Opening Day
Yesterday involved a long wait through the day to find out whether the A's opening day game would be rained out, communicating with Bill, Lucy, and others to decide if we would go. We were having a cold, rainy day all day, and then around 4:30 pm it started to clear up down where Apple is. However, it was not quite so clear farther north, and it seemed quite possible that even if we did go, the game would be rained out, or else would be cold and windy and not-fun. Gah.
One bad thing about baseball is that they usually wait until well after game time before calling a game due to rain. While presumably this is done mainly to get more concessions money, and also partly so as not to rip off the people who drove a long distance to see the game, it's annoying to people who are driving a medium-length distance to see the game, since it seems like they should be able to tell a few hours beforehand which way things are going to go.
Anyway, two other people cancelled before 5:00, and finally John and I decided to bag it, as I remembered my last cold, windy, drizzly April baseball game and as much as I like going to the game, I didn't really want to experience that again, especially at night and driving through traffic.
The game did indeed get played (the A's beat the hated Yankees), but was rained out after 8 innings. So that was kind of annoying, since I ended up feeling like we'd made both the right and the wrong decision. Sigh.
On the plus side, John and I drove up to his town of Redwood City and had dinner at a nearby pub (mmm... burgers and beer [well, okay, Coke for me]), and then walked around the city for an hour or more, which was nice and relaxing. So it was a decent evening after all.
In other baseball news, my Red Sox beat the Royals for their first win of the season, with Jose Offerman going 4-for-5 against his old team. Offerman is a controversial player, since he was signed after the Sox let slugger Mo Vaughn go to the Angels (for a bundle of money; not a bad decision, in my opinion), and Offerman was himself given a pretty hefty contract. Unlike Arizona's controversial Jay Bell signing a year ago, Offerman is a not-too-old player with some solid skills, and I think with escalating salaries it's quite possible that he'll be worth the money.
Many pundits are picking the Sox to finish fourth (behind the Yankmes, Baltimore, and Toronto); I think there's a good chance they'll win the wild card again, as I think Baltimore is highly overrated. Toronto could be a contender, however.
I get a little less pumped about baseball season every year, although last year was definitely a low, what with our fragmenting fantasy league and the Brewers switching to the boring NL. Maybe now that I'm in an area with two baseball teams and will be in a hopefully more cohesive fantasy league, my interest will perk up. Of course, maybe I'm just turning into someone who enjoys going to games, but gets bored with the whole season-long analysis thing. Which isn't the worst thing in the world.
But, it is definitely a brave new world for me. I'm not yet even at the point where I'm coming up with reasoned, directed test plans and documenting every move I make on the software - understandable, I hope, since I'm still learning the software. One tricky aspect here is when I come across something that's not necessarily "broken", but is "strange"; my reaction is, "hmm, is it supposed to do that, or is this a bug?"
Another tricky part is being on the other end of the developer/tester relationship, and realizing that I need to be sensitive to the investment that developers put into what they write. Yes, we're all professionals here, but programming still has its creative, ego-driven side. Although the simple matter of finding, isolating and documenting a bug is actually kind of exciting right now, I need to be careful not to crow about it.
Bottom line is, I'm now starting to get a handle on the kind of adjustment this job is going to be. I think it will be cool in many ways, but it will take time to fully absorb the mindset.
I also made my first contributions to our weekly meeting today, which was also a strange feeling. It was nice to feel I had something to say, and very nice to feel that people were listening to me. But I also wanted to make sure I didn't overstep my bounds somewhere, and I know I can have a tendency to babble when in a group. Probably just nerves, in this case. Especially since several people have made it clear that they consider the fact that I am new to the software to be a valuable asset, since it gives them someone in-house bringing a new perspective to how the system works. So because of that I don't want to be a wallflower.
But overall, this is turning out to be the most rewarding week I've had on the job so far. I'm getting into it.
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