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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Monday, February 25th, 2008 10:43 am

So here I am, looking again at listings for part-time work-from-home to bring in a little extra money.  The past six years or so have convinced me that I'm unemployable full-time for anything I'm physically capable of doing at this point¹ (I could probably get hired to work retail at, say, Home Depot, but my knees and left foot would never stand it).  And it seems there's basically three types of jobs listed if you're looking to work from home:

  1. Telemarketing.  'Nuff said.

    (I'd almost sooner mug old ladies.)

  2. Unspecified get-rich-quick promises using all the pyramid-scam buzzwords.

    (Sub-category:  Unspecified get-rich-quick promises using all the pyramid-scam buzzwords plus a liberal showering of "Christian" and "Mentor" and the like, to take advantage of the pious who think that if it's Christian it must be honest, because surely no fellow Christian would ever try to cheat them... right?)

  3. And "Get paid to take surveys on your computer."  I have a hard time believing there's significant money in that.  The sites I've looked at so far, it seems that to sign up, you have to agree to be spammed, opt in to a bunch of marketing crap, and sometimes even sign up for online college courses.  Can you say "just another scam"?  Sure you can.

Once again, I find myself wondering about a home-based PC repair business.  "The PC Doctor makes house calls!"  With places like Best Buy charging $70-$80 just to examine and diagnose a problem, there almost has to be a way to undercut them on repairs, and there may be money in support too.  (With the number of cheap-crap white-box PCs on the market stuffed full of lowest-bidder parts, there's probably little chance of making money building machines; anyone who knows enough to understand why it's worth using better-quality components probably knows enough to build their own.)

But how does one get started...?

[1]  Well, unless I were willing to uproot everyone again and move back to California.  Which I'm not.  It'd be chancing everything on a roll of the dice, and we'd be back into apartment-rental hell for the foreseeable future.

Monday, February 25th, 2008 05:09 pm (UTC)
Before I got this gig, I was looking into remote sysadminning, possibly contract/short term gigs where I might have to travel once or twice during the duration of the contract.

One of our maintenance companies approached us with a offer of support, the company they're subbing for for phone/software support appeared to use people at home for escalations. (They told us highly trained, highly experienced people. Sounded interesting, but I want Sun Support because if I'm calling them, it ain't easily googleable, and I've probably run through the obvious attempts.)

I could dig up the contact info if you'd be interested in tossing a resume towards the company.

(The websites I was looking at in 2002.. I don't recall off the top of my head, I'll see what I've got on the hard drive at home..)
Monday, February 25th, 2008 07:37 pm (UTC)
I could dig up the contact info if you'd be interested in tossing a resume towards the company.
It couldn't hurt. There's got to be some way out of this.
Saturday, March 1st, 2008 05:03 am (UTC)
They sounded interested. Mail inbound.