Every job requires some level of contacts. The idea of a meritocracy is a farse. That said, I wouldn't have that specific trade would be a job that is in high demand anyway. This is something that the US just doesn't do well as we've leaned on China way too hard for factory work. That's my completely ignorant viewpoint though since I don't actually work in that field.
These days, you might be better served going to a trade school and learning a trade like plumbing, electrician, carpenter, etc... Millenials were pushed hard into college and there aren't enough people in the trades now. They get paid well and are relatively easy to run your own business if that interests you.
If power consumption and media server are your goals, an Intel CPU is what you want. Intel with quicksync is the most power efficient way to transcode video. Your GTX960 could do it, but will use more power, be limited to fewer codec types, and be limited to 2 streams.
No, a single state isn't supposed to be able to block a nationwide thing. So, this could be limited to just Texas. But, it's likely I also don't know the correct answer to this with my limited understanding.
I use borg with borgmatic. Heck, if you're using Nextcloud AIO, borg is built in. It uses rsync, and takes incremental, deduplicated backups. I like it because it's mostly just setting up ssh and a config file.
More specifically I use Nextcloud's built in borg and these two containers:
Every job requires some level of contacts. The idea of a meritocracy is a farse. That said, I wouldn't have that specific trade would be a job that is in high demand anyway. This is something that the US just doesn't do well as we've leaned on China way too hard for factory work. That's my completely ignorant viewpoint though since I don't actually work in that field.