Slashdot Mirror
Successful Moonlighting For Geeks?
Lawksamussy writes "Having just bought a really old house that's on the verge of falling down, I'm now trying to find a way to pay to fix it up. I have a great job in software development that pays the bills, but I'm looking to earn some extra cash in my spare time. Whatever I end up doing has to be reasonably lucrative (or at least have the potential to be so), not require any specific time commitment, and be doable equally well from home or from a hotel room. I'm also keen that it should be sufficiently different to my day job to keep my interest up, so the most obvious things like bidding for programming projects on Rentacoder.com, or fixing up neighbors' PCs, aren't really on. Above all, it should appeal to my inner geek, otherwise my low boredom threshold will doom it to failure before I even start! So, I wonder if any of my fellow Slashdotters run little part-time ventures that they find more of an inspiration than a chore... and if they are willing to share what they do and perhaps even how much money they make doing it?"
I've been doing this for a while and I've managed to release a fair bit of cash.
Check out OnForce.com. They look for people in your area to do one-off installs, change out UPS batteries, run cable, update virus programs; all kinds of things that make more sense to hire someone knowledgeable one time than to keep people on staff "just in case."
I used these folks in my last gig to do field work all over the country...cheaper than flying someone out to do it.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Me? I'd like to build some out of exotic woods.
There is already a niche market for PC's made from high-end hard woods - I saw one advertised in a catalog on a commercial airplane that cost upwards around 3-4k with crappy innards. Go for it man....
Horns are really just a broken halo.
if you decide to do this, know your limitations, and the permit laws in your state. Here in NC, you need a permit for any new framing/walls, electric, plumbing, etc. If you don't get the proper permits, you may have a hard time selling your house down the road.
I second this. Instead of working to earn money to pay someone, you can do it yourself in the first place.
Back in my home country it is (in the country side) common to let someone (AKA people who know what they are doing) build the outer part of a house (basement, cellar, walls, roof) and some other important or safety-critical parts like heating system, staircases, electric wiring (not allowed to do without proper qualification) and water pipes (you don't want them to leak in 5 years), and maybe finish enough rooms to live inside the house (kitchen, bathroom, one bedroom, living room), and then do the rest yourself.
There are enough books to read about the needed tools and skills.
The best part about this is when later something breaks, you have the tools and knowledge to fix many problems yourself.
And carpenters and related jobs are unpopular enough (no one wants to learn this type of work any more) that there is enough shortage of those people so that their hourly rates are surprisingly high and they get away with it. So it's a nice "Plan B" in case your current computer related job no longer earns you enough.
You're completely out to lunch. There is almost no profit in LSD unless you are a primary manufacturer, in which case you "only" need about 8 years of organic chemistry experience, an advanced lab, and a couple of million dollars to buy precursors (and remember that ergotamine tartrate is closely monitored). Ecstasy has good profit margins, but the risks are high (it's a high profile LEO target), and you have to deal with the chance of getting bunk pills, as well as the kind of "cooks" who also run meth labs. You run a decent risk of getting jacked for your money buying a boat. Cocaine is even worse.
"Research Chemicals" (designer drugs) are still where it's at-- unscheduled analogues of scheduled chemicals. Things like DOI, DOB, DOC, 2C-E, 2C-I, MDMCat (Methylone), *-DIPT, *-DMT, *-DPT, etc. You can get these things in bulk for next to nothing from otherwise legitimate chemical houses in China, and then turn around and sell them online. Since Operation Web Tryp, pressure has been higher from the DEA, but anonymous hosting, website security, encrypting all email communications, etc., should be right up the alley of any geek. Profit margins are incredibly impressive, and it's easy to move. Relatively insignificant weights have good profit margins, as opposed to something like cocaine where you have to move kilos to make significant money.
For comparison, before Web Tryp you could get a gram of 5-MeO-DMT for about 200 dollars. You could easily sell it for a dollar a milligram. Go forth and profit on club scene kids with disposable income to burn (or snort, or eat, or inject).
I'm shocked no one suggested trading. I've been teaching myself trading for a few years now. Engineers are analytical by nature and trading is absolutely perfect. Backtesting systems and analyzing data for patterns are a yin-yang fit for techies. It's potentially lucrative and can be done from home or a hotel room, as the OP specified.
Worked for me, three times!
Buy COMMERCIAL quality basic power tools. The insane money you will save more than pays for them and they are a joy to use.
Buy tools as you need them for a given task, and check prices/vendors on the net just as you would for computer parts.
28-volt Milwaukee cordless tools are excellent. Set prices are much cheaper than "one at a time".
Use a digital camera to take MANY before/during/after photos so you KNOW where the stuff you cover up in the walls is located! You'll have an owners manual for your home.
Screws are usually better than nails, because you can (drumroll) UNscrew them and they hold much better. I don't use drywall screws even for drywall because they are brittle. Deck screws are rustproofed, tough, and trivially more expensive.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
That is a valid complaint. Not only do you need a Mac, you need the most recent OS.
I have a Powerbook G4 and a Macbook, both running OS X 10.4. Developing on the Powerbook is out because it has a risc processor, and I need OS 10.5 to develop on my (x86) Macbook.
Last night I downloaded Google's android SDK and emulator, and today I have a working Hello World and sample Lunar Lander.
Although Google has promised Android Market there are no android phones out there right yet, so the revenue potential is much less than for the iPhone at the moment.
Caveat Investor. Parent is likely a lucky and/or foolish speculator rather than an investor.
