I need to figure something else out - Jobs, what do?

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Let me start by saying this is still bad advice but I’ll forgive that you dont know how it works here because I have no idea how it works where you are.

In the states, there is the ASE certification. Its akin to an IT cert. There are a bunch of them. You dont need them but no reputable shop is going to hire you without that or equivalent experience. So starting out you might get to push a broom and after some time goes by you MIGHT get to do a brake job. A farm hand probably gets more mechanical experience than that. Unless you take a big interest in working on cars no shop is going to take someone in off the street. They will just be a liability.

Also mechanical stuff is a lot easier to prove to the mechanically inclined, which if those people were, they wouldnt bring their car to a shop. IT stuff is no different.

This is where you went full retard though,

Telling someone to not go into business for themselves in IT but then telling them they could do engine tuning is laughable. What do you expect would happen if someone gets their engine tuned and then they go beat the piss out of it until uncle rodney comes knockin? “uh man, I think your tune was bad.” Then he gets taken to small claims to replace the D16 in some kids 90s honda.

You seem to be stuck on the idea that this is what we’re telling him to do. We’re not. No one is. Though every business venture requires some kind of capital to make it happen, its generally understood that you would want to minimize risk. Telling someone not to go into business for themselves because of risk is like not going outside because you could get hit by a car. There are ways to mitigate the risk and if you look both ways before you cross that boundary you’ll probably be alright.

Repairing computers on CL is not a bad idea because of risk, if it was there would not be so god damn many posts in that section. Its a bad idea because of saturation. Theres likely 5-10 other people doing the same exact thing already.

Buying broken stuff, I agree, doesnt make much sense. Getting broken stuff for free and trying your hand at fixing it makes much more sense and could actually be profitable. Tools do cost money but skills are priceless. (BTW did you know in america you would have to buy your own tools to be a mechanic? shops dont provide them.)

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I’m sorry, are these your only options?

I might be confusing you with someone else, but aren’t you a hardware developer? I recall you saying you’ve “hacked” processors and written C code?

If this is the case, why not invest more time in those skills and become a systems engineer or embedded systems developer? You will easily clear six figures in most states and probably enjoy the work more than working on cars in a garage* or taking freelance I.T. work fixing laptops from 2009.

Having skills is one thing, marketing yourself is another. I’d build a solid LinkedIn profile and an online portfolio. Use WordPress or a free blog if you have no interest (or time) in building your own website. However, those two things alone will boost your availability and recognition. I also highly recommend getting a GitHub account and throwing your projects on there.

* I understand for some people that working on cars is therapeutic and fulfilling, but when you’re doing it on someone else’s disgusting vehicle or on someone else’s time, the fun tends to drop significantly.

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That is the eventual plan, of sorts. Or hardware repurposement of some sort. ATM I’m just stuck in a shitty situation and needed cash to pay stuff off. And while I would dump time into it, theres a problem of making my time match up with other people’s time. Working at an engine shop or general mechanics shop might not be optimal, but I know some about cars. I’d have a leg up there, just the same as working in IT or Software Development. Plus as much as I hate to say it I’d probably need to go back to school for those things to really happen. Though I don’t know much about the steps in during, or after. Guess I have people to ask though so not like my resources are sparse.

It probably doesn’t help that I don’t consider myself a developer at all. Just a shit-tier hacker. Yeah I have worked on stuff but nothing really ground up. I can never hold interest, though I guess thats what upstorm is for haha.

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if you’re good with cars, and near enough to a big city, you could do roadside assistance, like i do. (but for the love of god, don’t go with auto-rescue). pays decently, especially when you get with a good company. very flexible as you’re usually an independent contractor

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I completely understand and I’ve been there before. Take my advice with a grain of salt, as it’s mostly anecdotal and I’m trying to relate to a situation that I have limited information on.

That being said:

Make time for yourself. Wake up early, stay up late, give up video games, forums, anime, or whatever else you’re filling up time gaps. If you only have an extra 10 minutes just six times a day that’s still an hour that you can spend on improving yourself. If you can batch that time and focus an entire hour on doing something, that’s even better.

