Paul Spalding

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:56:38 GMT

There's a good article here on the craven attitude of ' the west ' to Islamism by Sam Harris.

Seven Deadly Sins.

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:45:23 GMT

Anybody seen the news today?

Apparently the Catholic Church has updated the Seven Deadly Sins to include: Drug Trafficking, Polluting and Stem Cell Research.

What a bunch of fuckwits!

Still, made me giggle.

The Job!

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:18:23 GMT

Some, few, of you may be wondering whether I got the job. I found out last monday (25 of Feb.), but I haven't got round to the write up. And no it's not because I've been slack. Ok, it's partly because I've been slack. The first couple of days I just couldn't be arsed. But it's mostly because my PC is playing up. My monitor keeps conking out on me within about two minutes of booting up, which is really annoying. I'm writing this entry on tya's laptop.
.
Anyway. No I didn't get the permanent Team Leader job. I had a talk with one of the managers when I got back to work on Monday and he told me the news. He said that I had a strong interview and that it was a near tie between me and another candidate, but they decided that the other guy slightly better matched what they wanted (bastard!).

Now the slightly odd bit. It turns out that the advertised positions didn't include the Team Leader vacancy on Wholesale (the department I work on) and they want me to stay on as temporary Team Leader on a rolling monthly basis. From what was said it sounds like they want me in the position for the rest of the year. So I didn't get the job but I'm still going to be doing the job on a semi-permanent basis. Go figure!

Not sure why they've done things this way, but fuck it I'm still getting paid for it. I don't have quite the same security but I can live with that.

So overall a mixed result.

Oh yeah and did anyone feel that earthquake! :)

It's my birthday

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:32:31 GMT

So we're back to that time of year again. It's my birthday! One year older but not one whit wiser. So it goes.

I wanted to book today off but I couldn't get it. But I've booked the next three days off. Rather indulgent, but fuck it! I fancy a break.

Haven't got an answer about the job yet. So I'll probably find out tomorrow, a guy from work will pass on the letter for me.

The estimated date for the delivery of my books from Amazon was today, but they've not arrived. Bollocks!

I'm not the only one with a birthday today. It's the_gremlin's bithday as well and he's older than me :-)

Happy Birthday Phil.

interview, the day of

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:24:18 GMT

Had the interview today. It seemed to go ok. Could've been better, no doubt, but it wasn't a disaster. Don't know how well I did relative to the other applicants of course, so I don't know how it will work out. Sould get an answer tomorrow or Wednesday.

Since I was an internal applicant they started by asking me for a quick run down of my time at technicolor and what departments I'd worked in etc. Then they did stengths, weakness, what I thought I'd done well during my time as temporary Team Leader, what I'd learned and what I could do better etc. Fairly standard stuff I guess.

The final question was: If your best friend had to describe you in five words, what would those five words be? I wasn't expecting that, although I probably should've been, so I went momentarily blank. I managed to get five out in the end though. I nearly included "tosser" and "slacker", but I thought that probably wasn't a good idea given the situation.

Now I wait.

Thanks to the_gremlin for the advice. Cheers Phil.

interview cont.

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:57:50 GMT

I'm trying to think of what to expect on Monday for the interview.

They'll probably want me to sell myself, ick! I hate selling myself. I wouldn't mind selling my body, though I don't suppose I'd get any buyers, but selling myself just doesn't come easily.

What kind of questions should I expect?

Any advice?

interview

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:13:16 GMT

Some of you may know that I did a stint as Temporary Team Leader at work last year and I applied for the permanent position when it came up this year.

On Tuesday I went to a workshop/assessment thing where a group of us did a number of "exercises". First one was to pick five people for a lifeboat out of fifteen survivors of a ship wreck. We were given descriptions of the fifteen and we had to defend our choices. The second involved building a tower out of lego and the third was a presentation on the duties and responsibilities of a Team Leader. There were eleven of us at the workshop of which six would be short-listed for an interview.

I've just found out today that I've got an interview. I'm quite pleased about this. I would've been really pissed off if I hadn't. If I don't get the job that's unfortunate but if I hadn't got an interview it would have been a real kick in the teeth. The interview is on Monday.

In other news it's my birthday next week so I've just ordered a couple of books from Amazon. They're dry philosophical books that only a few deranged individuals like me have any interest in. One about the philosopher Robert B. Brandom (subtitled: analytic pragmatist - bastard stole my idea ! :-). The other is about non-foundationist, contextualist epistemology. Yeah, I know, exciting huh? Bet you can't wait to borrow them!

dimwittery

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:37:25 GMT

This was taken from Charles Stross' Blog, found on some internet chat session arguing against evolution:

"One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it."

Yes, they do know about it! It's called the Sun! *bangs head on desk bangs head on desk bangs head on desk*

Charles has a few other examples of dimwittery over on his blog at:

www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/01/social_attitudes_of_our_times.html

The mind boggles!

Along with other interesting stuff:

www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html

Bob

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:41:35 GMT

Robert Anton Wilson is dead! He died on the 11/1/2007. I knew he'd been ill for a while with post-polio symptoms but I hadn't checked his website for a while. I'd mentioned him to Mark a few days ago when we were talking about longevity research (Bob had an early interest dating from the sixties) and the film 23 ( Bob started the whole 23 thing as part of his Guerrilla Ontology), so I thought I'd check up and found out that he was dead. There was a memorial for him on the 18th of Feb.

Bob was one of the funniest and most interesting writers I know. He hadn't been producing much recently because off his illness and now he's gone and done a Frank Herbert on me leaving me with a unfinished series of books!

I'm sad to hear he's died and it's a shame that the whole longevity thing didn't happen early enough for him to benefit from it.

See you at the Omega Point Bob!

Long live Robert Anton Wilson!

Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!