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Best Results From Bartering Computer Services?
silicon not in the v writes "Last night I was over at some friends' house. They had cable modem with no firewall and tons of spyware, etc. on their system. They complained about all the popups and how bad it was that they were afraid to let their kids on the computer, so I set them up with ZoneAlarm, Ad Aware, and Firefox to get it cleaned up. In return, the husband, who is a chiropractor, gave my wife and I a free adjustment. What other interesting services or benefits have people been able to get by bartering IT/programming services?"
I will fix your computer in return for one of these.
What other interesting services or benefits have people been able to get by bartering IT/programming services?
Beer. And lots of it.
--saint
Isn't this the story line for some cheap porno film??
I do some work for an ISP, and I get a couple of servers hosted for free, including bandwidth.
I also have a nice thing going where I host his users (on my servers), and he sends people needing web design to me.
It works out nicely.
I have no problems fixing lady's computers for a return "adjustment"
I get my taxes done for free after setting up a Samba domain for a local accountant here in my area. Pretty nice if you ask me.
Well my comp sci teacher lied to me. Apparently, you can't barter computer skills for sex. Bastard!
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
About all I've ever managed to get for helping my friends with their computer troubles is their recommendation to their friends to bug me to help them. A losing proposition all around.
Not more than you need, just more than you want
When I was a student, I set up an old 8086 "XT" class machine with DOS and 8-in-1 office software for a small restaurant. Basically just duplicated their ledger in the spreadsheet. I ate breakfast there all summer for free.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
My favorite thus far was an offer from a couple in Ireland who offered a night's lodging and a hearty Irish breakfast should we ever visit their fair country--in exchange for the bonus level pack.
Even though we probably won't hav ethe opportunity to take them up on the offer anytime soon, it was made in earnest, and I was happy to send them a copy of the level pack in return. Even though I can't buy beer 'n' pizza with it, this "barter" has proven far more memorable than the typical few bucks plonked in the PayPal account...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Better watch out for the IRS. You have to claim barter on your taxes!
I want someone to come over and mow the lawn or power spray the deck. Minimal skill needed. I'll even supply the equipment! No downloading of a mower/sprayer needed. I'll even make sure they have gas! If I mention those as a 'trade' for my time and skill EVERYTIME they say they will find someone else.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
...I have this friend who is a proctologist and he was having computer problems and...
This way to the egress...
a friend is a partner in and the brewmeister of a local microbrewery -- i fixed network printing for his back office staff.
"I'm here to fix the comptuer."
"It's in the bedroom."
"This is going to be a long, hard job."
"Maybe my roommate can help."
I fixed computers for hundreds of women. I think one of them later smiled at me. Sure she was nailing my jock roomate, but I still think I came close to losing my virginity...
maybe if you gave them linux you could've gotten the "happy ending"
I fix my neighbor's computer (which gets ruined by loads of spyware crap by his kids, almost every week) for beer, Heineken, of course... :)
Karma: Bad (but who really cares anyway?)
You could just name this story "I am a geek and married".
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.
I had plastic surgery to my face (the removal of six ugly moles) in return for doing some SEO (nothing unethical, just getting the right search terms in the right places) to the surgeons homepage that brought it into the first place on most search engines when one searched for "breast enlargement" (in the local language).
I think that beats your bone bending...
I have this neighbor who works at the NSA. He isn't really the bartering type. He, instead, prefers ominous threats.
Anyway, one day he walked over to my house, knocked on the door, and demanded that I help him get all the crap off his computer. Since he's never too nice to me, I asked him why I should do this. He said if I didn't he'd make me an NSA test case for subdermal tracking devices. Empty threat, I thought to myself.
Well, I was wrong. Now I have the black vans that seem to track me at a distance. They do a good job of staying out of sight, but I know they are following me. I guess I'm comforted by the fact that someone, somewhere knows my neighbors IP and what web sites he visits.
And why in God's name did you refuse those, uhm, services?... Are you crazy? Do you realize you've just alienated 85% of the /. crowd?
These newbies..
Karma: Bad (but who really cares anyway?)
In return for my services in fixing friends and family's PCs and printers I have recieved:
Beer
Free labor on replacement of my water heater.
