Re: Good Idea!
Want some qualifications, eh?
Firstly, assertions like "we'd never hire you" carry no weight at all when you're over 50 and apparently already past it.
Meanwhile, I make a living writing real-time embedded systems right down to the metal on ARM processors.
One particular device is a classic closed-loop motor control job to throw tennis balls accurately, finding and tracking a star should be child's play today if a processor from 15 years ago could do it.
http://www.tennismatic.com/main/page_products_ball_machines_t200_series.html
In the past I have done IBM 3270 screen-scraping for Australia's first Mobile Data courier system for Skypak, The original Freight Management System for Ansett Airfreight, and the Sortation Plant control program for TNT's Enfield Sortation Plant which handled 4 parcels per second at maximum load UNDER WINDOWS! as much as any Royal Mail plant. I have real-time down cold.
Saving flying Silent Trader aircraft flying overnight from Adelaide alone for Ansett saved millions.
Feel free to verify any of this with my old manager - http://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-szwec/7/493/94b
I run Cross Compiling, Simulation and PCB design mostly on my PC and for the chap who could have bought a PC each year, I say "9 women can't have a child in 1 month", you wouldn't have the same capability as this PC from year 1 and probably not by year 5 either.