Newer Resume (2024)
Old Mini CV – 20070131
People tell me that I was one of the pioneers of British Internet but a lot of this happened in the 1980’s and I have mentally blocked it all out. I can, however, claim to be the first person in the country to offer free public Internet access which was in the 1990’s when hairstyles were less embarrassing. I worked for many years in Internet security, spent a few years tracking down hackers and created one of the UK’s first dot-coms years before anyone had heard of the Internet which was a bad move since we could never find anyone willing to pay us for anything. After finishing off the last crate of Champagne there, I joined the team who built BT’s first Internet service before eventually ending up as BT’s main customer security person which meant I told government, banks, supermarkets and other such wonderful organisations what to do only to have them completely ignore me; still, despite sacking me three times during my time there, they paid me bucket loads of cash so for a while it was ok by me.
I formed a couple of companies of my own, was sued for all of the aforementioned bucket loads of cash by Harrods and British Airports because I owned harrods.com and baa.com and decided to retreat to the relative safety of teaching people at Middlesex University about security, risk, terrorism and the best ways to steal things from people like my previous clients and to stop people like me stealing things from them. As the result of an investigation into false-qualifications I have tonnes of degrees, phd’s and a couple of MBA’s. On paper, I am overqualified for nearly every job in the world. My CV would also be a lot more impressive if I was allowed to list the jobs I have been offered but turned down for various (usually ethical) reasons. I eventually retired from the rat-race to start to write more and I am currently at the “I have a title. What more do you want?” stage of 4 books. Technically this is something of a lie since I only have a title for 2 of them. I am at my best writing 55 word fiction stories which suit my pathetic attention span wonderfully.
I once accidentally spent a year as a text message girl of the sort you see advertised in the back of Men’s Magazines of questionable morality; mostly because the job ended up more interesting than writing the expose article into the business which was the original plan. Somewhere along the line, I have been a hacker catcher, a motivational trainer, a pornography site manager, a shonky lawyer and an executive member of The Professional Bodyguard Association; I built lots of the now broken bits of the Channel Tunnel, was systems manager for most of Portugal and as a photographer I made enough money to keep me in Tesco Value Beans for life. I can lay claim to inventing both the end-game in online games and the downloadable ringtone (for which I should probably be shot). I own and look after Britain’s longest serving lifeboat, I want to breed camels in Canada and I run one of the biggest Freecycle groups in the country. None of these items are related nor particularly relevant. I find it somewhat odd that I have never been called for interview for any job that I have ever had to submit a CV for. If anyone had ever told me that honesty was the best policy I may present this as empirical evidence against that statement.
