IT Werkz Sometimes

Why does Vista disconnect from the net if I’ve left the PC alone for a while? Also, why does the mouse lock up when not used? When I return and move the mouse, it takes about 15 seconds before it wakes up and you can actually see any mouse movement on the screen. Will SP1 cure these problems or will we have to wait till Windows 7 comes out next year.

I had an interview yesterday with someone who was really into exploratory testing and mentioned Kaner and Bach and dressed to prove it. Whilst I wore a suit which made him think I was a management type of person. His first question was ‘how much hands-on testing have I done?’

He did patiently explain to me how exploratory testing worked, and boy was he precious about it. I did say that I thought I knew what exploratory testing was but no he was having none of it. Exploratory testing was New and there was no way I would know how it worked (Gimmee a break I’ve been reverse engineering systems into requirements for years. Ed).  This guy was a geek, and there’s nothing very wrong with that, except actually wanting to be one, but he wasn’t actually as good a geek as he thought he was. He obviously had become a tester from a user of software angle rather than any development angle. 

Anyway he’d seen my resume and liked it. Initially he spoke about his position and his company and how they do things and then wanted to talk about what I have done. What the company did was very basic front-end testing, and no doubt someone’s making a lot of money at it as they manage to test about 100 systems a year with a staff of about three (Thorough then. Ed). Their problem, and why they probably wanted to interview me in the first place, was that they never usually do any back-end testing but currently have a project where they do need to do some back-end testing. Specifically checking SQL tables with TOAD, which is on my CV, and which they have no experience at. 

The interviewer had about 8 years testing experience and had managed to avoid SQL for the whole time. He couldn’t actually third degree me about SQL as he new nothing about it. It turned out that what he was good at was accessibility testing so he asked me all about that, and which isn’t even on my resume. He wanted me to prove to him, via a Contact Us web page, how I would go about testing it. I rattled through some obvious tests and really I could barely describe the testing that I was performing as it was so basic and rudimentary that I do that sort of testing in my sleep. Anyway I failed that as I hadn’t done any testing for accessibility, like for blind people and how they would use the system or deaf people. A fair cop as I had never done any accessibility testing in my life and it’s definitely not on my resume so I was good and firmly tripped up there.

The interview did rattle on in the same manner with him trying to prove to both of us that really I didn’t know how to test software. I can only assume that he was intimidated by my experience - 18 years of trying to get code to work - and was looking for an excuse to say no. It was obviously a waste of time and it was becoming very tedious with the interviewer being very awkward so that eventually I, the interviewee, actually bought the whole thing to an end. He was great afterwards, having rejected someone else. What he needs is someone with about 2 years experience. I think I know too much.

The interview was arranged by an agency that specialises in testing and I was the third person they had put forward to that company and apparently the other two interviews hadn’t gone down too well either. I feel a bit sorry for agents that work hard putting these things together and then get inexplicable results like these.

I bumped into Pete Townshend of The Who on the way home.