adventures in human capitalism

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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My new phone arrived yesterday!

(Amazon almost always takes less time to ship than they think they will, so I ignored them telling me to expect it on the 9th and kept an eye on the tracking page.)

I haven’t got it fully set up yet, but it’s coming along well. I might be finished by tonight, and likely by the end of tomorrow.

There are two main problems left.

First, it’s fucking cold out. -10C, windchill -20. It’s going to get less fucking cold in a couple days, but there won’t be a positive windchill temperature in the foreseeable future. Apparently active Pokemon Go players are dealing with this as best they can by things like walking laps around malls and camping indoor Pokestops. I might do stuff like that *next* winter, but I don’t want to *start* playing a game while it’s in winter dormancy.

Second, Internet access. I still don’t have a SIM card, which means I don’t have a data plan. I’m told Pokemon Go requires a continuous Internet connection.

I can think of a few ways of dealing with this:

1: Play only in Wi-Fi zones. I can’t tell yet how feasible this is: I don’t know what the public Wi-Fi coverage is like in my area. Because it is, again, fucking cold, I can’t go out mapping yet. (There are a *few* hotspots already listed on that map as being within walking distance, but it’s clear nobody’s gone through and systematically mapped my area. Not yet.)

2: Pay my brother to come with me, with his phone set to mobile hotspot. I might need *a* mobile data connection, but nobody said it had to be *mine*. I’m pretty sure I’d need to pay him even if he didn’t mind the act of coming with me, because I don’t think he currently has a data plan, nor do I think he has enough spare credits that he could buy one without making more top-ups to his pre-paid account than he otherwise would.

3: Convince my mother to detach her pre-paid account from her current flip phone and attach it to a phone capable of generating a mobile hotspot (the smartphone I’m giving her, perhaps). Then, take her phone with me. (She probably wouldn’t mind me using her phone without her supervision, as long as I asked first.) She has enough spare credits built up that I probably wouldn’t need to pay her, but she likes her current phone and getting her to switch would be tricky.

4: Finally just buy my own phone plan. (This option can probably be discarded. I am very reluctant to spend money on gaming: I normally stick to video games that are ad-supported, volunteer-maintained, or have optional purchases I never buy. I might be willing to bend a *little*, but not to the tune of $100/year. This option would be feasible if I had a significant amount of non-Pokemon use for a phone plan, but I currently don’t.)

5: *Partially* just buy my own plan: instead of getting the same setup as the rest of my family, with a $100 minimum top-up paid annually, pay on a sub-annual scale and let it lapse in winter. Alternatively, pay on a monthly scale only on months I don’t have school (and therefore have a lot more free afternoons in which to play), letting it lapse during winter *and* during school semesters (using one or more of the other methods to play during semesters). Even pre-paid plans don’t like people lapsing, so there would be penalties for having my plan be on-and-off. Because of the discount for paying annually, it might not even be cheaper depending on what periods of time the plan is “on”.

(All of these options, other than 1, also require arranging the data plan itself for maximally efficient use of phone credits. Depending on the setup, minimum payments might not provide enough credits, and if the minimum isn’t enough even Mom’s built-up credits would eventually run out.)

Last I heard, @nenya-kanadka has an on-and-off phone plan. Her Internet connection usually isn’t good enough for Tumblr these days, so she probably won’t see my ping, but I think I’ll message her on Dreamwidth and ask for details about how her setup works. (What with her being in Canada, any country-specific advice she gives will still apply.) That’d get me a bit closer to having enough information to make a decision, though I won’t be able to make any plans until I’ve mapped the local Wi-Fi.

Tags:

#originally I wasn’t even going to *consider* replacing my phone until spring #because I knew I’d get antsy if I had the theoretical capacity to play Pokemon Go but not the weather #(I’m now trying to balance ‘doing enough research to plan stuff like Internet access’ with ‘researching will make me antsier’) #but the sooner Mom gets an Android that actually functions okay (unlike her shitty tablet) the better #and anyway the roomier hard drive will be nice regardless #oh look an original post #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(three at the moment) #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #I’m not especially *expecting* advice but if anyone has any I’d be interested in hearing it

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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How can Pokemon Go be so popular if so few phone models can run it?

Like, am I missing something, or are phones with enough RAM small-selection and rather expensive? I looked on Amazon for 2GB RAM smartphones, and I got four entries, three of which were ~$195 and one that was $280.