I taught myself to play guitar, and I bring that up because it’s incredibly relevant to discussions like this. My friend had been playing longer than me, and he would play 2 to 6 hours every Saturday. He was GOOD. I practiced 30 minutes to an hour every day, 7 days a week, sometimes longer. I caught up to him within a year. He was baffled, claiming at the time that I had some unnatural talent or a “knack” for the guit-fiddle.

Knowing what I know now, I don’t think that’s true. I think me playing every day and building on something daily versus him playing in a burst session, likely spending a couple of his hours rebuilding his skills or “warming up”, I was warmed up from the previous day.

Anyway, point being, you spend a lot of time on the forum, and probably a lot of time wasted on the Internet. I’m not picking on you, EVERYONE does this. I work with people that never have time to do anything and struggle to meet deadlines, yet every time I wheel over they’re fucking off on God damn Facebook or Twitter or Discord or Instagram or blah. Replace Facebook with Level1Techs, Linus Tech Tips, /r/linuxmasterrace, etc. and it’s the same problem. Distractions are everywhere, and they have ruined us as deep thinkers and tainted our ability to learn new skills quickly.

If you write a shit ton of code 1 day a week for 4 hours, that’s still not as good as writing code an hour a day every day of the week.

Go into a room with no computer or smart phone and sit there for an hour and read. Make flash cards, write pseudocode, flowcharts, write all of your code on paper and transcribe it later. If hardware is your game then tinker with your tools alone in the garage or office.

Do this every day, as often you can, and document improvements.

Definitely do what you need to pay the bills. Don’t let this kill your drive though. Stay hydrated, quit drinking energy drinks and soda, and eat better where you can. This goes a long way to improve focus and motivation.

Probably, but maybe not. I did a lot of things without a degree, and I’ve worked with a lot of people without degrees or with unrelated degrees. Eric S. Raymond is an English major or something like that. I’ve worked with brilliant engineers that had History, English, and Philosophy degrees.

Allan Underwood, Microsoft MVP and Senior Architect for a big dog personality learning/security company got his degree after he had established himself in his career. Don’t use school as a crutch, if you’re good enough people will hire you regardless of what the HR file says. However, if school is something YOU want to do, desire, personal milestone, etc. then definitely make time to do it. I don’t know if FastWeb is still a thing but I spent a couple of hours every week and got like $1,000 to $3,000 a semester usually. Same with grants and what not, especially if you’re under 26, live at home, etc.

All it takes is a couple of weeks with the intention of improving your attitude on that. I’ve worked with and know a lot of people with Software Engineer, Software Developer, Software Architect, Systems Engineer, Infrastructure Developer, Infrastructure Engineer, DevOps Engineer, and many other words in their titles that I consider “shit-tier hackers”. That didn’t stop them from getting a cush job with benefits and breaking the bank on the 1st and 15th every month :man_shrugging:

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I’m following some similar advice from Tim Ferriss. Make a list of 5 things you need done. Do them for 1-2 hours every day, choose anything on the list, and do it till finished or irrelevancy. I am starting to carry a planner sorta thing again with me everywhere like I did in school. I’m also going to keep my ibook on me since most if not all of my code projects are 100% on that platform. Its just a matter of having that time.

Hmmm… Maybe one thing I can do is go into work early and work on stuff at a booth. Like 2 hours early. Though I do have the question of is the hardware’s speed goin8g to hit me and should I cross compile?

My first step is to learn how the porting process works so I can work on an OS that I have no basis of knowledge how to create. So I’m going to port Abiword 3.0.2 to OSX 10.5.8 and document the process. Problem is that I question if I should cross compile using a newer machine and run it in a VM. But then what weird things are the VM going to output as errors that won’t happen on the real hardware? What would work better or worse? How would I keep my ibook cool if I use it, or, do I get a max spec powerbook? Then these questions build up forever and I feel drowned.