Practically no one earns 30% annually with consistency, especially not people for whom it is a hobby. Many people remember the good bets and forget the bad ones. The only way you should be tracking returns is by measuring the net value of the account/s from period to period.
Ten years ago, people "invested" in their homes with leverage (debt) when everyone was saying that you'd be insane not to and that renters were throwing away their money. Now many of these people are upside down. You can be lucky for a long time, but that's not necessarily investing.
Sometimes markets aren't efficient, and a smart, even-tempered investor can beat them. This combination is rare, and on average, the average investor has average returns. For your reference, the average annual compounding return for the S&P 500, a fairly representative index of 500 American stocks, was 5.3% from 1 Jan. 2002 to 31 Dec. 2007. It's fallen since then.
Doing what the parent advocates, especially with leverage — options, forwards & futures, buying on margin (borrowing money), or shorting (borrowing stock)—, could net you big money, but it could also wipe you out.
>The living room also had 3-prong outlets, which did appear to be actually grounded, but which were miswired somewhere, such that 60-cycle hum would emanate from the stereo -unless- the clothes drier was running, which I still haven't figured out.
Check for a loose neutral, neutral tied to ground outside the panel, or (*much* worse, but probably more likely) a split neutral tying into your dryer. At absolute worst (VERY unlikely) you have an issue at the service not being tied into the panel correctly where one of the phases is loose.
Just some suggestions; I'm not an electrician by any means, just did 6 months of courses on it. :-)
>My situation is a little unique, compared to many localities, in that there is no residential building code here; anyone can plumb or wire their own house.
Well, there *is* a code here in Ontario, Canada (electrical and plumbing, although you don't need a license for household plumbing, IIRC -- as a fellow electrician said "worst that happens is you get wet"... and ruin the house... or let sewer gas in...).
The code does allow a homeowner to do their own electrical and plumbing work. However, for the electrical work the homeowner *has* to pull permits (they are allowed to do that).
IIRC, you can get around those must have a license laws by doing all the rough-in work yourself, and paying a licensed electrician to connect the outlets and the panel (or you might get away with just the panel!)
Best thing you can do for house wiring: DON'T BUY THE CODE BOOK (just yet). You should buy a book that teaches wiring based on the code book instead. The codes don't read much like a manual, and there are many, many, many conflicting, confusing, and unclear codes (example: Here you may use "buried" junction boxes in an unfinished basement, and don't need one outlet every 18 feet (or so). Unfinished is defined elsewhere [if at all] and means the bottom few inches of drywall have to be missing). I would suggest, for North America, your region's version of "Electrical Wiring Residential" (Ray C. Mullin). It references the code as it teaches you. You won't even need the code book if you read it thoroughly and only want to wire normal things in a house (eg: No welding outlets or 220 volt window AC outlets).
And if you don't read a resource like that you won't know what you're doing! Eg: You can have a single outlet above the fridge tied to the fridge outlet (which otherwise MUST be on it's own independent circuit and MAY NOT IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be GFCI protected, BY LAW). Or that you may (nay, MUST) use a single neutral when running two phases to a SPLIT duplex outlet (you may use this configuration for kitchen outlets, but you'll need GFCI breakers). Bedrooms MUST be protected by AFCI breakers, etc, etc. :-)
I never understood the whole split-phase duplex outlet thing. Why do you Canadians do that? :) (And doesn't it lead to an overloaded neutral?)
The two phases can share the neutral because the AC sine waves aren't synchronized. As one wave reaches peak, the other is hitting zero. Together, they never add up to more than one wire can handle. Further proof of the superiority of AC over DC. Edison sucks! Go Tesla!
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
um, they are synchronized - they're either 120 or 180 out of phase. If they weren't synchronized, the phase difference would wander up and down.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The sad thing is that you have no idea how dead-on your statement is--in multiple ways. Drug dealing and having a broken-down house go well together, and I don't mean for the purposes of using it as a crack house...
Someone in my past who was a drug dealer (and I'm not talking about myself, but I still choose to post anonymously), would hide his earnings by buying a distressed/outdated property then hiring a contractor to fix it & paying cash... Contractors LOVE cash because a) they can hide it from the government--profits and purchases of materials***; b) it's much easier to pay their illegals--er, undocumented workers. So, the contractors write up a very underreported invoice--that the IRS can find out about--but get paid a much higher amount for much more work. (The IRS and even the local municipality have no clue what condition the home was in before and how much work was actually done). The work gets done on the home, greatly increasing it's value. Property sells, the profits are clean, & he moves onto the next property... He then pays himself a salary based on the profits and is a full-time real estate investor.
That being said, I'm curious to know how he's dealing with the present storm in the housing market... Then again, last I heard he was in jail (and not for money laundering...)
***To add, local building suppliers (other than the nationwide chain stores) often give "cash discounts"... By this point, the $$$ has changed hands so much that it's impossible to prove it's drug money.
Growing Cannabis in your spare time can appeal to your geek side. There's some minor tech involved (lighting, extractor fans, etc.). There's also a lot of tweaking you can do to improve yield (literally 'hacking' at your plants in some cases. Not to mention the statistics gathering you have to do to keep track of your yield performance.
Obviously the legality of this depends on where you live, you did say you lived in The Netherlands, right?
Please tell me what bank you are using that pays 3% interest per month. I'll switch tomorrow.
Know the saddest part? I was a math major.
Seriously though, fixed. I've known about that for freaking ever and just didn't think anyone would care :) "Painter's house is always the last to be painted" and all.
-Josh
But I really do mean it - everyone needs to run their own business. Fight the power, and whatnot!
-knewter