NEW JOB: Well, this last week I did something I didn't think I was gonna be doing again. There's no script for this episode. This is me just hanging out here in the basement talking Well, whatever's on my mind. So this week On Tuesday, I sat down with my workplaces HR and had an exit had an exit interview. And you know, where I've been working, they prefer I don't mention where I'm working, so I'm gonna I'm gonna stick to that. I got like a week left over there, and I'm not willing to burn bridges or anything like that. They've they've been good to me. But for those of you who don't know, my name's Tyler. I'm a Broadcast engineer in the upper Midwest. And the last year or so, I've been more in the IT side of things. I'm what they call a broadcast network engineer now. I deal with all the IP type stuff, making sure the the audio payload, the video payload, because we do both television and radio where I'm at. That everything gets from point A to point B, basically. A a very broad oversimplification of it, you know. But it was a lot less field work and I was sitting more in front of a computer day to day. And there's nothing wrong with that. Some people thrive in that environment. They like being left alone, just sitting in front of the computer and doing their job. Me, on the other hand, I am fairly certain. you know. I've never been officially diagnosed, but I'm fairly certain I'm one of those autistic ADHD people. And the reason I say this, it's not just me talking out of my ass. It's my my oldest, you know, he's severely autistic in ADHD. And, you know, he struggled up through school and we've been through that whole process. He's in his senior year now. That kid is doing amazing. in this last year. He has come out of a shell. He's advocating for himself. He's about to start it's an internship, but it's a paid internship. So a job. He's starting it and he's come a long way. So I'm sure he doesn't listen to my show, but if he does, I want him to know that I am absolute absolutely one hundred percent so proud of him, man. But all the challenges he went through growing up Throughout school, looking at everything as a whole, over his 17 years of life, I see myself a lot in him. And when I was a kid, they didn't know what that was. They they put me in the class of SLD, which stood for specific learning disability. However, Nobody could ever tell me what that specific learning disability was. It was just that I'm different. So we're gonna put you over here in the other group with the other different kids that we don't know what to do with. I didn't learn at the same pace as everybody else. I didn't pick up on the same things as everybody else. I I I'll tell you this, I can't sit there and read a manual from front to back and remember anything. It I'll tell you this too. I if I read one page, even one page, I may not make it through that page and remember what was at the top of that page that I read. Because I've got about five to six different conversations going on in my head. There's noise that sounds like a garbage disposal. There's a dog howling. There's music blasting in the background. I got a lot of noise up there. So I usually don't remember what I read. I'm a visual learner. I'm a hands-on learner. If I do it. Once or twice it sticks. If I see it done and somebody explains to me, shows me why I'm doing it and why it's important, it sticks to me. So I learned differently. And the point that I'm getting to, I'm I'm getting there, was that sitting in front of a computer day to day, drudging through support tickets, configuring switches and stuff. It wasn't enjoyable to me. I thought, at the time, when it opened up, a lot of people thought I'd be a good candidate to shoe in for it, because, I have built some cool tools with the help of AI, some audio logging, internal audio logging tools that we still use over there now that records our various streams from the Innovicses, from Barrackses, anything that spits out an HTTP stream, like an ice cast type stream with a mount or A shout cast stream, anything that's an MP3 or an AAC stream, this thing can record it using liquid soap on an Ubuntu server and chop it up every hour. you know, I build or find a solution for things that I can't find elsewhere, or if there is a solution for it out there, it's too expensive, so I gotta brew up something internally that solves the problem. I was doing that, but while I was in field, because I did field engineering at the place where I'm at from two thousand and one up to two thousand and twenty-five, August of twenty five, and then I switched to this other role. You know, cause when I was at the current place for the five years or so doing field engineering, I had done field engineering previously at the last place at Midwest Family, from twenty eighteen up to twenty twenty one. So it was continuing that. So I'm like, all right, I wanna do something a little different. This, the the networking side of the business for our group was a lot more enterprise grade than I guess you could say a lot of you know about a lot of radio or or broadcasting companies today. You know, we've