What would you say is your worst character flaw?

Right, so before I was an Internationally lauded comedic Blogging genius, Sci-Fi author and book illustrator, I used to be a scummy IT contractor.  Going from thankless job to thankless job every three months or so and never making any real friends.

(This is where you feel sorry for me, violins play, and velvet ropes part.)

I mean, in the past twenty eight years I've worked for twenty-five different companies (And had a couple of years off in that time).  And you'd think that with of my experience of them, Interviews would get easier - But believe me, they don't.  I've had loads of the buggers, each more freakish and random as the last, and as I know that you guys enjoy laughing at my misfortunes, I thought that I'd give you a taste of some of the things that have happened to me in the name of prospective employment.

-oOo-

Back in 1986, I had an interview with British Telecom, they asked me a couple of questions about the job, and what I thought I'd be doing.  then one of the interviewers leaned back in his chair and said 'OK, so imagine that you own a Zoo on the south coast, and you've got a month to move the animals to a Zoo you've just bought in Scotland.  How would you do it?'

I 'ummed' and 'Ahhed' for a while then went off on one about how I'd send the Giraffes by road (after checking the atlas for low bridges - This was before Google Maps and all that shizzle) and fly the killer whales up there with the help of the RAF, I'd send the Meerkats by Red Star (British Rail's now defunct parcel service) and let the tropical fish find their own way using The UK's wonderful, fully connected, canal system, I must have gone on for about twenty minutes - it worked though - I was there for five years.

-oOo-

in 1996 - I went for an Agency Interview (i.e. the Agency had already 'sold' them on my experience, they just wanted to see if I'd 'fit in' with the team.) With the Children's clothing company Adams in Nuneaton.  The two managers there gave me a rundown of the team and asked me if I supported Derby County, what with me being from Derby.

I said 'No.'

They said, 'You can start on Monday'

-oOo-

A couple of years later, I had an interview for an electronics company, I think they were somewhere in Birmingham, but I can't remember their name and the only people in the room apart from me were the hiring manager, and the person currently doing the job I was interviewing for.  It seems that he had just been handed his notice, but they wanted him to sit in on the interviews and make sure the 'new guy' could do it as well as him.   What followed was an hour of torture, questions so technical and specific to that particular company that no one, other than the person asking them, had any idea of what the answers would be.

Needless to say, I didn't get that one, and I wasn't particularly bothered.

-oOo-

I had an interview for a civilian post with a 'Government Department' once too.  I still can't tell you which one it was, but I had to travel to the Dockyard at Chatham, in Kent, by train, because I didn't drive at the time.  The journey took three hours and it was raining when got there.  I was made to feel very welcome though. A very smartly dressed, you might even say uniformed, lady brought me a coffee and I was ushered into a nice wood-paneled room to be met by a gentleman with a completely epic moustache, who looked a little bit nervous.  He looked me up and down and said.

'Now, unfortunately, we missed a required skill off the advertisement for the vacancy - I don't suppose you speak fluent German do you?'

I shook my head, he thanked me for coming, and showed me to the door.

Of course, the job might not have required Fluent German, maybe he just didn't like the cut of my jib.

-oOo-

Talking of Germans, I was interviewed by a German chap once, for a job at a train company.  The interview was going really well, we were laughing and joking and he said that even though I wasn't the most qualified person that he'd spoken to, I was the best fit for the team, it all went a bit pear-shaped though when he said.

'Von last Kvestion... How many points do joo haff on jour drivink License?' (It was possible his Mother was Russian, I'm not sure)

'Erm... None?' I replied.

'Ach! joo are not right fur zis job, I do not trust peeples who do not haff at least one conviction fur den speedink.'

I started to reply, and he actually did that thing where you wave your index finger at someone and go 'Ah-ah-ah!' Then he just pointed at the door.

-oOo-

Then there was the interview for a local Steel Stockholder, the Agency called me and said that they were a casual dress company, so I wouldn't need to wear a suit and tie for the interview.  So I went in jeans, a smart shirt, and boots.  The two guys interviewing me were wearing T-shirts, ripped jeans and Reeboks.  The interview went well, we had coffee afterwards and talked about TV shows that we all liked and I waited for the Agency to call me back.

Later that afternoon I got the call to say that I didn't get the job because they thought that I was a little bit too casual.  I laughed when they went bust three months later, like a witch down a drain.

-oOo-

The funniest though I think was when I accidentally got a job with AT&T - I applied for a job as a Cable Monkey, connecting the flashing lights on computers together with bits of wire - Transposed a couple of numbers on the job identification part of the on-line application form (Put ATT34276435 instead of AT34726435 or something) and successfully got the job as the Due Diligence Manager for Europe, The Middle East and Africa... Was there for three months before they figured out I was making it up as I went along.

-oOo-

The most recent one was for my local University, the few, well chosen English words that they'd included in the job advert led me to believe that I could do the job.  The completely different words they used at the interview (including things about dodgy, esoteric, programming languages and sacrificing jellyfish headed ducks to the Dark Gods as a debugging tool) led me to believe that in fact, I couldn't - I'd pretty much convinced myself that there was no way that I was going to get the job, so when they asked:

'Do you have any questions for us?'

I replied, 'Actually yes, do you know what the average diameter of the moon is?'

Needless to say... Didn't get it

-oOo-

So remember kiddies, getting a job is 40% perseverance, 27% dumb luck, 18% hard work and 15% knowing someone who knows someone whose Uncle once had a naked picture of the guy who's interviewing you's Mum.