Though I’d prefer to use Amazon store credit, and an unlocked phone could be nice, I might end up buying another locked phone from PC Mobile. They’ll sell me a 2 GB model Amazon doesn’t carry for $104. The only problem I’ve ever had with my current PC Mobile lock was having to buy a very cheap flip-phone shell when I needed a temporary American cell phone last year, rather than putting an American SIM card in my pre-existing smartphone. Not only have I never wanted to buy a non-PC Canadian plan, I’ve never even bought a PC plan. It’s looking like my first smart-”phone” is going to live out its entire life without ever actually seeing a SIM card.

Also, apparently all smartphones are really tall now, so I’d need to replace my phone pouch too so a new phone will fit. I liked that pouch.

(I’m not just complaining. If anyone knows of an Amazon Canada listing that the search isn’t picking up, or some other decent method of obtaining a suitable phone (either cheaper or less locked than PC), or if Pokemon Go actually runs fine on 1 GB of RAM and Niantic was just being conservative with their list of specs, let me know. America-specific recommendations accepted if I can act on them during my day trip to Buffalo later this month and they’re unlocked, or possibly so cheap that their unlock fee is worth it: I don’t want to be tied to a carrier whose service area I don’t live in, in case I buy a plan someday. (But keep exchange rates in mind; from a CAD viewpoint, objects priced in USD are more expensive than they look.))

Tags:

#oh look an original post #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #and has been thinking of replacing the smaller one #nothing is *wrong* with it per se #it functions fine according to its original specifications #but I’m getting tired of juggling data around its tiny hard drive #(I’ve already had to uninstall multiple apps I wanted to keep because I simply didn’t have space) #(not *everything* can be transferred to the microSD) #and I would like to finally learn to speak Pokemon #but the thing that pushed me over into serious planning for replacement #was that Mom now has a thing she’d like to do that she needs a smartphone for #but it doesn’t really matter how *good* a smartphone #so I told her I’d buy a new one for me and hand my old one down to her #(neatly circumventing waste-not-want-not issues) #tag rambles

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The Secret, Dangerous World of Venezuelan Bitcoin Mining

Link ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

{{Title link: https://reason.com/archives/2016/11/28/the-secret-dangerous-world-of }}

moral-autism:

In a country where cash has lost much of its value, and food and other necessities are dangerously scarce, bitcoins are providing many Venezuelans with a lifeline. The same socialist economics that caused the country’s meltdown has made the energy-intensive process of bitcoin mining wildly profitable—but also dangerous.

Tags:

#interesting #Venezuela #bitcoin

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

First paycheck!

Tags:

#like I know it’s not ~a lot~ of money #but it was more profitable than how I would otherwise have spent that time #while not being significantly more unpleasant or inconvenient #(well I mean having a transcript deemed unfit for use last night was unpleasant) #(but that’s technically *next* week’s paycheck) #(and in terms of emotional pain level probably comparable or better than fucking something up on Flight Rising) #((*also* something that affects other people)) #(so as long as I’m more careful not to bite off more than I can chew I should still come out ahead) #anyway unequivocal steps up are worth celebrating regardless of Objective Size #tag rambles #in which Brin has a job #oh look an original post

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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justice-turtle:

brin-bellway:

justice-turtle:

As a matter of fact I mathed a while back and my transcribing speed on KUEC is well up to professional standards (I get through one minute of audio in about 6-7 minutes of work on average, last time I googled it said professionals vary from 4-10 minutes of work per minute of audio). I’m not sure how those figures would hold up when trying to transcribe people I haven’t already listened to literally hundreds of hours of, though, and if it had to have every “um, uh” and “I, I, I think” literal I’d definitely be slower. On KUEC transcriptions I cut out a lot of the verbal static that normal audio conversation has.

It’s worth looking into, though. What’s the pay like, what kind of material does one work on, what are the minimum/maximum productivity expectations, other questions like that? :-)

Background:

The company in question is called Rev. This is the job listing that brought it to Mom’s attention, which gives a short ad and a link to a bunch of generally positive reviews. (Mom, it turns out, is too hard of hearing: when they gave her a test recording to transcribe, she couldn’t even hear it well enough to finish the test, let alone pass. When she told me about this, after consoling her I said “Hey, I’m not hard of hearing, maybe I can do it.”)

—

Note that despite that being a Canadian job-hunting site, the listed pay is in U.S. dollars. (The company is based in San Francisco.) Money-wise, what you see is what you get, and what *I* see is a smaller number than what I get. (My currency-conversion app has been getting a little more use lately.)

