So Ben Hall tagged me with the latest blog me, appealing to my ego by calling me a "great presenter". Which mollified me somewhat; as I'd seen other people I know not tag me. That's the problem with these memes it reminds me of gym where you're chosen last (no offense Ben!)

So let's see;

  • I'm adopted; a certain person keeps saying that my parents got me from the pound. I have no real interest in tracing my biological parents but it did cause problems when I was getting security cleared for the Foreign Office; three months into the project (and two months of wandering around the building) I had a call from a civil servant in the clearance offices. "It says here you're adopted". "Yes". "Well can you tell me your biological parents' names". "Errr no, I was born before the law was changed to allow access to that information so I don't know". "Oh. Oh dear, that might complicate things. I am embarrassed to ask you know". "You realise I'm on site anyway?" "Oh, right, well I'd better push this through". I get the feeling somewhere that there is a file marked "uncooperative". Mind you that might not be limited to my security clearance ...
  • I have no immediate plans to install Vista. Most people who know me know that I'm a complete version slut; I run the latest version of everything. However as Visual Studio and SQL Server don't run well, if at all under the new OS and Toshiba are utterly pants about providing the latest drivers for anything other than the business orientated (read "expensive") laptops I don't have any drivers available for my laptop. Bummer. I did end up using it at the last DeveloperDay when I borrowed a Microsoft employee's laptop. It was very, very confusing.
  • I procrastinate way too much. I tend to leave preparing my presentations till the last minute (the last 48 slides DeveloperDay presentation was started, and finished two days before the event).
  • I'm slowly doing an Open University degree in Computing and Systems Practice. This was more to fill my spare time than for work purposes. My problem is I panic in exams, so my assignments scores tend to float around the 90s, with my exam scores in the 60s. Goodness knows what class of degree I'll get at the end of it all.
  • I worked in porn (yes, I am well aware of the image in your head now). Not like that, but a couple of companies back we did streaming media; in fact we were Europe's largest streaming company. We hosted the Kylie underwear advert, all the Cheeky Girls videos, the pre-release of a Robbie Williams album and lots and lots of music. And porn. We had a studio in Commercial Street in London and we were approached by one of the satellite porn channels who wanted to do their live phone in show and broadcast it on air and on the net simultaneously as you could show more on the net. So every Friday night we'd have three or four girls wandering around the offices in just heels and a dressing gown. It was rather surreal; they were all very nice, there was even the stereotype of a girl putting herself through college. It was rather weird to have them lean over you wearing just tassels asking how it all worked. As development manager I attended the first evening to make sure everything went off without a hitch. I was sitting watching the stats and the feed and whilst I watched I uttered "They can't wear fishnets, look at the moirĂ© pattern it creates. Everyone teased me that all I noticed was the interference.

And now to choose my victims. Step up Andrew, Sarah, Chris, Simon and Jen.