
Ask HN: What are some cool things you've done? - Kevin_S
For me:<p>I found a new way to abuse the market in an MMORPG and made $50k+ from it as a high-schooler<p>Re-invented myself in college. I was something of a loner in HS and became a highly involved very social person in college, while improving my personal life substantially.
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I spent about 14 years designing and building vans that C4-C5 quadriplegics
could drive. We shipped them all over the world while I did that. Our clients
included many war veterans as well as Jill Kinmont (champion ski racer) and
Teddy Pendergrass (musician).

While I was working on those it was the only vehicle in the world a quad could
drive.

To put it into perspective, most of them came to us knowing they could not
pick up a sandwich and take a bite by themselves, and we were telling them
they could open the doors, operate the lift, get inside and securely seated
next to the controls, and drive a big Ford Van safely away wherever they
wanted to go all by themselves.

And they all did, and that was always cool to see.

It's much more common now to see someone in a wheelchair driving a car but
it's still not common to see a quad driving. Shortly after I stopped working
with the company that made those vans they went out of business.

They'd gotten bought out by an "investment firm" who didn't value the small
crew that had been building them since the company had started and we all
decided to stop building them.

I'd mostly subcontracted work from them and just went back to building custom
cars full time and the rest of the crew just stopped taking orders from the
government and insurance agencies that paid for the vans. They finished up
what was on the line and did some maintenance work for clients that had them
while the new "CEO" sat upstairs smoking cigars in his office for about 4-5
months without ever realizing the crew was shutting the business down.

By the time he realized it the company didn't have any money in the bank, the
inventory on the shelves was gone, there were no vans in the eight slots we
had set up to build them, and he owed the crew a month's salary. They all
agreed to take the tools and machines and whatever else was owned by the
company as compensation and started their own business, all as equal partners.

That was pretty cool too.

