31–40 of 41 posts
You could get involved in GeekCorps : http://www.geekcorps.org/
The "Get Involed" link brings up a lightbox but doesn't load anything. Is this organization still active, and have you been involved in it?
You can find jobs like that at http://www.usajobs.gov/.
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Farmers are forced to continually find new hacks. The labor is so intensive that every little innovation adds up.
That reminds me of a cheese farm I worked on in France. The farmer had slowly hacked together his cheese making equipment from an assortment of other food processing machinery. It ended up saving him something like 10k euro over a commercially produced device. My favorite hack of his was out of necessity. He started getting shoulder problems from stirring milk for hours every day, so he found an old motor and attache…
Who in hell would actually spend hours stirring milk for hours a day?
Saying that this is a clever hack is like saying "I know a guy who heats his water for a shower using a hot water heater, instead of jumping into cold water and thrashing his arms around for four hours - what a genius!"
I am going to try to program while outside.
Programming while out of doors may not be as satisfying as you might think. One is still very sedentary for very long periods: hot weather feels hotter, cold weather much colder, and buzzing insects more annoying. You may miss having a whiteboard or your printed-matter library handy. Also, outdoor furniture typically makes a terrible substitute for proper office furniture.
On the plus side, eye strain is less of a problem given the built-in eye relief of long focus outdoor viewing. And trees and birds make very pleasant office companions who will always respect your privacy.
Ultimately, I find the out of doors better for reading (email, tech papers, the occasional HN link) or reviewing code than actually programming.
I have recently taken up photography as a technical but low-stress pastime. It appeals to my programmer-brain and my under-utilized artistic appeal at the same time. It is also a great excuse to go to interesting place. As a bonus, part of learning photography is learning interesting things about cognition, vision and light. All cool stuff.
Photography listens to "intent" and "execution" nearly as much as programming, which makes it very appealing to me. It's remarkable to me how two very similar pictures at identical venues can convey very different feelings, based off intent and execution.
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In the meantime, you could try IT on a cruise ship.
We were discussing living outdoors -- and still get intellectual stimulus. (Preferably without people shooting at you, I assume.) I don't know the subject, but a cruise ship seems like a more expensive variant of eating all meals at restaurants and going on a weekend trip every week? :-)
Salaries are kind of low, but that is only because they know the perks (room/board/travel) make up for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Farmers are forced to continually find new hacks. The labor is so intensive that every little innovation adds up.
That reminds me of a cheese farm I worked on in France. The farmer had slowly hacked together his cheese making equipment from an assortment of other food processing machinery. It ended up saving him something like 10k euro over a commercially produced device. My favorite hack of his was out of necessity. He started getting shoulder problems from stirring milk for hours every day, so he found an old motor and attache…
Look, there aren't that many careers that will pay you $100+/hr on a short-term contract. Take one of those for six months, then go hike the Pacific Crest Trail. Then ride your bike to Florida.
That's a full year plan, half of which is spent outdoors, at the end of which you'll still be about $50k ahead of where you would have been if you'd taken a job planting trees for the forest service.
We really do have it better than just about everybody else. Do yourself a favor and take advantage of it!