Free server hosting
A kitchen faucet (a nice lifetime warranty Moen one, but not the kitchen sink to go with it)
Discounted closing on my home mortgage
Supper
More Beer
Lots more food, including gift certificates to nice restaurants
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
I fixed up my pastor's PC, and in return he has saved my eternal soul. :)
It's not /free/ if you had to fix her computer for it.
--Xandu
I've given up. Everyone seems to want my services for free, so now I tell them up front $60 an hour. I figure that's how much my time spent away from my wife and kids is worth.
Although I HAVE traded flight time in my uncles Cessna 172 once. That was a good deal.
Same deal here. All my dental work for free.
Of course the other side of that deal is that I married his daughter. I think he got the cheaper end of the deal...
Yep you heard me.
Actually, I was going to get the sex anyways, the small perl script was just what I did to prolong the sex.
A bag of weed to reformat and reinstall someones laptop.
I've gotten a stovetop griddle (great for making a family load of bacon and eggs), movie tickets, countless meals, short term loans when I ran into unforseen expenses, a really nice pear tree that will be going up in my yard as soon as we close, and the love and respect of my family. Even if I didn't get anything from being the resident geek for two families, I would still do it for all the times I've been helped out when I needed it.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
anyone wearing that shirt rightly deserves the social ostracization that will ensue.
Photos.
I called around when I was looking for office space. I found a real estate company that just renovated a new space, and were renting offices for $600.00/mo. I offered them $200 cash and 8/hrs a month network admin, desktop support. At first, I thought I had screwed myself, which is true in a strict monetary sense. But I get free ISP, no util bills, access to copier, fax, kitchen, conf room. Not to mention a few cute girls. Beats the living room desk. abulafia!
In high school I fixed an auto mechanic's PC and he fixed my car. I've received the best *massage* in my life for 30 minutes of "Getting the internet to work" by setting up their network settings and performing disk scan, cleanup, and defrag. This was several years ago back in college, it did cost me one network cable. But recently the best thing I've bartered for is with my wife's friend. Her husband is an established builder and he agreed to inspect our house that is in the process of being constructed. Every week we're heading out to the build site to make sure my current builders don't mess anything up. In return I've put together a decent family PC machine from spare parts. Got their copy of OS on there and locked it down. All parties are happy. Oh don't tell the wife about the massage, and yes it was just a massage - the best I ever had.
I've traded computer help and web hosting and computer equipment for loads of stuff and services. A few examples:
a boat and trailer
snakes (pet snakes)
several dinners both home cooked and for restaurants
a condo for a week on the gulf
brownies and fresh baked goodies from Publix
remodeling on my house
stove
fridge
tires for my car
VCD's of old DragonBallZ bootlegs
--- www.f-theocean.com
[woman in nightie]: ...but I don't have a hard drive...
*bow chica bow bow*
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
I did some REAL minor graphic work (changing 3 buttons for their website) for a firm a few months back... one of the provisions of my day job's contract is that I'm forbidden from doing any outside work, so I asked my boss if I could do a little one-off on the side as long as no money changed hands, and he agreed... so I got the side folks to give me a new bowling ball instead of cash - everyone happy all around!
By the way, the new ball added almost 30 pins to my average right out of the gate. If you can lay your hands on an original Spirit, they're awesome!
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
OK, so maybe there was a bit more than computer services involved, but after spending some late nights with a friend of the family optimizing his system and setting up a wireless network, he offered me their condo in San Francisco for six weeks! I'm now living there, having a great time!
;)
By the way, I long ago decided not to charge money for my services. I always get something much more valuable when I ask for in-kind payment!
Wish you were here!
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
I started out doing a personal website for a friend that tattoo's at a local shop. That quickly turned into 6 sites for the shop and some of there artist's. now i have $800 worth of tattooing done and about $2000 left to go.
[ex girlfriend] I'm having problems with my PC, I keep getting popups and it freezes all the time.
[me] That stinks...
[ex girlfriend] Would you come over and fix it for me?
[me] I'm kinda busy lately...
[ex girlfriend] I'll make it worth the trip
[me] Leaving now!!!
...and it was really gwood, too!
Last night I had some geek come over to my house who wanted to install some crap on my computer. I let him, and in return I got to fondel his wife. I called it "adjusting".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Homeopathy is not medical science, and it's not accepted in Europe, not among real scientists and doctors anyway. Please don't lie.