Or the ability to ask 'Would you like fries with that?'


(P.S. it's about 2,200 miles - If you were wondering)

Welcome to the world of...

.....THE FUTURE!

That's right kiddies, today I'd like to spout a page full of nonsense about one of the broadest subjects on which you're still allowed to have an opinion and sound as if you might know what you're talking about - The vast panoply of things that haven't happened yet.

I know that not everybody likes science fiction, but everyone likes 'cool' stuff surely?

Cool stuff like, oh... I don't know... Flying through space, faster than the speed of light, giving it the old pew-pew-pew whilst shouting 'Eat Plutonium death, you repulsive alien weirdos!'

Or being transported from your bed to the breakfast table by conveyor belt, having a tablet that tastes like bacon and another that tastes like eggs.  Jumping into a hollow glass tube and be lowered to the garage level where you sit on a floating disk and tell it where you want to go.

If things like this ever happen, they're not going to happen whilst anyone who's currently alive is still alive, at least I don't think so... But then I'm not a Futurist.

There are people out there who are paid to tell big companies what the future is going to be like so that they can develop products that will better fit into that world.

Apple employed a futurist who told them that the future will all be featureless black monolithic slabs, that would spring into life when you touch them. (Leading a lot of people to believe that he'd watched Stanley Kubrick's film 2001 the previous night and had eaten a bad chimichanga.)

You'd expect Apple to be able to employ warehouses full of bearded, flip-flop wearing 'visionaries' to tell them how the future should look, but what about the chaps in the little vans who mess about in that mysterious green box at the end of the road?

British Telecom have a whole raft of futurists, a couple of whom came up with a frankly brilliant idea ruined by being called, incredibly ominously I think, 'The Soul Catcher'.  One of its functions is to cheat death, you wear the device throughout your life and it records everything you experience. At the moment of death, or frankly, whenever you feel like it, you can download yourself into a new-born baby and have another three-score and ten ad infinitum.  I'm sure they've worked out all the moral implications of this, and we shouldn't worry at all.  In fact, I've just noticed that they've renamed the project 'Soul Catcher 2025' and I'm going to go ahead and assume that this means you'll be able to buy yourself one for Christmas in about twelve years time.

While we're on the subject of the Technological Behemoth that is BT.  One of their other research teams are (allegedly) looking at human microchipping.  Much like they currently do with dogs - They cite their reasoning as developing a cashless, passportless societly.  Where your identity could be confirmed by swiping you with something that perhaps looks like one of those wands that they wave at you if you make the metal detector go off at the airport whilst you're just wearing your pants.   What it's not for, they say, is to be able to tell where every, single person on the planet is at any specific time... Oh no, nothing like that.  And it's not to provide plot devices for action films where the bad guy figures out where your chip is, hacks off that part of your body and lives as you for the next few weeks.  We do quite enough of that already with those eye-scanning lock things that all the secret bases seem to have nowadays.  All you need to do in that case is find someone who has access and introduce them to the business end of a teaspoon.

Mind control devices are also seeping into our toyshops at the moment... I don't mean they control your mind, yet... I mean that there are toys that claim to be able to be manipulated by your mind.  Did any of you see the Gadget Show Japanese special where the very lovely Pollyanna Woodward wore a pair of brainwave controlled cat ears?  She could make the ears move by thinking, or at least, by simulating different moods.  There are helicopters you can fly with your mind, assault courses that you can move floating ping-pong balls through.  And I'm reliably informed that there is a Star Wars game where you learn how to use the Force (i.e. make something happen just by thinking about it)

There are your standard advances, that every can think about, things like 'Oh computers will definitely get smaller.' You're right, they will.  But how small will they get? A chap called Gordon Moore (Nearly typed Gordon Freeman then... There's a Freudian slip for you) who helped to found a little company called Intel, posited something which has come to be called 'Moore's Law'. This states that the amount of 'switches' on a given size of computer chip will double about every two years - So it gets twice as powerful.  This can't go on forever though, as there's a limit to how small things can get - Or is there?  Scientists have managed to create a switch (more properly called a transistor) out of a single atom of phosphorous that can be used in the next level of computer design, something called Quantum Computing.  You know how all the information is stored inside computers as millions of '1's and '0's? Well, Quantum Computing's just the same as that, but all the switches are set to '1' and '0' at the same time... (This theory originally brought to you by an Austrian bloke who considered sealing a cat in a box with some poison to prove that it was both alive and dead at the same time.)

(No, not THAT mad Austrian bloke, not the one that enjoyed some hardcore antisemitism, a different one - It must be something in the water.)

The thing to remember is that these are just the things we know about.  The military (Specifically a bunch of complete nutters called DARPA - Who gave us the Internet amongst other things) are working on stuff that would turn your ears green and make your socks set on fire.  For instance, those of you that remember the first Gulf war in 1991, remember seeing all those videos of the new F117 'Stealth Fighter'? Well, they started developing it in 1975, and it first flew in 1981, so they're VERY VERY good at keeping things secret.

Listen to the tin-hat brigade and they'll tell you about reverse engineered alien technology, mind control (the bad kind), genetic engineering of humans and boxes that can generate and control the weather.  Who knows?

What do I see in the immediate future?

Well, lunch initially, then the publishing of a wildly successful book by a new writer about airships and robots, that has a strange close-up picture of the author from his eyebrows down to his chest on the back, because he is fat and balding.

What do you think the next century holds? I'd be genuinely interested in finding out, leave me a comment, it's the way of the future...