Hellivision! That is what my grandfather called it. “That stuff is piped straight from the depths of Hell,” Grandpa George would say. Can you imagine if that were really true. We would see something like this: “Good evening, I am Tom Brokaw on location at the Gates of Hades. Tonight we’re talking with Al Gore’s campaign imps.” Heh.

I grew up without a television. Honestly, if it is not there, you do not miss it. This may not make sense at first. But if you actually think about why you watch television, you may start to find a few flaws in the reasoning. I used to watch local TV news until I realized that in the place of important news they would show a lame dog story every single night!

Books and radio programs entertained me as a kid. I remember my father, brother and I sitting around the radio listening to radio plays like “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and “The Bob and Ray Radio Show”. Sometimes the location of our bodies in the room would affect the reception of the radio transmission. Imagine the three of us moving and positioning ourselves in an effort to tune our “human antennae”. Talk about interactive entertainment! The Internet will not be truly interactive until it makes you get your fat butt out of that chair and move around.

Do not get me wrong. I love technology. I am a highly skilled professional on the cutting edge of computer and interactive technologies. I just would like to convince at least one peer out there to turn off the Hellivision for a change and join me in creating a better future.

Things are progressing well at Nova Business Systems, the startup I joined over a month ago. We have an obligatory company website now. More importantly we have nailed down our business model and are nearly completed with the first stage of our pilot. We will go live with a customer sometime next week. Shazam!

Being employee number 3 at a company is exciting and scary. I am Director of Technology for an enterprise that is taking its first baby steps. I have never felt so ultimately in control of my destiny at any point in my professional career. This is what I have been wanting all along. I do not want to go back to sitting in cube hell, working on grunt projects that either nobody wants or nobody has the ability to finish.

My next job will be at a start-up. Hopefully, this one will do so well that my next gig will be my own start-up.