got Cisco switches, you know, the Catalyst switches, we've got the Nexus switches, we've got Cisco routers. We've got, really bang on heavy duty 11 gig, six gig microwave equipment. We've got all kinds of stuff. Public broadcasting money. And so when the spot opened up, a lot of people said I should apply for it, go look at it. And I'm like, you know, I do really want to do that because I'm excited to build, you know, learning something different. I really want to learn the networking side of it. I quickly found out that. Well, as much as I know, I'm I'm like I know enough to be dangerous in networking. I know the basics. There's definitely people on the networking side at our place that can run circles around me. But I liked it. What happened is though over months and months of i it got tedious. I was doing the same thing all the time. I don't want to say glorified IT, but a lot of support tickets helping out various regions, which is fine. Helping out our regions and partners and ever technicians out in the field, that was fine. It was just a lot of the same issues over and over, and I don't know. It it it just wasn't for me. And I had an opportunity at the place where I'm at where I didn't have to move. Well, I'm sorry. Didn't have to move jobs, didn't have to change jobs. I would have had to move for the spot that someone suggested I should go to. Our director of field engineering said, Hey, we've got a spot opening up in Wausau, Wisconsin. Got a manager up there that's leaving, got another technician up there who's retiring. we basically the f the director of field engineering has been trying to get me back out in the field since I left. a ma amazing guy. I don't he's got my back and I really appreciate it because he sees the passion and the I guess my worth ethic because I I'll tell you, I am so passionate. I love what I do. I love making radio work. I love making television work. When I can put the puzzles together of an air chain and make it sound good and flip the switch or Whatever, setting up logic, all that kind of stuff. I like doing that. Well, he was disappointed I left the field. So he's been trying to get me back. And he figured, hey, there's a spot up here, you can go do that. Now, nobody at the organization knew that I was looking elsewhere. And I really wasn't looking. I didn't go out there looking for another opportunity. The opportunity approached me. I don't know if they would have a problem with me. saying who it was, but let's just say another broadcaster reached out back in August of this year. And wanted to know if I would contract engineer for them. And you know, at first I didn't want to. I said, No, I'm happy where I'm at. So, fast forward three Years later. hang on. Let me back up. My mind's kind of all over the place. Originally this company reached out three years ago. I said no. I guess I wasn't ready yet. You know, I was still new at the other place. I didn't want to up and move somewhere else yet, I guess. I don't know. But I told them no. No thanks. You know, I'm happy where I'm at. And then in August of this year, they approached me again. There we go. So we clarify the timeline here. Approached me again, wanting to know if I would contract the engineer for him, 'cause they just recently purchased a few stations down in Iowa, so I'm assuming maybe that's what that was for. some other stuff on this side of the state, this company's in Wisconsin, expanding into Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Upper Peninsula, Michigan. You know, they're growing. They're doing stuff, which is neat. This is very exciting. Well, they approached me about contract engineering. And not so much not liking what I'm doing, but I wasn't enjoying it. Yeah, even my wife said one time when I came home, it doesn't seem like you enjoy what you're doing as much as when you were in the field. So which caused me to look inward and go, Yeah, I wasn't really Yeah, I'm not really enjoying this. But things progressed, got worse this year because you know, we've got a couple of partner groups. that we work with. And unfortunately, one of them, no, fortunately, unfortunately, it's unfortunate for the guys who work there because the engineers at a partner organization they got laid off. They got or let let go. Things consolidated, regroup however you want to word it. I I see it as we took over their engineering and they let their guys go. Their guys had opportunities to come over to our group. Cultures were different. Lot of them didn't want to. I get it. I'm not worrying about that. But we took on their engineering and they're set up completely different than where I had been before. So, you know, we were a Nutanix shop. They were a VMware shop. They're a Tello shop. We didn't really do that at our sites. So we took care of the transport and transmitter facilities, sites, towers, all that stuff. They took care of more studios and the content side of it. So now we're doing the whole picture, right? But we're working on two different, two very different plants. for those of you who work in radio broadcast engineering, you know what I mean by plants. So