So I go by Den. And on January 1, 2022 I retired. I worked at 2 Television stations over 40 years. Channel 5 I was a broadcast engineer (I pushed buttons… albeit the right ones to get paid) for 31.5 years. At which point I was laid off since they were hubbing to Atlanta (no unions). If you don’t know what that means from a broadcast station perspective: basically, the only people working at the TV station located in your town are a few administrative folks (much of the day-to-day stuff like payroll, billing, etc is done from the stations owners headquarters), some local sales people, newsroom folks who gather the news, and anchors who tell you the news, along with a skeleton engineering crew to keep it all going over the air. All the traffic and programming are also usually located at headquarters with so much content now-a-days being provided by syndication or networks and commercials come from a lot of national advertisers AND much of the collection of this content is for a network of stations owned and operated by the parent company. Then there are the people who push buttons to get the right things on the air [actually this is done a lot by computers now… but there is still plenty to do to earn your pay with so much that can go wrong from the device that spits out the content to getting it to your set/electronic device} who are hubbed to a location that can have multiple stations to control by one person at one time. Easy peasy right? What happens when one of the 16 stations you are operating needs to do breaking weather news and another wants to do a local live breaking news story. All the planned programming and commercials have to be paused or pre-empted. And each station has its own protocols. It is much cheaper for the owners to run things this way, but it reeks havoc with blood pressure among other medical conditions such stress generates. I know because after being laid off (with full pay and benefits for over a year… which the corporation changed after this event), I found myself working for another local station who was in the process of being a hub for that corporation’s group of TV stations. I walked in working 6 stations, then there were 16 that were run on the overnight shift. I worked at this second station for about 8.5 years. And when I found out I could afford to retire a bit early, did.
But during my layoff I worked hard at setting up a website creating business, along with offering writing services. You see 17 years while I was with the first company I was the editor of their monthly in-house newsletter. LOVED doing this. I was told I was a natural writer again and again, even though having been there a while I knew how to get folks to write articles for the average 12 page issue each month. As a “Web Assistant” I built and maintained about 6 websites. For one I was the ghost writer. But since I was new, and never charged a client for things I was learning (practicing on their site) I didn’t make enough money. I found out I am not an entrepreneur.
One thing all my jobs had in common, at least over the past 20-25 years was computers. I seem to have taken to them like fish to water, or as us geeks would say like a diode to a motherboard. I am actually proud of that moniker. The other thing I am proud to be is a rescue mom. I have had the pleasure of rescuing 12 dogs over my lifetime. ALL different breeds (mostly mixed) and temperaments (Bonnie was the only dog smarter than me… I’d bet smarter than most humans, check out her bio on the main page of my website).
I have missed writing so I will play around with topics for a while and maybe get into some sort of volunteering. AFTER I get much needed work and “oh that can wait until I retire” upgrades.
Since I don’t want this to be a business, please forgive me but comments will not be taken anywhere on this site. There is nothing to join or create accounts for. Just read (if you like) and post your opinions on social media. You can find me on FaceBook under Den Pikey. And as Lily Tomlin use to say “And that’s the Truth-th-th-th-th!”
I post online on Facebook and on Twitter. My online avatars are as follows…
