Next, I took a peek at some popular youTube video documentaries, such as George 4 Title. I can do better. The guy props a camera on his desk and tries to wing statistics and political commentary without rehearsal or a teleprompter. Who does he think he is? Me? I wound up reviewing six of his posts and it’s bad. Could I do better? Yes, but I would have to make money at it from the get-go. It has me thinking.Today is a type of anniversary for me. Yet for some reason, I’m grumpy. I looked up what employees at my old job had to say about the company. Hey, hey, all kinds of them are now reporting extremes of the very conditions I rebelled against before I quit the place. It only took my co-workers another 15 years to clue in:
1. Uneducated management chosen for cronyism and connections.
2. Micro-management to the degree of health-affecting stress levels.
3. Company “we own you” attitude.
4. Severe favoritism, nepotism, and pro-minority practices.
5. Benefits that exempt single white male workers.
I had to also smile at the union pay scales. I didn’t follow the annual negotiations, but in today’s dollars, I made around $90,000 per year. I’m shocked to learn the craftspeople (like I was) now average a piddling $49,000 per year. I’d say the phone company has really gone downhill. I set about to find out when I last earned such a small amount, but upon checking my inflation calculator, the lowest paying union job I’ve ever had in my life paid, in today’s money, the equivalent of $60,748 annually. I’d say I got out just in time.
Then today I read a student’s essay on dyscalculia and nearly gagged on my decaffeinated orange pekoe tea and almond biscotti. What drivel, “The numbers danced in front of me”, says Mr. Poor-poor Baby.
Learning disability my eye! Everyone has subjects they can’t learn easily, it’s called being alive. I’m terrible at math but do you see me begging for money? I don’t understand trigonometry or calculus and I know very well what giving up is all about when the knowledge is not worth the effort. That’s completely a different ball of wax than saying society should pay up every time I call it quits.
Listen up “learning disability” wimps: I go through the exact same process as you do every time I try to learn something new. These people aren’t putting out the effort because they’ve found the easy way out: the sympathy ticket. I know exactly, did I say exactly, because I mean exactly, how much work, did I say work, that it takes to learn something new and complicated. They don’t deserve any extra and they’ve never had one shred of difficulty that I don’t have every day. What makes them think they require more comfort than I’ve ever known?
And the newest Russian tank, the T-90? A copy of the Abrams, pure and simple. The newest arms shows featuring the T-90 are orchestrated by the Bolshoi opera people. I once tried to build a tank with my Meccano set. I think the company went broke because you never could build the model pictured on the box with the parts inside.
Hidden here at the bottom is the report of a significant turning point in my career. I met with Trent at the courthouse and it looks like things are indeed going my way. I just may make Colorado yet. The good news has to do with long-term financing. Remember, I did not set out in life to get rich, rather to not slave my existence away paying the recurring monthly bills. Rich would have been nice, but it would have required resources I could only dream of before I was 30. And as I’ve said before, don’t preach to me about college for I know student loans are only enough to go to school even when one is so poor that school alone isn’t enough.
ADDENDUM
Here’s another thing you never saw before, but that’s why you keep coming back. Does this screen shot seem vaguely familiar? If you are a TV watcher, at least some of it should. It is software used by closed captioning operators. And it is on sale for $7,900. The stenography training is two to four years to get up to a “gold” speed of 225 wpm which the schools say only a “very small percentage” of students ever achieve. Those that do make a boatload of money.
Strange I can’t find my blog about the steno machine from the old Thrift. One was donated but we couldn’t figure out if it was broken or not. Nobody knew how to work it. I fruitlessly tried to find some basic tutorials on-line. I’ve received advice it may be lucrative to learn this trade so let us consider the price.According to Court Reporting Institute of Dallas
“The cost of tuition, fees and books for a student who completes the onsite day college court reporting program in ten quarters will be approximately $37,259.00; and the cost of tuition, fees, and books for a student who completes the onsite night college in twenty quarters will be approximately $46,323.00. The cost of tuition, fees, and books for a student who completes the full-time online program in ten quarters will be approximately $38,463.00; and the cost of tuition, fees, and books for a student who completes the online part-time program in 5 years will be approximately $47,783.00.
The Internet compresses all prices to non-competitive levels so don’t expect to save by shopping around. Ten quarters is 2.5 years off the job market, plus the software fee, machine rental, and lab fees. There’s staying alive at $1,200 per month which doesn’t sound like fun, but I’ve done it. Nonetheless, it would be wise to plan for a working retirement no matter how well off you are today.
Most of the boomers edging up to retirement are particularly useless when it comes to real-life job and survival skills. I will discuss this option with Trent. I am appalled at the functional illiteracy of most TV captionists and believe he will confirm this as the case (ha-ha), albeit at a different level, at the courts. Imagine the demand for a person who could manage the full 225 wpm with perfect grammar, terminology, punctuation, and knows the vocabulary. Hmmmm. The machine currently used for teaching is the Wave Student Writer, shown here at $1,995.
One should contemplate advances with voice recognition software in five years while factoring in that it’s been ages since they said that would become a big deal. The stenograph is a proven system and there is work other than the courts. Recall LA in the 90’s when Al Vicki wanted me to type out his script “longhand” as he spoke. I was just fast enough to manage that.The undercurrent here concerns working retirement. Sure, I like music, but how much have I [really] made [at it] in the past five years? The glory days may be gone there, too. To fail at stenography, I would have to lose manual dexterity and mental alacrity to a degree that would bring quality of life into question. The fact is, someone like me could likely continue as a writer for another thirty years if need be. It beats midnight shift stocking soup cans at Winn/Dixie.