they're using different equipment than us. They're using different procedures than us. They're using different, you know, they got different policies. Even the communication, they're using Slack or using Teams, everything so different between the two. And it's still very early on in that process of them of us taking over their engineering, but it's become so overly complex and so. The workload doubled because now we're trying to change how they did everything or trying to fix things to how our organization thinks they should be done. But we're not really we're not really simplifying the process. We're not trying to do this what do you call it? symmetry. I don't know. Trying to trying to make everything I I guess I can't think of of the way to describe this. So I'm I feel like I'm just talking in circles right now. But The other the other problem was and I don't I don't mean this to sound like I'm bitter, but communication was a problem. We didn't always feel us in the department I worked in that we were included on a lot of the technical decisions. A lot of us felt like the support staff to a couple of individuals. and they kind of ran the show. when I'm on call and I get a call from our knock, and they're saying, hey, we've got a couple sites here that are flapping. that's the internet connections up and down. Would you take a look at it? Sure. So of course I do my thing. I let our team know on on Teams, you know, I say, Hey, got a call from so and so at the knock, and they said, These sites are flapping, looking into it. My boss gets involved, the network architect gets involved and start driving the show. direct the meal on how to do things. And and these other people, they weren't on call. I was the one on call, so I felt I was ultimately responsible for it. And this is just one case, it happens a lot. That was like, Man, come on, guys. I know how to do this. I know how to troubleshoot. I know how to gather the notes. I'll open a ticket. I'll let the knock know what I found. Also, it was out of our control. There wasn't anything we could do about it. It was a lumen problem. I fire a lumen ticket up. You wait. Luckily, we got redundant connections. We got other circuits or cellular providers. They were all right. But the fact that I didn't have trust, I didn't have autonomy to make decisions. And I get, obviously some things you got to run up up the chain, especially depending on what level you're at. I get that. But when I'm on call, and it's a basic troubleshooting, see why a circuit's down, why your tunnels went down, that kind of stuff I can do without any interference from anybody. I don't need someone directing me who I should give updates to or what I should do with the ticket. I don't need that. So little things like that stack up over time. And and when the other company reached out and they're a smaller engineer in shop and they're doing stuff with really cool tools. they're utilizing AI for the good. All right, nobody freak out because it's AI, but they're they're thinking out of the box on stuff, and they're ran by a guy who came from the tech sector, but not a traditional radio guy. So you got fr you got some fresh ideas in there. And they're doing a lot of their own internal tools and building some cool stuff and really really focusing on community driven radio. Like their focus at this group is purchase, you know, stations in smaller markets and fix them back up because unfortunately a lot of these older radio sites were let go. You know, over time they've just overgrown, didn't get taken care of, the tower's in bad shape, the transmitter's in bad shape, the the entire air chain's in bad shape, they got old consoles, whatever it is. Well, in this group is going in, gutting them, replacing the gear, and you know, leaning in hard on audio over IP, pretty scrappy little operation. I like it. And one of the things I had was excuse me, if I'm gonna do this, I need some level of autonomy. And it's not that I don't like working with a team I just if there's a if there's an issue, just let me work on it. Just let me troubleshoot it. I don't need the entire department. We don't need to have a a slack huddle every time something dings. speaking of, you know, things dinging like Slack or Teams, I kid you not, those noises, those notification sounds from those two apps give me anxiety at this point because we have so much noise in our organization. So much friggin' noise that when that ding goes off over there, I instantly like tense up. And that's not good for your mental health either. If every time that phone dings, you immediately your whole spine, everything just freaking tightens up. It's not good for you mentally. And that was the problem. I was coming home mentally exhausted a lot of times. Wanted to check out when I was getting home. And as I've mentioned before on previous episodes, I've mentioned it already in this episode. I love this business. I love putting an air chain together. I love working on transmitters. I love working with processors, the whole air chain. I'll I love it. I love radio. I think radio still has a really good opportunity