Though to be fair I have tinkered at fixing a bug in 3.0.2 every few days that I can’t really wrap my head around yet. So maybe thats a start. I know the syntax so I know the language, whether it-s C C++ or Python, but I can’t yart out an app. Thats why I consider myself a hacker not a developer. Can never keep interest enough.

I know that from band doing an hour a day helps a lot. I also know from band that having nothing real to play gets boring and that my double horn isn’t as fun as a mellophone. But yeah I get your point.

… I miss jazz band I need to buy a mellophone.

I used to. I’d say I was busy and haven’t had time, but I’ve just lost interest. Some days I screw with the lounge for an hour, or help with a linux problem, or comment on a few things, but I’m really not on the page much its just open on my desktop all day.

I was thinking immersion of the limited platform. Literally take my mac pro off my desk and use slower hardware that my projects are based on.

Theres a reason that emac G4 is on my desk permanently.

image

Also this is annoying only because I didn’t know anything had happened. Apparently I’m too slow for @stenstorp and now PPC void is a thing in under 2 weeks. Well maybe I’ll just port apps then I didn’t expect people over on the void forum to kick interest, or at least do it that fast.

Look at this shit it fucking boots too.

image

vhttps://forum.voidlinux.org/t/porting-void-to-powerpc/6228/23

And all he really did was change build arguments. Thats the other problem I have: I wouldn’t think to do that first. My process that I know is configure, if theres an error in the configure figure out what makes that happen and fix it, try make, make kicks out errors, fix the errors till it builds. Ugh. Its annoying but I’m learning from it either way.

I’ll keep fastweb in mind. Problem is I have interests in everything and nothing annoys me more than having to choose one of about 18. And none of them are greater than the others. I know thats a common problem and all and I should choose one and go. Blah blah.

I’ll keep that in mind too then D:

I think what I need to do is choose what I’m deving on and keep that on the desk. If I want to play games I can do that on the xbox but hot damn I’m falling behind on the project I originally came up with and now its out of my hands.

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bwahahahaha

That’ll cost more than the car itself WITH a good engine already in it.

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I’m not saying anyone is trying to tell him to do anything. I was referring to his own comments about picking stuff on up craigslist.

You’re right, maybe things are different here.

Here in Australia we have Apprenticeships, where you can start out in a business like a mechanic workshop and get paid a lower wage, the government gives the business an incentive to hire you.

That aside. Forget the mechanic stuff then.

I still maintain that spending your own limited funds to BUY broken hardware on craigslist in the hope you can fix it and sell it at a profit with little to no experience in doing so, whilst actually making money on it is a risky idea.

If anyone DOES try doing that, make sure to keep track of your time spent on each item:

  • locating the hardware
  • procuring the hardware (collecting it, unpacking, etc.)
  • diagnosing, fixing the hardware (including finding/purchasing the schematics, etc.)
  • procuring spare parts
  • dealing with the sale of the hardware

Don’t forget all the equipment you’ll need up front to do this properly too… parts cleaners, extraction fans, microscope, etc.

And work out your hourly rate once you sell it. Don’t forget to include the relevant tax liabilities. You’ll likely find you’re working for a pittance. Doing it as a hobby on the side? Maybe…

Being a gun for hire to fix people’s stuff without buying it first? Sure. You haven’t had to expend any funds that you may never get back. Scouring craigslist to buy stuff in the hope of fixing it? Fuck that.

WORKING old hardware isn’t worth enough to sell for enough to pay for your time at any reasonable hourly rate, imho.

Plenty of people may be doing it, but plenty of people in this world make incredibly bad decisions; that doesn’t make it a good idea.

People like Louis Rossman can make (good) money doing Mac repair because he has experience, has put in a lot of time and effort learning this stuff and has a bunch of spare parts. He’s also not buying broken hardware in the hope of flipping it for a profit. Anything he buys is likely purely for spares with no hope/expectation that it will be a working machine.

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Aight look I enjoy the advice but if you’re gunna fight get the fuck outta here.

Seriously.

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I muted him and I’m done. Sorry fam.

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