canada bought  
the donuts.

From now on, we are planning to meet once a month, generally on the  
third Tuesday. Our next meeting will be in the second half of March  
(date TBD), most probably a joint meeting with CJUG (Calgary Java Users  
Group). The subject of the meeting will be Rails (but of course!)

So, if you like Ruby and live in Calgary, you are most welcome to join  
us.  
Please subscribe to CRUSERS Yahoo Group:

> **[Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos](https://www.yahoo.com/)**
>
> Latest news coverage, email, free stock quotes, live scores and video are just the beginning. Discover more every day at Yahoo!

And once you subscribe, consider posting an introductory message,  
describing your programming background, how do you use Ruby, and what  
would you like to do in CRUSERS.

Best regards,  
Alex Verkhovsky

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![alexeyv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/46a35a/32.png) [@alexeyv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alexeyv)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2006, 7:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-calgary-ruby-users-society-crusers/54104/2 "2006-02-23T07:19:20Z")

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You know how in Canada (or maybe just Vancouver) there’s these hotdog  
stands  
named “Mr. Tubesteak.”?

Yeah, CRUSERS and Mr. Tubesteak are both really really bad names for  
things  
to Americans. 🙂

Actual useful comments below…

On 2/23/06 12:30 AM, “Alexey V.” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Calgary Ruby U. Society (otherwise known as Association of Anonymous  
> Java Programmers, Calgary branch) had it’s first meeting today. After a  
> round of introductions, we discussed our interests and brainstormed  
> possible activities for the group. Paul R. did a presentation on  
> Watir [[http://wtr.rubyforge.org/](http://wtr.rubyforge.org/)]. Watir is not just a great tool, but  
> also a way to sneak Ruby into your day job. ThoughtWorks Canada bought  
> the donuts.

Watir is the bomb I must say. We used it today to debug a load problem  
on  
our portal server (yeah, don’t ask). We just took a script we were  
using  
for testing and ran it un 500 threads. Kept doing that until our fixes  
stopped the portal from crashing.

Great stuff.

Zed A. Shaw

> **[Zed A. shaw](https://zedshaw.com/)**
>
> Personal essays and writings by Zed A. Shaw.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![alexeyv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/46a35a/32.png) [@alexeyv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alexeyv)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2006, 4:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-calgary-ruby-users-society-crusers/54104/3 "2006-02-25T04:24:19Z")

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Zed S. wrote:

> Yeah, CRUSERS and Mr. Tubesteak are both really really bad names for things  
> to Americans. 🙂

Note how the people coming up with this name were Canadians, not  
Americans. 🙂

> Watir is the bomb I must say. We used it today to debug a load problem on  
> our portal server (yeah, don’t ask). We just took a script we were using  
> for testing and ran it un 500 threads. Kept doing that until our fixes  
> stopped the portal from crashing.

Heh… Watir can be used for all sorts of things other than functional  
test automation.

Once, I’ve seen somebody using it for data migration. Assumption was, if  
you enter your legacy data through your new application GUI, you get  
less work to do and more confidence in the integrity of your migrated  
data. Of course, it was quite slow, but in that particular case slow was  
OK.

Alex