to fill gaps that things like Spotify or Apple Music or title or any these other music services can't. We can still do local. We can still serve our communities. We can still be there when things go wrong, like wildfires or hurricanes or snowstorms. We can still be there helping our communities. And I think radio as a whole is going to get smaller. It's going to get more niche, I guess you could say, but I think that's gonna work in our benefit. Mm you know, maybe the future isn't hundred thousand watt flamethrowers. Maybe it's more like local not LPFM per se, but you know, more more geo targeted to use more modern tech terms, I guess. So this new company, they're they're Doing that, which is very exciting. And I get to go back out in the field, but I also get to work on modern tools, designing internal tools. so I get to do a little bit of both worlds. A little bit of IT, a little bit of field engineering. So I'm very excited about it. So I accepted a position with them. Back in early October, you know, over the course of a few months, back and forth. They gave me the offer. My wife and I, we'd already talk about it. Insurance isn't quite as good, but nothing can beat the insurance of where I'm going away from. But the new group made it worthwhile, I think. Gotta do a little more traveling, which is just fine. But when I'm not traveling, I can work from home. Got my little home set up in the basement. So November ninth, in just under a week of when this episode publishes, I'm Changing things up. At forty years old, I will tell you, I am nervous. I am scared to change jobs at this point in my life, especially because we know how rocky and turbulent broadcast is right now. This group they shut a few stations off. And, you know, one of their guys I talked to The way he explained it. made it all click and make sense and put me at ease because, basically said we can either lay off people, put the company into jeopardy, or we can turn these sticks off that are underperforming that we're losing money on. And they had to make the decisions to shut a few stations down in order to protect the company overall. And I get it. Some stations you buy in certain areas Just may not do good, especially with AM radio right now. cars removing AM tuners, AM noise, you know, it's becoming a noisy environment. And, you know, there's not a lot of people out there still listening to AM radio. FM still got some room, and we can make FM sound good. And I still, even though H D radio isn't quite what it was promised, H D radio still has a place, still sounds good. We can do that. So they're focusing on the areas that they can make work where they can serve their communities and they're growing. They're still buying stations and they still got a few more coming up. They haven't let me in on that one yet. I don't know what stations they're looking at purchasing, but they're still growing. So a small privately held company in let's see, three, four, five states now, you know, rebuilding studios, rebuilding the entire plant, utilizing some new gear. To make it all work. It's very exciting. So I'm nervous because I'm leaving a pretty safe, I don't want to say cushy job, but sorta, to go get back into the basics of what I like doing. And that's really what this whole episode is about. It's just me blabbering about doing some cool things, changing it up, getting back to what I like, just you know Back to the basics of radio because radio is not overly complicated. Radio doesn't need to be overly complicated. We can simplify it, we can make it efficient, and we can still serve our communities where we live. Now my dog's barking upstairs. So I think that's gonna wrap it up for this one. So it's just a little life update, a little personal update for me. I didn't release an episode last week because I'm busy, you know, getting all my ducks in a row. Before I depart the other place to go somewhere else. And there was a lot of other stuff just going on personally. And yeah, just unfortunately, I just didn't get an episode done. So skipped last week. It's the first time I've skipped an episode since I started this. So I apologize. But this is more of a hobby for me. It's more for me to talk about things I like and hopefully you like it. And if you do, hey, go to Tylerwoodward.me, sign up on the newsletter there. Newsletter I called the transmission. It's through my host and provider at R Riverside. So if you wanna join up on the newsletter, go for it. You can also follow me. I'm getting really heavily into the Fediverse, Mastodon, Pixel Fed, Lemmy, that stuff. Trying to distance myself aware away from the traditional social media apps like the the Facebooks, the threads, the Instagrams, the TikTok, all that kind of stuff. I'm still there, but I'm trying to put the focus on more. open source, open, the Fediverse or even the at proto protocol, whatever it is that Blue Sky uses, also pretty interesting. So you could follow me there as as well or email me, Tyler at Tylerwoodward.me. Well, I think I've gone long enough. So I'm gonna wrap it up there. I'll catch you guys next week. Thanks for listening.