The Tyler Woodward Project cover art

About

Hi, I'm Tyler Woodward

A show for elder millennials who miss more than they expected to: burning a CD, a video store clerk who actually knew movies, a phone that just made calls. I've got two decades of broadcast and network engineering behind me, but I'm not here to sell you on the industry, just someone who grew up on dial-up and AM/FM static, thinking out loud about the small stuff that used to be simpler.

A few things about me

Driving route map from La Crosse, Wisconsin to Tampa, Florida

Tampa to La Crosse

Beaches to Cheese

Born and raised in Tampa, now settled into actual Wisconsin winters.

Studio microphone in a broadcast booth

Broadcast Engineer

Radio, TV, Oh My

Day job is keeping transmitters, networks, and signals from falling over.

Stereotypical basement PC nerd at a keyboard

Linux Nerd

All Hail Tux

Comfortable in a terminal, and happiest when something's running on Debian.

A tangled server rack full of network cables

Home Lab

Because I Like Torture

A closet of servers doing more work than they probably should.

Sitting on a beach swing with a kid

Dad

It Was a Trap... But I Like It Here

The reason "good enough" stopped being an acceptable answer.

Record needle on a spinning turntable

Music

Everything Except Country

Rock and pop punk are home base. Current favorite band: The Warning.

From the host

I'm an elder millennial, and there's a lot I miss that I didn't expect to.

Burning a CD for a road trip. The weight of the case in your hand. Renting a movie from a clerk who actually knew what he was talking about, not some algorithm guessing off what you watched last Tuesday. A phone that just made calls, and nothing else, and somehow that was enough.

This show's about that stuff: the small, ordinary things from before everything needed an app, a login, and a monthly fee just to work the way it used to for free.

Some weeks it's radio, too, since I've spent enough of my life around it to know exactly why every rock station plays the same seven songs. That started at five years old, when my mom bought me my first AM/FM radio, and it took hold for good growing up locked into Tampa's WFLZ during the Power Pig era, recording myself on a cassette deck and playing radio alone in my bedroom. My first paid gig came years later on WRQT 95.7 The Rock and WKTY in La Crosse, and from there I worked my way from the air studio into engineering, chasing the systems behind the signal instead of just the sound of it.

I've got the industry background, but this isn't an industry show. It's nostalgia without the rose tint, just one guy who grew up on dial-up and AM/FM static thinking out loud.

Not because the past was perfect. Just because some of it was good, and it's worth holding onto before it slips away completely.

New episodes every week. Subscribe wherever you listen, or browse episodes here on the site.

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