A month or so before I moved into my first apartment she was moving out of her one-bedroom to live with her new fiance, and so in return for my work she called me up and gave me all the furniture from her old apartment provided I move it out.
I ended up getting a futon, couch, kitchen table and chairs, two clothes chests, a couple end tables, and a slew of kitchen stuff (plates, glasses, pots etc), all in excellent condition. She essentially totally furnished my new place and it cost me nothing.
I consider this to be the best example of good karma at work I've experienced to date.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Chiropractors are generally quacks. No offense, but next time receive something of value.
http://chirolinks.quackfiles.com/
Do you have ESP?
Back in the 80s I did custom programming for small businesses. The vast majority were just basic pay for services but sometimes there were alternate agreement. For example, that's how I got my private pilot's license.
:)
Another client distributed natural foods and always sent me off with a few bags of goodies - they always had a stack of stuff that was fine except for damaged labels and such.
I ended up with some suits/ties/etc. from a men's clothier.
Dealing with IRS accounting for all that is a pain, though.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
OK, other way around really but the priest who erm, "runs"? my local church (he didn't actually perform either my wedding or child's christening due to illness, but his church nonetheless) has been getting free Excel support ever since.
It's getting to be a running joke that each week or two he'll turn up at the door with printouts in hand and an unquenchable need for tea.
So I guess he bartered christian services for MS Office development and support services.
When I was in college and all my money went down on beer, I had to teach individual computer lessons to survive. Parents of one of my students had a food business (cooking at home, then delivering orders, and selling the rest in the shop). Although there was a fixed monetary charge, they still couldn't let me out of the place before feeding me to death. It was a good bonus and very appropriate. And I was lucky enough, cause they were good cooks. :)
Fixing computers, on the other hand, is mostly a one time job and results in random ways of payment - from nothing, through beer, to paychecks. There are no limits, really.
Leonid Mamtchenkov
cookies, and... My Little Pony stickers...
Dear Penthouse Letters,
....
I never thought I'd be writing to you, but
Get off my lawn.
Sometimes undying gratitude as well. That can go a long way. Oddly enough, a lot of time when the computer is totally hosed, I get better results. "Okay, the OS is hosed, the hard drive has 5 errors, you only have 16mb RAM on a Win98 machine, and the CD-ROM won't work. Not a lot I can do here." "Oh, I am so sorry to drag you all the way up here..."
Oh, and I have gotten a LOT of free stuff, like old computer hardware or stuff I find around the hardware.
God, I am such a geek...I once recivied a Harley for payment of what was then a top of the line computer
I have recieved beer, money, food, home-made herbal teas, coffee, hardware, a brake job, but my favorite was the girl that gave me a copy of her and her boyfriends collection of 'personal' pics...
Just like you, I have gotten free Chiropractic care in exchange for computer help. The running deal is that my Chiropractor and I are effectivley on retainer for each other. I get all the chiropractic care I want at no charge, he gets all the computer help he needs at the same rate. He pays for all materials.
Thus far, it has involved speccing out a couple of computers for him, installing a LAN in his office (from scratch, cabling and all) and straightening the Green pin on one of his monitors so that the video was no longer purple. It has been a very good deal.
For another customer, I have done a hard drive upgrade in exchange for the old hard drive and a monitor. The monitor was promptly redeployed to my wife's computer (hers was staring to go fuzzy) and the hard drive was then sold to another customer of mine (nothing unethical, sold as used and wiped clean first).
www.wavefront-av.com
I did a bunch of work on the Dali Lama's PC. Got rid of the spyware and got him a bunch of MP3s. The guy wears a big robe which doesn't have pockets so he doesn't carry cash.
Suffice it to say I was feeling pretty ripped off. But he told me that in return for my good work right before my death I'd have one moment of perfect clarity.
So I got that going for me.
I have no
When I need something ( chiropractic, new car, ect... ), I ask them if they'd be willing to barter services for a better price ( or simple trades, often enough. You'd be surprised at how much you can get like that ).
:)
Often, what will give me the idea is I see something that I can improve on.
