The Reality of Digital TV

You wanna know why all us Americans are being forced into the digital television age?

Widgets.

Television advertisers want to put widgets on the t.v. that will help viewers interact with their products in a web-browser like environment. T.V. stations want to add things like stock tickers, weather widgets, you name it, into their broadcasts to keep people from surfing channels in search of more indepth or on-demand content. CBS has the sports report on it & you need weather? No need to change the channel, just look at the sidebar or pop-up panel activated by your universal remote!

Can you imaging pop-up commercials? You're sitting there, watching a show & bloop - pop-up tampon ad!

Yeah, I'm a little peeved at this whole thing. The US Government says 'yes, we're converting all televisions to digital' & 'you've got to pay for the box that will let you view the new, improved t.v. stations'. Granted, in order to watch t.v. in the first place, you have to buy a t.v. - but nothing says you can't go out & buy some $10 b/w thing with a dial on it at someone's yard sale or swapmeet.

WTF? That Is Not My Userpic!

Ok, somehow my extra-special 'Hello Cthulhu' user pic has been mysteriously replaced by unknown anime.

Which blows.

I don't know how my account suffered such a misfortune, but I can tell you this - this transgression has not gone unnoticed. Cthulhu is not pleased. He is only 6" tall, but He is a wrathful Elder Being, and He will take great care and delight in smiting you.

You may think it's funny. You may not believe in Cthulhu. But Cthulhu believes in you, and that is not the best place for you to be at the moment. You stepped over the line, whoever you are, and Cthulhu is watching.

(Edited for content: Ok, Cthulhu is back where He belongs. Apparently, IE7's cache is now a quivering mass of digital jelly.)

Decisions, Decisions

I've been looking into some possible career fields. I've got to admit, I'm not going to be content to be an IT Help Desk Tech for the rest of my working career, which means I need to somehow move forward. This is the problem with returning to school after you're 30 - by the time you've got enough school to qualify for what you're going to school to do, you're too old to be marketable.

- Paralegal
- Legal Secretary
- Network Administrator
- Network Engineer

These are the four things I've been looking at.

Paralegals ($37,000 - $55,000)... well, once you're a paralegal, you're a paralegal & that's pretty much it. There's no real room for advancement, only for gaining seniority or tenure or however paralegals look at that particular phenomenon of the cube-farm. A big advantage of switching to something like paralegal is that, unless you specialize in tax law or real property, the rules don't change often or much.

Legal Secretary ($35k - $52k) - I'm already a legal-secretary-in-training, only I'm called a 'Legal Office Assistant'. I don't make the $3 an hour more that the people w/the title get. I'd have to stick with the gov'ment jobs in order to keep making decent money.

Network Engineer ($48k - $76k) - these are the people who manage network systems. They make the decisions on what resources to allocate where, security levels, load balancing, project management, that kind of thing. I don't have the managerial or supervisory experience, and most places looking for a network engineer want someone w/5 - 10 years of network management experience. If I could land an entry level position in network management, I'd be 45 years old by the time I could get a real job w/the real title. Which is pretty close to retirement in that field. I get the feeling that my abilities to learn are slowly going to be outpaced by technology moving forward. Microsoft just announced Windows 7 Beta & I'm still trying to learn the ins & outs of WinXP. I haven't even worked on a Vista machine beyond loading WoW into Rob's laptop. I'm still using Word 2003 at work, but we've upgraded to Outlook 2007... The last time I worked on a network, it was Novell... Now everything's pretty much switched over to Windows network environments. It's intimidating to see how fast everything moves. Just a year or so ago I was hearing about dual-core processors... now it's already quad-cores. A Gig of memory seemed infinite - now I've got a Terabyte sitting on my desk.

Network Administrator ($40k - $60k) - these are the nuts 'n bolts guys. They map out how the information flows in a network & then run the cables. They set up routers & hubs & switches, troubleshoot communication problems & work off the designs laid out by the Network Engineers. Yes, the technology driving the network may advance rapidly but a hub is a hub, a switch is a switch, a router is a router & a cable is a cable.. or there may not even be any cables, in which case a WAP is a WAP.

I'm looking towards Network Admin. I need to come to some kind of decision soon unless I want to spend the next 20 years job-hopping & finally end up as a Wal-Mart greeter before I drop dead of a heart attack.

I guess I finally know what I want am going to be when I grow up...