
Must ride mule to and from work location - eightturn
https://www.deepsouthventures.com/must-ride-mule-to-from-work-location/
======
reaperducer
I love it when "rural" and "IT" come together. Reminds me of a job listing I
came across when I was on the beach a few years ago.

It was for the government of the state in which I lived at the time. It was
listed in the IT area. Essentially, the responsibility was to test and
maintain computers and their webcams in transmitter sheds at the top of the
tallest, most remote mountain peaks in the state. They were part of some kind
of state-wide radio network, presumably for forest rangers, firefighters, BLM,
and similar types of agencies.

I didn't apply because the job listing included requirements about the ability
to handle strenuous hiking, previous experience camping for a week or more at
altitude in winter, and various types of outdoorsy skills which I simply don't
possess. All I could imagine was spending a week walking up a mountain with a
couple of servers strapped to my back in deep snow. Not my scene.

And sadly, because it was a gub'mint job, it couldn't pay extra for the
hardships involved.

~~~
walrus01
The WISP last mile, small ISP industry sees a lot of the venn diagram overlap
between tech and rural. Lots of places out there in remote parts of the
American west which have only one wisp available, or none, and will benefit
greatly from starlink.

You see lots of creative stuff out there. Small solar powered hilltop sites.
60cm dish antennas bolted to trees.

~~~
reaperducer
_60cm dish antennas bolted to trees._

I stayed at the Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction, California. It
had one of those dishes for internet service. It was mounted to the top of
what looked like a super-extended flag pole.

Every time the wind picked up, it would lose alignment and the internet would
go out.

~~~
walrus01
There's better ways to do that without so much rotation that a 5.x GHz based
PTP link will lose alignment - one low cost solution is a 16' long, 6x6
pressure treated timber set directly into a hole in the ground, with a 3"
sch40 steel pipe bolted an additional 10' on top of that.

~~~
yourapostasy
How much of the timber sits in the ground, and what is the maximum wind rating
of the mounting you described?

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tbran
Good stuff. This author builds businesses off kind of serendipitous domain
name purchases.

Find a domain, build something useful on it, grind for a while, you have a
business. He also wrote:

 _I Sell Onions on the Internet [0]_ \- He buys the vidaliaonions.com domain
and works with local onion farmers to sell them. Has been linked at least a
couple times on HN.

 _Want to build a side business? Just buy a great Domain Name [1]_ \- I like
this idea because it can give you a steady stream of ideas, puts some
constraints on you, and you'll probably be a lot more committed if you plunk
down a few hundred or thousand dollars for a domain!

[0]: [https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-
inter...](https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-internet/)

[1]: [https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-
business/](https://www.deepsouthventures.com/build-a-side-business/)

~~~
elbigbad
I saw the onion article and ordered 5lbs of Vidalia onions from
vidaliaonions.com on a lark because I had never had one. Never again, maybe I
just don't have a taste for them, but loved the site and was very happy with
the service and product in principle. :D

~~~
baldeagle
There are also Texas 1015s. I can eat those like an apple. :)

~~~
eightturn
1015s are great.. Walla wallas, and maui sweets as well.

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vageli
> Now, sure, from the outset, I could have viewed this idea from a defeatist
> attitude, that being, “What? I’m gonna try to compete with Indeed,
> SimplyHired, Monster, and the like? They’re VC backed heavyweights… I have
> no chance.”

It's _something_ to hear others battle with a similar set of demons as myself.
How easy it is to get in one's own way. What do I have to lose?

This guy's story reminded me of the person selling onions via the internet
(vidaliaonions.com). [0] Turns out it's the same guy!

[0]: [https://onezero.medium.com/the-dot-com-don-meet-the-
domain-p...](https://onezero.medium.com/the-dot-com-don-meet-the-domain-
prospector-turning-stray-urls-into-real-businesses-bf9b5747e5f3)

~~~
swinnipeg
It should remind you, it is the same guy!

------
yourapostasy
I really like these descriptions of long-tail businesses that connect people
with lower and lower economic friction, it fulfills the original wondrous
promises of the Net that filled my head when I was first exposed to it.

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jamestimmins
OP seems unusually good at copywriting and HN-friendly headlines. That's a
huge asset.

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dfee
looking at a domain now... but, it’s listed as for sale on Domainist - a site
which (despite me registering, and it accepting the registration), never sent
me the confirmation email needed to proceed with the offer.

The thing I like about these small humble internet businesses is that they’re
so close to people. Not that I’m complaining about working as an engineer on
growth projects, but I often times think that each human connection /
conversation is just as rewarding as the zillionth install.

------
walrus01
I occasionally check random common nouns as domain names. Somewhat surprised
that burrito.com hasn't been used by somebody to redirect to a third party
food delivery service (Uber eats, doordash, skip the dishes etc) as a portal
for finding Mexican food delivery near your location.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
how? this is an amazing domain.

~~~
walrus01
My only guess is that somebody is sitting on it and trying to sell it for an
unreasonably high asking price.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
That's the thing... just forward that site down to UberEats's site for 2 hours
with an HTTP Header of "X-WANT-MORE-MONEY-CALL-ME: phone number" and you'll
sell it

~~~
Thorrez
I don't think you can set headers on redirects.

~~~
netsharc
I guess one could do a Javascript redirect and I think the browser would set a
referrer.

So you could redirect from burrito.domain to burrito.domain/call_us_at_xyz,
and from that page redirect to ubereats, which will hopefully set a referrer.

Or one could also redirect to ubereats.site/?message=Hello+Uber+Eats, which
probably won't break their site, but someone will hopefully see..

------
Zhenya
I went to each of the listed sold domains.

Working:

\--AppalachianTrail.com [SOLD] |

\--BearSpray.com [SOLD]

Broken/parked:

\--CowboysAndIndians.com [SOLD]

\--WeBuyLand.com [SOLD] |

\--Ziplines.com [SOLD] |

\--LambChops.com [SOLD]

Thought that was interesting.

~~~
eightturn
author here. I wish I'd kept Ziplines.. I could build something neat on that.
Needed cash at the time, so had to sell.

~~~
nedwin
Do you think they bought it to develop and just never got around to it?

Or as an investment, something to sell again in the future?

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raunometsa
I love nice, humble internet businesses like this!

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thih9
> At first, I seeded all the jobs myself

What does this mean?

I really hope this isn’t generating nonexistent job offers and accepting
applications from real people.

Perhaps this was copying offers from other boards, which would be relatively
harmless.

~~~
eightturn
author here.. when I started, I already had years of experience in the dude
ranching industry, so I simply reached out to them for jobs to post. ie, I
seeded, in other words, posted the jobs myself.

~~~
thih9
Thanks describing the details and congrats on a really cool project!

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oldsj
He should really consider hosting the site on Rancheros