“Average monthly earnings: $241, top monthly earning: $1,440″: in other words, theoretically possible to make a living off it*, but most people don’t. (Of course, I expect a lot of people are just supplementing and aren’t aiming for a living wage, and that would drag the average down.)

So far, I have completed two transcriptions, for a total transcription time of 13 minutes, a total real time of slightly over two hours, and a total money of USD$5.76. (That is, as the old joke goes, $7.72 in real money.) However, I am a newbie and speed comes with practice. Also, people who have logged less than an hour of transcription time don’t get paid as much: 20% of what would otherwise be their pay goes to an experienced transcriber who double-checks everything to catch any beginner’s mistakes, for a pay boost of 25% (because fractions) once you finish the probationary period.

So yeah, the bad news is that it’s not minimum wage until and unless you get pretty good at it, and no benefits. Good news things:

There are no minimum productivity requirements. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re claiming jobs from the pool and then not doing them, but if you don’t claim any jobs for a while there’s no penalty (unless you count the natural consequence of not earning anything). There’s no official maximum, although I’d guess there’s some number at which they go “this is suspiciously ridiculous”, because it’d be strange if there weren’t.

As long as you have an Internet-connected computer, a set of headphones, and a reasonably quiet environment, you can work. No commute, sit in whatever chair you want.

—

By default, “umms” and “ahhs” and such are skipped. Customers can request verbatim transcripts (my first transcript was verbatim), but they cost(/you get paid) extra (an extra dime per minute, I think).

Payment for each calendar week is sent to your Paypal the following Monday. So I’m told, anyway: I haven’t gotten there yet. (I don’t think it will feel quite real until I see the money in my account. Then, I will be Employed.)

Material varies. Interviews, medical records, instructional videos, sermons, I’m told podcasts but I haven’t seen any yet… Audio quality varies a lot, and there’s been some I haven’t understood, but you can hear a recording without claiming it, and there’s a one-hour grace period after claiming where you can bail on it without penalty. (Also they have audio filter options that apparently help somewhat with recorded background noise.)

—

All in all, may or may not be enough on its own, but at the very least a potentially helpful supplement. If you have a spare hour and a half or so at some point, you might want to try applying; fair warning, they brag to their customers about rejecting 90% of job applicants (”only the best 10% work on your recording!”). I mean, who knows how many of that 90% were blatantly incompetent, but if it seems like something you might be interested in, it might be best to find out whether or not they’ll take you before you get desperate.

—

I feel like I might be missing something, but it’s past my bedtime. Let me know if you have any other questions.

—

*According to the cost-of-living figures in my head, which are based on averaged per-person cost for a family of four in southern Ontario circa 2014. YMMV by quite a bit.

How long does it take to hear back about whether you’ve been hired? And what’s the application like – I mean, do you need an up-to-date resume, or a list of seven years’ addresses for a background check, or is it more just “prove you have these current skills”, or what?

(I haven’t the time to apply at this very moment, cos I’m tryna catch up on a bit more sleep before work, but I’m trying to figure out how much time to block out and what to prepare before I do.)

More just “Prove you have these current skills.”

The application asked for my name, my email address, my typing speed (linking to an online test to take if I wasn’t sure), and my level of previous experience with transcription (options: “none”, “some”, “professional”; I picked none). Then they gave me a short quiz on grammar and choosing the correct homophone for the context of a sentence. Then they asked me to write a thing of one to three paragraphs on a provided topic. (600 word maximum, I think mine was about 250 – 300; since they expect the entire application to take an hour*, they’re clearly not expecting a highly polished essay, just something that shows competence with English.) Then they gave me their Style Guide to read, and a clip about 2.5 minutes long to transcribe in their text editor and according to their style standards. I saw in the background on one of their instructional videos–which was filmed on an older version of the interface–that there used to be an optional resume upload at the end, but now they don’t even give you the option.

Oh, and a Terms and a Privacy Policy to agree to. I did actually read them; it was pretty much what I expected, the usual “to the greatest extent possible, nothing is ever legally our fault” that most companies do with most things, and a warning that I was a freelancer and not technically an employee, and therefore not eligible for things like employee benefits. (I did hear on their forum that if you’re a freelancer and you need an official paper proving you work somewhere, Rev will give you one. I haven’t looked into it yet as I haven’t needed such a paper, so I can’t promise that.) (Also, you know, make sure to read it yourself and not rely on my summary, just in case that needs to be said.)

