Dystopia

Dream Jobs

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It's weird. I left Microsoft a year ago this month but as memories go it feels like it was all a dream, like someone else's memory. I'm not entirely sure why this is but I have my suspicions. I retain pin-sharp memories of much earlier jobs than Microsoft, so it's less biological, more psychological. I joined Microsoft immediately after what had been the single most depressing and distressing period of my working life. In super-short form; I started my career in the cold hard world of late 1980's technology sales, took a shine to selling Pegasus accounting software to small businesses, did well as a salesman, joined Pegasus in a sales role in 1995, progressed to being managing director there in 2003, had an absolute blast and then Pegasus' parent company was a acquired by the private equity backed Infor in 2006.

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The Best PowerPoint Slide. Ever.

in ,

"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely" - Edward Tufte.

So, if PowerPoint is evil; the fightback begins here. Think of this as a wholesome, good karma form of industrial sabotage. All that is required is a careful (furtive) insertion of this image into various PowerPoint presentation decks belonging to either 1. You (excellent place to start) 2. Your co-workers, 3. Your boss, 4. Your competitors, 5. Your parent teacher association organiser, 6. Anyone who comes to 'present' to you at your place of work.

This should create the required disturbance in the PowerPoint forcefield and, with a little luck, force them to let go of the wheel and actually talk to you as humans without the crutch of 78 slides to make a point that should take only 3.

Please do come back and let me know how you get on with it.

*No money back guarantee and I'm not liable if you lose your job, the respect of your peers, your child's place at school, your home is at risk if you do not keep up mortgage repayments... etc. etc.

PPS. My trackbacks are not working, otherwise it would have been obvious to me sooner that this post has since been covered in the latest Geek News Central

podcast

. #blush...

PPPS. It did also occur to me that not every projector is running in English, but I don't know / haven't checked what 'No Signal' is in other languages. Also, if you wanted to be very accurate/convincing, you could copy specific projector manufacturer graphics and logos into a variety of different No Signal messages for various projectors. But that's getting too anal. Indeed, it would also be fantastically ironic to eventually end up with a multi-slide deck of countless 'No signal' slides in various languages and brands. Excellent recursion.

This was just about the idea, not so much the execution - which is easy to customise on your own for your own needs.

Moving Parts

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It's amazing how few moving parts occupy our lives compared with twenty years ago. If you know the meaning of 'Auto-Reverse' in a further twenty years from now, you'll probably be regarded as some kind of ancient relic and people will cross to ther other side of the street when they see you coming. Then one day much further into the future, the collective will eventually forget all it ever knew about mechanical engineering and, as with the ancient Pyramids, future-people will variously conjour preposterous explanations for how early civilization in the late twentieth century was able to listen to both sides of the "C-60 Compact Cassette" without removing or changing the orientation of the cassette itself.

Shortly after this a race of horse riding, rifle-toting monkeys with a prediliction for black leather waistcoats and various other faux gothic accoutrements will suddenly emerge onto the scene.