[CLUE-Talk] interesting home business article - from slashdot

[Evan Widger]

yeah, it would suck to have that as an added annoyance on top of your real
job

but. if you got payed for it and were at people's homes and had the chance
to teach them what they're doing wrong, why they're not supposed to be doing
it, and making the userbase that much smarter, i think it'd be more
fufilling and of course at $30-50/hr, be alot better for the pocketbook. i
had a job a while ago as a tech at a mom n pop computer store, and was tech
support on the phone for about 5-10 calls a day (usually resulting in bring
the computer in and we'll look at it). when i did phone support it wasn't
that bad and people were usually apreciative of my knowledge (i.e. being
able to walk them through dialogues without having their computer in front
of me). i think i have the cajones, i already made a business card and am
thinking of hitting the pavement tomorrow and posting fliers around to see
what the response is. the biggest problem (according to my wife) is that the
neighborhood we're in is low income and to put it nicely, i don't speak
spanish very well. looking through the phone book i see a number of computer
shops that have onsite support (2 or 3 big picture ads at least) but i'm
sure i'd be cheaper than them. to put it another way, this is the first
thing i've seen that has inspired me to actually get out of the house in the
past few days, not to mention that i could pick up job applications at
places around here (computer or otherwise) and kill a couple or 3 birds with
one stone (i much prefer shotguns but that's only in counterstrike)

as for school, i'd go back to get my 4 year degree or more certs but don't
have the money and having just moved here would have to pay nonresident
rates (CCofA is like $300/credit hour, so even a cert in unix sysadmin would
be exorbitent) i want to get an A+ or RHCE or even an MCSE if i'd thought
it'd get me better chances in the job market but as it is my AS in computers
and school certs in HTML, Java, JavaScript and Perl/CGI aren't doing
anything for me. THAT pisses me off to no end. 3 years of college while
working part/full time and nothing worthwile to show for it, but i
digress.....

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Timothy C. Klein" <teece at silverklein.net>
To: <clue-talk at clue.denver.co.us>
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 11:27 PM
Subject: Re: [CLUE-Talk] interesting home business article - from slashdot

 blah blah snippety blah (hey, it's my own text, i can say it)

> I also found this article intriguing.  But I have never liked the idea of
> tech support, as the author of the article suggests.  When I worked at
> Qwest/USWest, I always managed to become known as 'that guy that knows
> computers'.  People wouldn't call company tech support because everyone
> told them to come to me, I would get the job done better (tells you
> something more about Qwest in-house tech support, rather than me).  It
> was always annoying, but it was not my job then, it was an annoyance on
> top of my job.
>
> I currently don't have a job, as I got laid of last year and am going to
> school full time to get a *real* job. :->
>
> The biggest trouble I see is having the cojones to just go for it, and
> get it started.
>
> Anybody on the list do something similar, that can give a feel for what
> the market is like?
>
> Tim
> --


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