Email, November 21st, 10:46 PM Eastern: “Most likely you will hear back from us within one to two days. In particularly high volume times, it can take as long as three days to get through all of the applications.“

Email, November 21st, 11:21 PM Eastern: “Good news, your Rev account is now activated and you are ready to start working and earning money!

To get started, click here to complete your account registration.“

So they reserve the right to take a couple days, but mine was less than an hour. I can only guess that the application queue was deserted and somebody had nothing better to do than review my application immediately. (I was particular surprised given that I didn’t even submit within Pacific business hours.)

“Completing my account registration“ involved my home address, phone number, and the name and email of the Paypal I wanted them to send my payments to. (Which were the same as the name and email I’d given them previously, but the fact that they’re separate fields implies the option of having them be different.) They gave me a tutorial where they showed me around the employee freelancer-only sections of the site, gave me a few short sample audios (optional but recommended) that I could try to transcribe and/or watch a video of an experienced person explaining how to deal with the clip’s particular issues.

After that, I could start right away, and that evening I took a short (6-minute) clip that I could manage before bedtime (and I could, but only just). (I woke up to find that just after I’d turned off my computer for the night, a grader had checked my work. They said I’d done very well; the only flaw was one word that they had managed to hear but I had marked inaudible. The other word I had marked inaudible didn’t count as a flaw because the grader couldn’t hear it either.)

—

Things I thought of after finishing the last message:

I can’t be sure, and it’s probably still best to look into it sooner rather than later, but I suspect the 90% rejection rate isn’t as big a deal as it sounds. It’s in their interest to hire as many competent people as they can get their hands on: the larger the pool of freelancers, the more and/or faster transcripts they can complete, the more attractive their service will be to customers. (I saw quite a few positive customer reviews along the lines of “They told me to expect my transcript within 24 hours, but it came back in only 3!”.) Like I said in the footnote, quantity is good as long as it doesn’t compromise quality.

It’s not 100% true that there’s never a penalty for not working. They don’t fire you or dock pay for work you completed or anything, but people who are prolific enough while maintaining good grades are rewarded with first pick of new audios and the option to apply to become a grader, and if you don’t maintain your prolific-ness you drop down to regular transcriber.

Working in transcription would probably directly help with the feeling of your work requiring you to be mean to disabled people. In my last job, I made an instructional video more accessible. (Speaking of, Rev also has freelance captioning, but I haven’t applied to that and don’t know much about it. Rumour on the forum has it that it is more difficult than transcribing but higher pay.)

—

*Mine was more like an hour and a half, and so was Mom’s from when she started to when she gave up. I do tend to be slow and cautious and triple-check everything on tests, though, especially tests without strict time limits. (Or, in other words, I’ve demonstrated a willingness to take a significant cut to my own hourly wage to ensure a higher quality for their product. I don’t know if they’ve noticed, but they might think it’s a good sign if they did. Quantity is good all else equal, but only if it doesn’t compromise quality.)

Tags:

#I’ve been aiming for a transcript every school evening #(probably aim for more on non-schooldays) #but I ended up skipping yesterday because Thanksgiving was too tiring and I couldn’t focus enough #reply via reblog #in which Brin has a job #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

justice-turtle:

As a matter of fact I mathed a while back and my transcribing speed on KUEC is well up to professional standards (I get through one minute of audio in about 6-7 minutes of work on average, last time I googled it said professionals vary from 4-10 minutes of work per minute of audio). I’m not sure how those figures would hold up when trying to transcribe people I haven’t already listened to literally hundreds of hours of, though, and if it had to have every “um, uh” and “I, I, I think” literal I’d definitely be slower. On KUEC transcriptions I cut out a lot of the verbal static that normal audio conversation has.

It’s worth looking into, though. What’s the pay like, what kind of material does one work on, what are the minimum/maximum productivity expectations, other questions like that? :-)

Background:

The company in question is called Rev. This is the job listing that brought it to Mom’s attention, which gives a short ad and a link to a bunch of generally positive reviews. (Mom, it turns out, is too hard of hearing: when they gave her a test recording to transcribe, she couldn’t even hear it well enough to finish the test, let alone pass. When she told me about this, after consoling her I said “Hey, I’m not hard of hearing, maybe I can do it.”)