Granted, most of the time, they are taken care of in that dept, but often enough I have gotten free stuff for a couple hours worth of work.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Fixed computers for a Doctor's family recently... Got in a friendly argument about payment. See, this Doctor has done alot to help me and my family at various times, including doing very expensive procedures essentially for free. So I naturally didn't want to charge him. Finally we agreed that instead of payment, as a late surprise birthday gift my girlfriend could come for a day of horseback riding since she hasn't ridden a horse in a few years and has loved them since she had one as a little girl.
:) God bless the generous.
Of course the nut mailed me a check anyway.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
It was supposed to be about love, but in the end it wasn't. C'est la vie.
At least she didn't give you a virus.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I think he means free as in speech.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Quackery certainly, but it's been around a lot longer than the newage (rhymes with sewage) fad, so it's not actually newage quackery.
IMHO, the best description of Chiropractic was H.L. Mencken's essay on the subject.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I try to avoid income derived from bartering because, in the U.S. at least, this income is still taxable by state and federal governments at fair market value of the service/product being traded on both sides of the deal (Google "bartering tax law", or consult with your tax accountant or attorney for more details). For this reason it becomes difficult to strike a truly equitable deal.
There are some scary consequences for not keeping accurate, defensible paperwork on any barter transactions. Free trade is only free trade if the government gets its cut, and heavy fines and/or jail time just aren't worth the risks of swapping professional services/products casually. If you get caught without good documentation, it is likely you will involve yourself in a government sponsored colonoscopy going back several years.
A cop on our block had his HDD crash and burn. I did the replacement and XP reinstall (yes, including SP and hotfix, XP firewall, unbinding file+print, and autoupdates set to autoinstall).
He bought me a cold bottle of Chimay ale, which was nice, but I was hoping for something a little more cop-like out of him, like maybe harassing the CEO on the street in front of the office. They say "cops got the best stuff", too.
Another neighbor is an interior painter, and he's done some free painting for me, but I'd go to his house to drool over his daughter anyway, which is a tad twisted since she's 17 and I'm...older than that.
No kidding, a year or so back my mother's boyfriend asked me if I could come over to one of his friends house to fix a problem he was having with his computer. It was about 8 or 9 on a Sunday evening , my only day off I might add, but I said "sure". After hearing a description of the problem I determined it was Blaster so I loaded up my trusty pen drive with the removal tool and Ad-aware. After spending 45 minutes removing blaster, patching, removing around 300 bits of spyware (according to Ad-aware),and defragmenting I figured the guy was going to hand me a twenty or possibly even a fifty (he owned a used car dealership) for doing all that work and making it to where his computer was usable again. What was my grand reward for taking over an hour and a half (this includes driving time) of my time on a Sunday night? A yummy bottle of Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink. The sad part is that if I had killed him I would be considered the criminal.....
You should ask for this instead.
It just seems more appropriate.
This is not my sig.
since bartering income has to be declared as such on your tax return. But the cost of preparing your return is deductable but not in the same tax year usually. Otherwise it'd cancel out quite nicely for you but not the accountant.
A haircut.
Serveral massages.
Dinner (and she hit on me...)
"'Restricted level accesss' to some of her 'services'"
Note that these were all with different females.
Less look fast, more go fast.
There are a lot of unethical chiropractors, (doctors, lawyers, car mechanics, etc.) certainly, but that doesn't mean that the field itself is quackery.
Some headaches, neck pains, pinched nerves, and such can be fixed by one visit.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Beer
Free labor on replacement of my water heater.
Free server hosting
A kitchen faucet (a nice lifetime warranty Moen one, but not the kitchen sink to go with it)
Discounted closing on my home mortgage
I like how beer comes before Discounted closing on my home mortgage
How to get out of doing tech support for your family.
Sex.. yes, geeks do get laid, but it makes asking for money difficult.
4 fat Cohiba cigars as a tip.
Fixed 5 imacs in trade for getting to keep one of them.
$2000 to spend 8 hours removing klez from a network overnight.
Recently Knocked $500 off a dual Opteron server with 2 GB ram in exchange for the sun 250... with 2 GB of ram it replaced.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Built 1 web site = free sushi for life from a master chef
Host 1 web site = free tattoos over most of my body
Built+host 2 web sites + email = sex (well, she married me too)
Built+host 1 web site = free accountant
admin 1 box = free 1U+1Mbit connection (which I use to host the above mentioned barters)
tech support = free clothes from a cool store
If I could just work something out with my mortgage lender and my utilities I could quit my job!
