Amy Currioman

Have you ever wanted to take a teaching course?  Not too long ago I was thinking about becoming a substitute teacher for the local school district.  After all they don’t even require a college degree in early education!  That was surprising to me!  Well, I decided to check it out as a possible course of employment but decided that the school system here did not have any kind of training course in place to help people to learn how to be substitute teachers.  So I passed on that – I didn’t think I would do a good job of it! I really think that the school systems should have a better system than to just hire anyone with a high school diploma to be a substitute teacher!

One of the things that I find very interesting about living in a rural area is how much time is spent with neighbors discussing things like cell phone coverage and television providers.  I can remember when there was no such thing as pay television (except in motels!)  Everyone simply had bunny ear antennas or rooftop antennas for the free local channels.  And there were only a few local channels – the big networks and a public television!

So I find it amusing when I see and hear so much promotional material about different television offers!  Direct TV  commercials abound on just about every single channel I get on my television!  My brother has Directtv and tells me that he loves it because he is always watching some kind of race going on somewhere!  And there are many different Direct TV Packages available to satisfy almost anyone’s interests and budget.  What an amazing difference in television technology there has been since I was a child sitting in front of the old black and white television show watching Ranger Rick, Captain Kangaroo, and Bozo the Clown!

In today’s technological world Online Trading seems to be a very popular way for the investor to be involved in Stock Trading.  I think that having an Online Broker would be a very convenient way to deal with investing!  There have been many times when I wanted to talk to my own stock broker and had to leave messages on his voice mail and wait for a return call – sometimes several days!

With doing stock trading online, you don’t have to wait for a return call – you place your order and “poof” it is done the same day!  And the fees for trading with an online trading firm are often much lower than the fees for a “regular” stock broker!  And nowadays you can get just as good advice about stocks online as you can with a “real” person.  In fact, sometimes the advice is even better because it is impartial and just relays the facts and figures.

I was taking a nap three days ago when my son came into my room and announced that my computer had been infected with the nasty malware program that calls itself “Security Tools.” What a pain in the neck that was! Fortunately I have a younger brother who lives nearby that makes his living doing IT support. So I called him and he told me that I could bring my CPU to his place and he’d fix it for me. He had to squeeze it in with his paying clients, and while he was at it he installed a bunch of new programs for me. I had to “make do” with my back-up computer in the spare bedroom while my “main computer” was at my brother’s. That was a pain in the neck, but I struggled along.

Thankfully I was able to pick up my CPU last night and bring it home. So now I’m back to almost normal, have to do a little bit of catchup bookkeeping! Whoever created that awful malware should be ashamed of themselves! I’d like to say some very strong things about/to that person, but that would ruin my “family rating” on this blog! All I CAN say is that they have created some very bad Karma, and it is well deserved bad Karma!

I’ve been thinking about expanding my ability to connect to the Internet.  I’d like to get a broadband service but am concerned that I might be in a dead zone.  Unfortunately I don’t know that much about broadband!  I have heard that there are dead zones for them, just like with regular cell phone service.  And I have been told that I need to pick the broadband service that serves the area(s) that I will be in the most.  The research that I’ve done so far seems to indicate that there is no one broadband service company that serves the areas that I frequent – I would have to sign up with several services.  Of course I’m not sure about that – I find it all very confusing!

I became interested in broadband when my cousin Sarah told me that she has subscribed to UK broadband while she is in England.  She’s in a college program here in the states that let her study abroad for a year, and she jumped at the chance.  Sarah says that her UK broadband lets her access the Internet everywhere she goes, and she thinks that it is the best invention since the personal computer!  So her satisfaction with her UK broadband service has sparked my interest in trying to find a good broadband service here where I live.