• 1:44 AM
  Booze up and golf!

I spent most of Friday at work, golfing. That's not part of my normal job - it was a special appreciative golf trip for us in the Money Finding Department (MFD) at smartcorp. Actually, they were celebrating the release of something I wasn't really involved with, since I just came on in March and am actually working in a sub-group of MFD, People Annoying Technologies (PAT). Nonetheless, they saw fit to take me along and put me on a scramble golf team with various personell who specialize in assuring quality.

I like the quality assurance people, even though their job is technically to inform my superiors of my mistakes. They're meticulous, critical-minded individuals, who make lots of noise and sit near me! Actually, that's not true anymore. Most of the QA people are permanent employees and have moved into offices. Being a masterless contractor, as I am, I will never be granted real estate which is not surrounded by the flimsy beige covers of a cubicle. Cubicles are sort of like binders that you store people in. With all the QA people in offices, I don't hear them anymore, so it's sort of like I got an office in the process.

Scramble golf is a special type of team golf. Basically, each person on your team hits a ball from your current golfing position. These balls will fly in catastrophically diverse directions, if your team is like mine. You choose the best shot and continue playing from where it landed.

Mind you, this was not putt-putt golf, or driving at the driving range. We were out there on an actual golf COURSE. I hadn't been out on one before, except the time I popped out of the bushes at the Pali golf course and was chased off by the groundskeeper. This time I was armed with a bag of golfing sticks (called "clubs") and driving a special anti-exercise vehicle ("golf cart").

Of course, my team managed to annoy the serious golf people within our first two strokes, or shots, or whatever they call one occurence of a golf ball being hit. Our best shot went off into territory belonging to a hole about 8 holes ahead of the one we were on. (A golf "hole" includes the whole part of the course from the first place you hit the ball (the "tee") all the way to the pocket (cup, crater, mug, whatever) where you are supposed to make the ball go.) We waited for the serious golf people to hit their balls downrange, but they still shouted something at us to the tune of "when you're playing a scramble, you have to go!" So we went! Sacrificing accuracy for speed! Which, really, wasn't much of a sacrifice.

I hate to go over exactly what happened on that golf course. We laughed at each other a lot. The (right handed) QA manager tried golfing left handed and with inappropriate clubs (this is somehow appropriate to QA. I imagine she later filed a bug report like "left handed golf clubs are usable by right handed people.") Basically, we clowned around for 4 hours. Oh, and I discovered why golfers wear gloves: you can get blisters from flailing a golf club as hard as you can.

Today I woke up sore, sunburned, and with a cold. Damned golf. My team scored the highest, but we played each hole to the bitter end. No giving up for us. 10 on a par 4. That's the kind of people I like to work with!