`fortune -o`
was this a girls dorm for college or a middle school?
Those are euphemisms, right?
The father of one of my friends needed Linux installed. When I was done, I found out that he was a lawyer who owned a liquor store. One cancels the other out, I guess. Anyway, I was amply rewarded.
In college, I was approached by one of my girlfriend's dormmates, a good-looking blonde poli-sci major who'd procrastinated on some statistical thing she needed to do on the campus computer system. She was in danger of failing a class if she didn't get it done over the weekend, and she literally didn't even know how to log into the system.
So, after much hinting and many awkward silences, she blurted out that she'd do anything I wanted if I bailed her out. Surely at that moment I achieved a permanent place in the Geek Hall of Fame, perhaps in the Absurd Fantasies wing.
But it gets better. You see, I was very happy with my girlfriend at the time (whom I later married), and I didn't want to mess that up by sleeping with someone she saw every day and whom I didn't trust to keep quiet. So I turned her down.
For the sex, anyway. I had her take me out to dinner instead. The stats thing she needed took me 20 minutes to run.
I was walking on air for some time after that, just based on the principle of the thing.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
When I was going to college, I was working weekends in NY and going to school in Baltimore, and, well, I had a little accident on the New Jersey Turnpike where I sort of hit a Highway Patrol car in the snow at very low speed. He wrote me up a ticket for "careless driving," which would have sent my insurance through the roof.
I was embarrassed about it, but I mentioned it to my although-I-didn't-know-it-wife-to-be, and felt that I had to plead guilty to the charge. She mentioned that her uncle was a lawyer in New Jersey, and that he was having trouble configuring his new Unix box (a Fortune computer, this was 1983.) A deal was quickly struck.
I went up there for the weekend, and got his machine configured, and he told me about this spectacular precedent called the Wenzel case in New Jersey -- where no matter what the evidence is, if the cop didn't actually see you being careless he couldn't charge you with that. He refused to represent me, but he counseled me with exactly what I had to say. Basically, although I was acting in my own defense, I couldn't testify for myself -- I would merely cite the case.
Well, traffic court in New Jersey was a long slow process, and I was the last one there when the cop finally deigned to appear. He gave his report, and I offered no explanation, but cited Wenzel, and the judge said "Get out of here." And so I did.
That barter probably saved me many thousands of dollars over the next few years.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
A nosy friend of my mother's fixed me up and introduction to a young lady. At the time I lived in Atlanta and she lived in Lafayette, Louisiana. We were both in school. We emailed each other and made a phone call or two for three months before she came to Atlanta to visit her mother.
Now I do Windows, but at heart I'm a Mac guy. As soon as I introduced myself to this lady, I determined that she was a Mac user. She told me that her mother was a self-employed person who ran her business out of her home on a Macintosh, and that her mother needed a great deal of computer help, which she wasn't really able to pay for.
(Lightbulb goes off).
We met. Five months later she bailed out of grad school and moved to Atlanta. We were inseparable. And I spent a lot of time, gratis, helping her mother tackle her Mac problems and get her business and office under control. I upgraded both of them to newer Macs, largely at my own expense.
When I asked the young lady to marry me, and she said "Yes," I went to her mother.
I said, "Linda, how would you like a lifetime of free technical support?"
(Wedding bells)
So why is there a Royal National Homeopathic Hospital in London, that the NHS pays for?
I got a cat a few months ago that had worms and needed to get spayed. A freind of mine had a computer that was infested with Windows ME and loaded with spyware. I fixed his computer and he fixed my cat.
In my experience it was quite the opposite. Many years ago (well, about 10) I started getting severe neck aches while studying for exams. Well we all know how useless regular doctors are for anything spinal, lots of drugs and no progress. On my mothers recommendation I went to a chiropractor for a _single_ session. It cost something like $20. Not only was she able to tell within about 10 minutes that as a child I had broken my left ankle, she also decided that was the cause of my problems (limping = misaligned pelvis = bent spine = neck strain). So she did some adjustments, and I went on my merry way 60 mins later. It was not a good short term feeling I can tell you. For the rest of that day my back felt very weird, and very stiff. But the next morning I was cured - for the rest of my college life (and beyond) I had no problems at all.