—

Note that despite that being a Canadian job-hunting site, the listed pay is in U.S. dollars. (The company is based in San Francisco.) Money-wise, what you see is what you get, and what *I* see is a smaller number than what I get. (My currency-conversion app has been getting a little more use lately.)

“Average monthly earnings: $241, top monthly earning: $1,440″: in other words, theoretically possible to make a living off it*, but most people don’t. (Of course, I expect a lot of people are just supplementing and aren’t aiming for a living wage, and that would drag the average down.)

So far, I have completed two transcriptions, for a total transcription time of 13 minutes, a total real time of slightly over two hours, and a total money of USD$5.76. (That is, as the old joke goes, $7.72 in real money.) However, I am a newbie and speed comes with practice. Also, people who have logged less than an hour of transcription time don’t get paid as much: 20% of what would otherwise be their pay goes to an experienced transcriber who double-checks everything to catch any beginner’s mistakes, for a pay boost of 25% (because fractions) once you finish the probationary period.

So yeah, the bad news is that it’s not minimum wage until and unless you get pretty good at it, and no benefits. Good news things:

There are no minimum productivity requirements. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re claiming jobs from the pool and then not doing them, but if you don’t claim any jobs for a while there’s no penalty (unless you count the natural consequence of not earning anything). There’s no official maximum, although I’d guess there’s some number at which they go “this is suspiciously ridiculous”, because it’d be strange if there weren’t.

As long as you have an Internet-connected computer, a set of headphones, and a reasonably quiet environment, you can work. No commute, sit in whatever chair you want.

—

By default, “umms” and “ahhs” and such are skipped. Customers can
request verbatim transcripts (my first transcript was verbatim), but
they cost(/you get paid) extra (an extra dime per minute, I think).

Payment for each calendar week is sent to your Paypal the following Monday. So I’m told, anyway: I haven’t gotten there yet. (I don’t think it will feel quite real until I see the money in my account. Then, I will be Employed.)

Material varies. Interviews, medical records, instructional videos, sermons, I’m told podcasts but I haven’t seen any yet… Audio quality varies a lot, and there’s been some I haven’t understood, but you can hear a recording without claiming it, and there’s a one-hour grace period after claiming where you can bail on it without penalty. (Also they have audio filter options that apparently help somewhat with recorded background noise.)

—

All in all, may or may not be enough on its own, but at the very least a potentially helpful supplement. If you have a spare hour and a half or so at some point, you might want to try applying; fair warning, they brag to their customers about rejecting 90% of job applicants (”only the best 10% work on your recording!”). I mean, who knows how many of that 90% were blatantly incompetent, but if it seems like something you might be interested in, it might be best to find out whether or not they’ll take you before you get desperate.

—

I feel like I might be missing something, but it’s past my bedtime. Let me know if you have any other questions.

—

*According to the cost-of-living figures in my head, which are based on averaged per-person cost for a family of four in southern Ontario circa 2014. YMMV by quite a bit.

Tags:

#in which Brin has a job #(even if it doesn’t quite feel real yet) #reply via reblog #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism

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~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

Rules: Tag 10 people you wanna know better.

I was tagged by @cakehorse

Favorite Fandom: I…actually haven’t been all that active in fandom lately. I guess I could go with Star Trek?

Languages I Speak: I speak English. I can read okay Packaging French, but don’t expect me to write it, let alone do anything with spoken French.

Favourite Film Of 2015: Not all that into movies. Especially not into watching in theatres, which are too loud and don’t let you pause and have sunk costs (since you pay by the movie, that places pressure on you not to leave partway through if it’s boring).

I will say The Force Awakens, on the grounds that it is a movie that I have watched and that I know to be from 2015. I watched it for cultural literacy reasons and do not really have an opinion on how good it was (”favourite” or otherwise), but it is definitely a film from 2015 (or so IMDB tells me, anyway).

Last Article I Read:  Um…*presses “undo close tab” repeatedly* *runs out of tab archive*

Oh, wait, “show all history” and then looking at the recent stuff would be better.

Right, it was “One Player’s Nine-Year Journey to Open a Locked, Secret Door”.

Shuffle Your Song Library And Put The First Three Titles:

“Moonlight (A Vampire’s Dream)” – Stevie Nicks

“Don’t Stop” – Fleetwood Mac

“Vienna” – Billy Joel

Last Thing I Bought Online: I bought a 64GB microSD card and a 4-pack of Aero chocolate bars from Amazon. Well, I say “I” bought them: my brother wanted them, but I had a lot of Amazon credit lying around and he didn’t, so I bought them and he paid me back. (He could have paid for them himself, but no sense leaving that money tied up in Amazon when it could be in my bank account*. I can always pay Amazon with bank money if I find something I want later.)

