What’s so interesting about On Off Digital World for me is how it suggests a particular period of old New York. Well, the eighties, really. Back then a token was necessary to use the subways, when pizza was a dollar a slice and comic books about the same. It was a time before Neflix and video on demand, a time when, in fact, cable was still trying to take off with regards to widespread adoption. That was an innocent time, in a way — a time when mom-and-pop types of retailers like Montgomery Ward were it for electronics. Such is the nostalgic appeal of On Off Digital.

Blu-ray disc – or often known as “Blu Ray disk” by people typing into the search engines – is the hottest new thing in home entertainment these last few years. Even regular single-layer discs provide 25GB of storage capacity, which translates into much sharper video and much better-sounding audio. Given less than five hundred lines of image available with DVDs, the Blu-ray disc format offers a thousand and eighty lines. That’s significantly more than half of what’s available! Still not impressed? Well, imagine if your vision improved by that same amount – and you could see much more than twice as far away, with much more than twice the detail! No doubt about it, this is entertainment for the modern home!

There’s nowhere like Manhattan for shopping. From traditional retailers like On Off Digital World to modern big box chain stores and franchises, there is so much one can do to spend money! Nearly anything can be purchased there, one reason why New York City is considered the leading city of the world frequently: if it isn’t found there, it probably doesn’t even exist! Cars, electronics, clothing, anything. The assortment of goods offered is most appropriate for a city that draws people from all around the world. And that’s another reason why The Big Apple is considered the world’s capital! There just isn’t any other city like it in the world.

It’s one of the safest locations in Manhattan, or, even, all of New York City. But the situation wasn’t always the case. Just ask the old-timers, retailers such as On Off Digital World or one of the few mom-and-pop operations still around. They’ve seen it all, and it wasn’t always lovely. On the other hand, there exists a certain type of person, and a certain sort of New Yorker, one that truly misses the bad ol’ days. Such folks imagine that the city was authentic then; it had its difficulties but it also had a lot of heart, also, lots of spirit. Currently, they complain, midtown Manhattan is just an internationally flavored version of most any outdoor mall in America.

Because of out fast-paced society, fast-paced because new discoveries are being made all the time which ends up in things change regularly, even personal fitness trainers have to use CPE courses to be able to remain in good ranking professionally.
As a former personal trainer myself, I have to say, however, that the standard trainer may still not be as well-informed as such accreditations may wish to suggest.

Those employed by chain gyms, which is the great majority of those today, are often youngsters for whom personal training is a gig they happen to have come upon.
At something like New York Sports Club (NYSC), they wear the red tee shirts that say “here to help you.”
Now some are, obviously, quite knowledgeable and rather enthusiastic about the subject, but for most it is just a job that appeared to fit nicely with a laid-back interest in sports.

The certification exam they take is honest and rigorous enough for any employing a multiple-choice format, yet it’s really nothing more than a memory test and definitely indicates no real expertise.
The necessary CPE courses run generally along the same lines, regurgitating data by rote.
The truth is, these trainers do not know anything that could not be obtained by anyone who logs online.

Naturally, one may say the same of any occupation – but when it comes to physical fitness, the very nature of the field enables for no small amount of misinformation and outright quackery.
The reason for this is really pretty simple: no one really knows.

That’s right.
I’m a former personal fitness trainer and the only one who can tell the absolute truth: no one really knows.
Unless he or she is God or was there at the creation of Adam and Eve, no one really knows.
Hence, all the personal trainer CPE courses in the world isn’t going to make up for this plain but shocking truth – “the human body is centuries prior to medical science,” as Doctor Sir Roger Bannister explained.

So you want to be a lawyer. You understand it’s going to mean a lot of learning, a lot of time used with books – but you like reading, and figuring things out, and you enjoy words, language, and all the semantic nuances involved.

You even know that the LSAT test for admission to law school is difficult, and something to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for, for special prep courses, coaching classes etc. You also realize that law school itself will be difficult as nails, at least throughout the all-too-crucial First Year.

Great. Maybe you even know that you will be forever hitting the books as a practicing lawyer, forever taking online CPE courses and their tests, one after the other, in order to maintain your position with the professional association governing your licensure.

Super.

But did you know it will be quite tough getting a high-enough-paying job as lawyer in order to pay off your student loans? In reality, those online CPE courses will surely cost some money, too.

Oh, you probably think you have that covered. You’ll graduate at the top of your class, or you’ll be accepted into an Ivy League law school and graduate none too low in the positions so as to get hired by a top corporate law firm and very easily recoup your investment in two to three years’ time.