I know that if I ever get similar problems I'll be back again, but touchwood that has never happened. Count me as one very satisfied customer.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Tech Support for the Family?
I used to fix computers for friends for free just as a favour.. Then word travelled locally and I built a good reputation. People started offering me all sorts of things for computer help; free wine, beer, wine and beermaking accessories (all while I was underage), free weights (yeah, like I actually work out), cookies, dates with hot women (I never did and never will take a pity date), and eventually I became good enough at doing it that most of my offers were money. And so I registered a computer consulting business at age 16.
I soon had people asking if I could build computers for them.. or tell them what to buy.. or better yet, if they could just hand me the money and I'd do it all for them. I mostly do it for money these days, but I regularly get tips because customers are happy with my level of honesty. Most of my tips are cash (about 10% tip on a whole computer, which is pretty big.. especially considering most parts only have 13% markup!) but I am still tipped with a couple cases of beer now and then. I've had customers ask if they could set me up with their daughters, I can get into a number of local clubs for free with no line, a few local gyms, and I get discount pricing on pretty much everything I buy.
Computer skills can get you seriously networked with people. I think that's the most important part of all. My friends are always shocked at how many people I know. We'll be talking about, say... getting a car alarm installed on my friend's POS that's been stolen a million times. I know a guy who can hook us up on pricing. I know another guy who will install it for me for free. I know a woman at the insurance agency who will pull all the strings she can to see if the new alarm will lower the insurance rates. Knowing people in places will bail you out of a million and one situations.
Forget favours like beer. Networking with people is important, and computer skills can do that for you.
I'm now 20 and just finished my second year of university; I work fewer than 10 hours a week and make more money than the average bachelor degree graduate from my school. I usually don't brag, but I think that's a pretty good accomplishment.
Coulda at least tried for the 3-way since you already had a girlfriend. *shakes head*
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Since I was about 10 or basicaly as long as I could remember. I would have headaches maby 3-4 times a week. In, I think 9th grade, playing basket ball, I took a knee prety hard to one side of my back. No big at the time I got up and continued to play. But the next morning I thought I was going to die, trying to get out of bed.
My parents and I though I pulled somthing. A week later, still in lots of unsubsiding pain, I went to a doctor. X-Ray's hole nine, Doc. told me to see a Crackolgist. The Doctor Told Me they would be able to fix it.
In one visit (insurance covered) he fixed the back pain, in like 5 min i felt mutch better. He asked if I had anyother issues. My mother mentioned the headaches. Back on the table. With my feet haning off the edge, and my head stright down my heals wern't even. when i turned my head to one side (I can't remembver which) they evened out. One twisting of the neck, that hurt alot and ached a little for maby an hour. i didnt have annother headach for 3 months.
When they came back, I went and same thing was discovered. Then 6 maby 9 months went by, annother trip. After that I havent had the recuring headachs for more than a decade now.
I also have a herdatory predispostion for cracking joints (statisticaly proven to be harmless). I can crack my fingers(mutipal joints per) toes, ankles, wrists, knees, elbow, sholder and hip's on rare un-intentional ocations, even my kneck and back in sevral places (my situps can cound like popcorn). Cracking joints and what ciropractors do are very diffrent. It feels diffrent and has diffrent effects.
People who think what they do is useless, or trivial in any way, has never had it when they needed it, or was mis diagnosed and had it when they didn't need it.
Don't judge me by my spelling
I helped out some neighbors with a cable modem problem.
:)
They gave me a nice bottle of wine and a $50 gift certificate to a wine shop.
Then they had a friend of theirs give me a $90/hr contract job configuring a couple of media center servers. That was an on-site job at a digital media company that I wrapped up in three hours. As I was finishing up that job, they picked me up for two days' worth of video production consulting, also at $90/hr.
All in all, 25 minutes of blowing away bogus browser extensions netted me about a grand and a half.
So always be nice to your neighbors!
