I may have mentioned this before. I'm old. Well, technically old in that, when I first produced this web page, I had been in IT for some 37 years. Mentally, I'm not sure I made it much past my stroppy teenage years, but that's another story.

I started out in the days of the mainframe. Actually, I still fondly remember the first machine (they were 'machines' then, not computers), the IBM System 370/155 , a monster that took up two rooms a lot of air conditioning and the first three years of my working life.

I never wanted to get in to computers. I wanted to be a lumberjack - no, sorry, I wanted to be an electronics technician working for the BBC. I had an interview in London and was cruelly rejected so, when I was offered an interview for a programming job just down the road from where I lived, I went for it. No idea what programming was, but what the hell, it was local.

I failed the aptitude test. Devastating. I had never failed an aptitude test at school.

So, since I was local, they interviewed me for an operators job (that was Ok, I didn't know what that was either). I passed and started work at Sun-Alliance.

To compress the next 35+ years... I taught my self Cobol, then S/370 Assembler, the APL, became an MVS and VM systems programmer. Made redundant. Became a DOS/VSE and VM systems programmer. Hated the job. Became a VM/MVS/VSE systems programmer for a consultancy. Spent my life "moving systems" between data centres and travelling from Birmingham to Manchester and Liverpool. Became diabetic. Moved to another consultancy and spent my life travelling to Peterborough and Aberdeen.

Taught myself 80386 assembler and wrote a subset of DCF for the TRS-80. Taught myself C an got a job with an ex-colleague. Poached back to a previous employer. Added CICS and DL/1 to the list of things I supported. Eventually went back to the ex-colleague once he got the company back on its feet.

Worked there for 15 years developing a business modelling tool. Made redundant. Dark times.

Joined a financial company maintaining their VB6 application. Dead end job so moved to a different company maintaining their mortgage application. Promised promotion failed to materialise so left to join a small company (big mistake) in the housing business. Ended up working for a control freak. Been there, done that, not again, so went back to the mortgage company with the promise of seniority to follow quickly. Shock horror, it didn't.

Poached back to the ex-colleagues who had put their all in to clearing the company debits and rebuilding the company. Got to admire that when so many organisations are so ready to go bankrupt and screw everyone around them.

And that where I sit today. Ok, maybe not as compressed as I could have made it, but those are the essential points.