Burning some XP or I don't like wearing shoes, but I do use them

So my blog post this time is a bit different. I figured I would just put what I've been doing recently, as well as what I plan on doing:

1. Japanese: I've been working with a group of friends online and in person for learning hiragana (so far). Mostly I can recognize 1/3 or so of the characters. My plan is to be able to write and recognize all of them by the end of October, as well as be able to pronounce/recognize some basic words and phrases. Our group is using this book: http://www.cheng-tsui.com/store/products/adventures_japanese
2. Braille: oddly enough, SEP (Software Engineering Professionals) has an interactive art project with a braille board. I've found that I've started to recognize a few of the letters when I go by it, so I've been trying to actively learn the patterns.
3. Reading The Passionate Programmer: It's a book about being enthusiastic and successful with your work. I'm finding it actually really interesting so far, and I've been trying to apply some of those lessons to my career, which brings me to...
4. Shoes: This is a GUI package for Ruby. I'm enjoying it so far, and I plan on dipping into it further. Should be nice and simple to learn (since I've never written any real UI before, all of my programs have been command line). More information at: http://shoesrb.com/
5. Exercise: I've been going to the YMCA recently, it's been one of my favorite decisions so far. I've been going at least once a week, and usually twice a week, as well as walking more often (I sometimes now walk home from work, it's about 2 miles). 

Implicit vs. Explicit communication

This blog post was sparked by something that happened a few weeks ago, something completely unrelated to testing, but which, I think, has a lot of lessons for testing (as well as general office communication).

I had offered to emergency-GM for an L5R group (Heroes of Rokugan, if you feel so inclined to check it out). Long story short, the game ended up not happening due to the bad timing of trying to find a GM at the last moment, and having two players in South Korea.

What happened next, however, was a fun comedy of errors.

I had started off an email thread to get things rolling, including all of the players, as well as the three GMs who were generally free, including myself as (what I thought) was an alternate in case they needed me.

One of the organizers trimmed the list back to just myself and the players, without explicitly telling me she was doing so (I found out later that the other GMs had contacted her, with no one passing along the information to me).

This went to the day before the game with me innocently asking who the GM was, and finding out it was me. Unfortunately, I had already made plans (seeing as no one had actually asked me to GM, and I wasn't their regular one).

Had either I said that I needed to be asked to GM, or someone had explicitly asked me to GM, things would have worked out okay.

So, how does this apply to testing? In a few ways:

• I am sometimes bad about being explicit in my speech and writing. I tend to assume people already know what I'm talking about. It's one of the habits I am trying to work myself out of.
• Tests should make clear what they are testing. Tests shouldn't be left floating with no clear connection to their requirements. Without some good connection to the requirements, it is hard to keep the test maintainable...as new testers have to work harder to find out what a test does, what requirement it covers, and how thorough it is. Good, descriptive comments and logs go a long way.

So, how about you, any bad experiences due to poor or implicit communication?