Karma
Allergies are one area where homeopathy is useful, because you're not concerned with curing the causes, you're concerned with getting rid of the symptoms. ("Yes, I know there are trees blooming outside, I just want to stop sneezing.") Modern medicine has antihistamines that can help block the symptoms, and cause some side effects, and homeopathy has bogus quack formulations that can also help block the symptoms, and have different side effects, and depending on which one does a better job for _you_ with the allergens that are blowing around right now, and which one has more annoying side effects (e.g. drowsiness vs. stomach upset), sometimes homeopathy is the right choice. Or you can get allergy shots, which aren't really much different from well-controlled homeopathy. It's only been the last couple of years that I've found that modern medicine has products that are significantly better.
Flu is a special case. It's a virus, so if the vaccine didn't protect you this year, modern medicine mostly tells you to stay home in bed, drink hot fluids, and cover your mouth when you sneeze, and otherwise can't do much. Homeopathy is good for this - there are a couple of homeopathic preparations that can take you from feeling really lousy to merely feeling not very good, and that's a big win.
The nice thing about homeopathy is that its particularl bogus theory is that the more you dilute a medicine, the more subtle the hints it gives your body's immune system about how to attack the real problem, and therefore the stronger it is. (It's similar to the theory of making martinis that says that you should take the vermouth bottle and gesture meaningfully in the direction of the glass without actually pouring any in...) So unlike herbalist medicines, which you take in non-trivial quantities and can sometimes cause liver or kidney damage if you're not careful, most homeopathic medicines aren't going to hurt you, and the "really strong" stuff is no threat at all if it doesn't work.
Chiropractic is another quack theory that is obviously not useful for curing disease, but sometimes it can help with back and neck pain, and if you think of it as yet another form of massage, it's often somewhat helpful for many people. My first chiropractor was also an MD, which rather surprised both communities. The last one I went to wasn't able to recognize that my shoulder pains were early bursitis, so it was a while before I found a doctor who could do much about it, but at least he knew his limitations and could tell me that shoulder joints weren't something he knew about.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
everything except that which i actually need. a job :(
Beware... sometimes there's a catch to this whole bartering thing.
On a semi-related note, I wholeheartedly recommend not knowing anything about Windows, so when people ask for help with their computers, you can simply smile and say "Sorry, I don't know anything about Windows, I only use unix systems." It works great for me.
I'm a member of the Valley Barter Group in Phoenix.
I am able to trade out computer services for barter bucks which I can use to get food catering, so I don't have to spend time shopping/cooking.
The added bonus of joining a barter group is that people are way more willing to spend barter bucks than cash, so you can get value out of people who wouldn't otherwise pay you. It is also good for increasing business when you don't have a lot of it already.
Security is inversely proportional to the commitment of one desiring to circumvent it.
I work in a hospital and one of our senior doctors wanted me to do some work for him. He gave me 2 offers. I took the second one - cash. The first one was a free coloscopy...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I've never had any offers of sex, but I've been given a dobro, a lawnmower, a variety of CDs, a pan of toe-curlingly delicious lasagna, a cordless phone, a gutter-cleaning job, and a smorgasbord of computer parts.
I've only cut one person off cold. "You really need to learn some of this yourself," I told him one day. "I don't need to," he said. "I have you." No he didn't. Not after that.
True story...in college I saw this hot chick at the cafeteria in the beginning of the 2nd semester...and I had never seen her before. After asking around I finally got introduced through a mutual friend, and over lunch one day I just mentioned that I was interested in computers. She mentioned that she was having issues with her laptop, which would randomly shut down on her. I didn't really know what was causing the problem, but I decided to head over and take a look at her computer. Couple nights later, I head over to her dorm room...I just do a few standard things, run Ad-aware, etc. During the whole time I'm there, the computer doesn't shut down once. After about half an hour I'm done, but every time I tried to leave she kept trying to find a way to keep me there. We ended up just hanging out for about four hours that night (it was on a Monday), and over the course of the week I averaged at least that much time or more with her every night. I got a girlfriend out of it:-)
People like people who like them. This shirt says that the world pisses me off, and you're part of that world. Therefore, i'm pissed off at idiots like you who can't tell that my time is too precious to spend fixing your broken PC.
If you're too busy to fix someone's PC just tell them so, nicely.
That's respecting yourself, AND others. (ok that sounds like an after school special but it's true).
Photos.
Thats what my girlfreind gave me for fixing her pc, does that count?
