11–20 of 46 posts
I somehow ended up on the government's poor people list despite being nowhere near poor, from my rural hometown, and I get enough money for a handful of AI subscriptions (to give you an idea) through the direct benefits program. I also get "for the family" notebooks and bags at the start of the school year, a phone every few years, a mixer-grinder now and then, sweets once a year, and more similar, all beautifully ad…
I am employed as a senior software engineer at Microsoft, on the side I like to steal from parked cars with clearly visible valuables in suburbs adjacent to our office. You can make a fortune selling this garbage on the internet with little risk, I make usually an extra $800 - sometimes $2000 in a good week if multiple high end laptops.
Farmers' market produce was once a go-to for our basic funding requirements; and pretty much all of those were wild harvested from perma-jungle that we leased or from surrounding state/public roadside, and from trees and edible weeds that i was also payed to trim and maintain - so i knew they were all pesticide, herbicide free.
Also did some sales of goat milk, which as it was unpasteurized and unprocessed, was not for human consumption. A primary customer was the exotic mammals nursery at the local zoo. Turns out goat milk is a pretty good stand-in for the needs of everything from foxbats, to marsupials, to simians; with perhaps a little adjustment by the veterinarian caretakers in each of those cases.
I've been an occasional writer of technical documentation, including for private and government grant proposals ~ that may seem strange to have your lawn-care, goat-wrangling, tour-guide, dive-instructor as the uncredited primary author for a multi-year, multi-institution, multi-million dollar educational research program: but hey, whatever gets the job done, and since I identified the grant(s) and matched them to the service providers, educators, researchers, and institutions they paid me to write them. Several of those ran for a little less than ten years with renewal and reapplication - minimal reworking of the original grants to meet each years' new parameters.
Provided safety training and outdoor activity orientation in a National Park which included both whitewater rafting and back-country mule rides. Is that unusual?
Collected offshore water samples for e. coli detection and genetic analysis to determine near-shore pollution sources. Is that unusual?
Pulled used vehicle tires from landfills for recycling into rubberized asphalt, with selections of those shipped to form a seismic damper layer at an international airport built on a man-made island? Is that usual?
The list really does go on: astronomy equipment digital control interface software, bare-metal unikernel design, commercial dish washer, electric and hydrogen kiln control hardware redesign and implementation, commercial game meat processing, electronic flight-bag software design, commercial video monitoring installations, high risk personnel protection, methane-digester design (with vapor scrubbing for safe appliance use in a mixed methane:propane system including off-grid refrigeration), NiFe alkaline power cell reconditioning, PC repair including refloat of 'dead' GPU hardware solder points (oh, back in the day of the 9800), isolate and safety testing of lambic fermenting polycultures for more than one microbrewery - many of the HN crowd may have actually tasted the semi-sour Weisen from one of those, before the shop got bought out by AB Inbev, ... it's been a while since i really made a list, and just now I realize it does just go on-and-on, ... there's rattlesnake meat sold to a restaurant, gentle breaking of horses, house demolition and historically accurate restoration of a 'listed property', underwater asset reclamation...
The thing I realize is that I may never have made very much revenue from any of them; but each needed done, I was willing and able.
It sure beats saying to myself; "I made widgets to make other people wealthy enough to lose tough with their humanity."
One person's unusual is other peoples' every day.
I'd keep in mind that even though someone may find an activity profitable, it's often largely affected by the local laws and tax policies. For example are a myriad of 10s-100s of bucks/month I could theoretically make that have demand and in many countries someone might do, but here it's 1) required to have a company 2) static taxes are several thousand/year 3) dealing with requisite liabilities and insurance lifts t…
I promise you can sell something to your neighbor for $10 without filing taxes and registering a company.
To believe otherwise is like the Top Gear story about the German guy who insists you need a license to drive a car.
I am employed as a senior software engineer at Microsoft, on the side I like to steal from parked cars with clearly visible valuables in suburbs adjacent to our office. You can make a fortune selling this garbage on the internet with little risk, I make usually an extra $800 - sometimes $2000 in a good week if multiple high end laptops.
Are you serious?
nice try
I am employed as a senior software engineer at Microsoft, on the side I like to steal from parked cars with clearly visible valuables in suburbs adjacent to our office. You can make a fortune selling this garbage on the internet with little risk, I make usually an extra $800 - sometimes $2000 in a good week if multiple high end laptops.
Was a no-brainer.