And without a doubt, if such a thing does happen, your odds would be better than those for virtually the rest of your peers, even in this economy. But “better than” does not mean “inherently good.” ’Cause guess what happens – globalization is coming to the legal profession also.

Yes, you heard that right – outsourcing. Indeed, some of the online CPE courses available on the worldwide web were produced overseas! And though the legal profession has attempted to resist it (after all, it took a whole decade for everyone to swap from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word!), it’s finally started to affect the industry.

Taking online CPE courses is more convenient than previously, but it’s still something that one would have to take seriously.
Those unfamiliar with continuing professional education may suppose it’s just some kind of blow or they may think it’s like school all over again.
The truth is, however, somewhere at the center.

Online CPE courses help make it even less like school, and for all the seriousness involved they may be almost fun.
A well-written course can help to make things seem less onerous – as anything obligatory usually tends to be – but of course if one is a professional then one will do whatever needs to be done regardless of the fun factor!

Still, it’s pleasant to know that not all online CPE courses have to be as dull as traditional mail correspondence classes were.
No need to make a chore even more of a chore, after all!
Hopefully, staying on top of improvements in one’s field, whether it be the law or medicine or any other occupation, would be exciting enough in and of itself.

Frankly, if undergoing continuing education would be a difficulty, then there is no reason to enter such occupations to start with, regardless of the prestige and the higher income.
(And, in the case of lawyers, the higher income is nowhere near as guaranteed as for the other professions!)
These days, even personal fitness trainers are required to take continuing education courses.
That’s right – those guys and gals at the gym!

Chalk it all up to an ever increasingly competitive job market, where credentials mean getting a foot in the door.
Of course, it is not just market pressures, as the scope of knowledge in a area like medicine is always growing with each new discovery.
However, while something like the law is also subject to constant change, it simply does not command the same kind of rates these days as it once did.
Law graduates have really gone on to file class-action lawsuits against their alma maters, putting those legal expertise to the just use they can find in this economy!

Probably the most essential developments in the field of professional continuing education (CPE) is the relatively recent concentration on ethics, leading to the proliferation now of many an ethics CPE course.
While certainly a good thing when the professions insist on not just what is legal but what is ethical and, even, moral, it is also quite sad that standard human decency should today be so unusual as to warrant an explicit prerequisite.

Needless to say, malpractice jokes roasting doctors, lawyers, and accountants have long been a staple of humor and given such a context the now-official admiration for proper behavior is to be applauded.
There are certainly more intense scenarios than having ethics CPE needs – namely, the lack of them with the world still being the way it is: the very way which initially made such courses so vital!
But there’s no doubting the fact that when fundamental human decency must be taught so many years after kindergarten, where they were primarily encountered (likely an unfortunate fact in itself, as the first place anyone should find their ethics should be the home!), society is doomed to an evermore unhappy race to the bottom for all.

Why, just take a look at the well-established practice now of companies hiring unpaid interns to do full-time jobs – real jobs, for which these volunteers aren’t even given the protection of common workplace discrimination and harrassment laws.
No, really!
Even multi-billion-dollar corporations, such as General Electric (which managed to pay no taxes for the filing season of 2011), make considerable use of these unpaid workers daily.
What good has all the ethics CPE courses in the world really achieved when corporate bean-counters still carry on to merely invent new ways of posting a profit while raising productivity and lowering costs on the backs of young people without money?

For me, On Off Digital World is like the old Montgomery Ward in Penn Station, one of them big old old-fashioned electronics retailers you used to find all over New York City. Such businesses were simply mom-and-pop operations that got rather big, to where they had like maybe fifty employees — still thought of a small business by many criteria but obviously still prosperous. But it was all before the big box stores and I was just a youth then so they were all “big” to me — after all, there were so many gizmos available! That’s what comes to mind now when I chance by a store like this.

It’s good to see that the promise of Blu Ray video is being achieved so quickly. While some releases have been critically panned for not living up to the technological potential of the format, most of what’s available on the market today are excellent examples. Contrary to what happened to DVD ten years ago, when many discs were nothing but straight ports of VHS copies, with no improvements whatsoever in picture quality, sound quality, or, indeed, anything at all – many didn’t even offer chapter stops and played straight through in the then-familiar manner of videotapes – the Blu-ray format has not been subjected to any such humiliations (yet). Even better, with prices that rival those of a DVD, it’s no wonder that consumers have switched in droves!