:)
Now if only her twin sister had the same problem
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
I have had some annoying girls ask me to fix their computers. These are usually the friends of friends, who care only about themselves, basically the cast members of "mean girls." So instead of trying to get something out of it I usually ask them for something they won't ever end up giving me. An example, this one girl begged me multiple times to fix her computer. I told her I don't know how to cook and if I fixed her computer I simply want a dinner out of it. But I knew she was too selfish to ever do that in return. My real plan was to help her so she can't ask my help again. I cleaned the computer up, got it working great, 5 months later it is filled with spyware again and even though she has mentioned it to my brother he simply responds "he is still disappointed about you not holding up your end of the bargain."
I spent the hour not for the free dinner but because I knew I wouldn't get it and I could use that for leverage.
Give me a treat, and I'll give you Mozilla.
Give me a raging case of herpes, and I'll clean your PC of Spyware.
Use your teeth, and I reinstall windows.
Lots and lots of cocaine.
;)
One night after at a bar I randomly ran into this guy that some of my friends and I had met earlier at a basketball game. After the bar closed we proceeded back to his house to continue the party - it was at this point I noticed a computer and sat down to mess with it. Seeing this our host starts with a laundry list of problems his windows box was having. I told him that I would love to help but that i was a bit too drunk.
And then he brought out the coke...
As everyone else coninued drinking/screaming/watching porn in the background this guy would hold up a mirror in front of my face every few minutes when I was hyped/frustrated/too high/not high enough until I had finished.
All said I was probably paid about $100 for three or four hours of work. Sadly not the first or the last time I have accepted substance for service
In the words of Rick James: "Cocaine is a helluva drug"
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
That's hilarious. Your first thought is to stay under the table and masterbate instead of actually trying to talk to her or ask her out. DAMNIT MAN! SNAP OUT OF IT!!
Funny. I always get the "trust content from..." dialog whenever Windows wants to download a patch.
Maybe clicking "No" would help...
I once saw a
I should've got a screenshot.
So? They also eat things called "haggis" and "spotted dick." Please don't use the British as examples of sane behavior. ;)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Below is the relevant excerpt from the article:
In finding defendant guilty of careless driving, the Law Division judge stated: The defendant quite clearly operated his vehicle carelessly, failed to exercise appropriate caution in the prevailing circumstances, and endangered both the persons in the other vehicle. These conclusory remarks, however, were insufficient to establish a careless driving violation. It appears that both the Municipal Court judge and the Law Division judge applied a res ipsa loquitur analysis in finding defendant guilty of careless driving. The doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, however, has no application in the determination of careless driving due to the quasi-criminal nature of the proceeding in which the State has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt all elements of the offense. See State v. Wenzel, 113 N.J. Super., 215, 216-18 (App. Div. 1971)(the mere fact of an "otherwise unexplained jackknifing" where a tractor-trailer entering a construction area had jackknifed on the wet roadway, crossed into the opposite lane and broadsided another truck fatally injuring the truck's driver, did not establish that the defendant had been driving carelessly.) The careless driving statute provides: [a] person who drives a vehicle on a highway carelessly, or without due caution and circumspection, in a manner so as to endanger, or be likely to endanger, a person or property, shall be guilty of careless driving.
[N.J.S.A. 39:4-97.]
Here, other than the accident itself, the State only presented defendant's statement that his vehicle began to slide on the wet highway and continued to do so when he tapped his brakes. Moreover, his apology was not an admission to driving carelessly, but merely a statement that his car had slid on the wet pavement. The State presented no evidence indicating that defendant had been speeding, driving too fast for the wet road conditions, distracted or otherwise driving without due caution and circumspection. Consequently, there was insufficient evidence to support defendant's conviction for careless driving, and we reverse that conviction. We affirm the driving under the influence conviction and sentence under N.J.S.A. 39:4-50(a) and vacate the stay. We reverse the careless driving conviction under N.J.S.A. 39:4-97 and remand to the Law Division to amend the judgment.
"It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork."
That shirt is a big fuck you to the world. If you want to say fuck you to people who -DEMAND- they help you then by all means go ahead. I'm just saying that the shirt in question makes you seem like a dickhead to everyone, even the nice people. That shirt makes it seem like even asking is wrong. It reeks of snobbery, and anger. That is the message it sends.
Photos.
Because some people are morons. Does this make homeopathy science?