(Because the microSD card was just under the free shipping cut-off, it was actually cheaper to buy the chocolate bars than to not buy them, which is why he got them.)

*Well, in general. In that specific case, the money my brother gave me never saw my bank account: I used it to pay my exam invigilator.

Last Person I Dreamed Of: Does it have to be a real person? I dreamt of the Red Panda a couple days ago.

Any Recurring Dreams: Not by the strict definition: nothing identical or nearly-identical, no continuing storylines. As for recurring themes, I get a relatively large number of amnesia nightmares. (Occasionally they even go meta, with lucid nightmares where the horror comes from knowing your long-term memory compiler is turned off while you’re asleep.)

Phobias Or Fears: Food poisoning, death (and partial death, as above)

How Would My Friends Describe Me: Has an interesting perspective on things. (Interesting in the genuine and positive sense, not the “…interesting” one might use to describe something one doesn’t want to admit was dull or disturbing.)

How Would My Enemies Describe Me: Whatever their favourite euphemism is for “insubordinate”. A lot of negative descriptors for use on people boil down to “insubordinate”.

(I try to keep my insubordination to a minimum, but sometimes I slip up or misjudge exactly which hierarchy is in play.)

Would I Take A Bullet For Someone: Probably not. I guess if the bullet would be fatal to them and non-fatal to me, but that’s probably not what the question meant.

If I Had Money To Spare What Would I Buy First: (I assume this is after taking care of the usual windfall stuff, paying off household debts and charity and whatnot)

Maybe a car? Our minivan has terrible gas mileage, and we only make use of the superior storage space (for items or passengers) ~4 times/year. I’d keep the minivan around for those 4 times and buy a more efficient car for everyday use. (Mom’s afraid a non-minivan won’t have enough legroom, but surely there must be some car out there with both legroom and decent fuel efficiency.)

Tags (no obligation to do this, obviously!): @ilzolende (my newest follower), @ellaenchanting, @orbispelagium, @justice-turtle, @lizardywizard

Tags:

#I tweaked some of the questions #just for consistency in capitalisation and first- vs second-person #(yes I know I didn’t fix the shuffle one) #(couldn’t think of a way to do it that wouldn’t involve major restructuring) #(was not willing to do major restructuring) #meme #oh look an original post #(more or less)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

justice-turtle:

(not to mention we’re all broke anyway. like other than that salient point. ;P I don’t even know who I’d ask to borrow money from, just the mechanics of long-distance money transfer when you haven’t got a bank account are really very frustrating)

Could you do a workaround with gift cards?

This is easier with places like Amazon, who explicitly support emailing store credit to people, but even some corporeal stores have setups that allow for transfers over the Internet.

Consider the following scenario:

Step 1: Alice, who lives in Ontario, goes to her local Tim Hortons restaurant and buys the lowest-denomination gift card available (probably $5).

Step 2: Alice goes to the Tim Hortons website and creates an account.

Step 3: Alice types in the long string of numbers on the back of her gift card, and the shorter string of numbers hidden behind scratchcard-like material on the back of the gift card. This registers the card to her account, granting it theft protection and–more importantly, in this case–the ability to transfer credit between one card registered to her and another.

(If Alice already has a registered Tim Hortons gift card lying around, she can skip Steps 1 – 3.)

Step 4: Bob, who lives 2000km away in Alberta, goes to his local Tim Hortons restaurant and buys a $20 gift card.

Step 5: Bob emails/IMs/communicates to Alice the two strings of numbers on his card.

Step 6: Alice registers Bob’s card to her account.

Step 7: Alice transfers the credit on “her” second card to her first card. Bob has now given Alice $20.

I don’t know if you have any gas station chains (or other stores selling stuff you need, but I gather you’re in particular need of gasoline atm) nearby with that kind of gift-card system, but it might be something to consider.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #I know this post is a couple days ago but this just occurred to me this afternoon #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #adventures in human capitalism

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

no-chill-at-all:

 

justice-turtle:

cheshiretiffy:

ms-splendiferous:

tittytaytay:

ablackgirldaydreaming:

Yea

same

load up the playlist and spend the days writing and…praying

Let’s see…. 6 months of quiet and beautiful scenery to earn more money than anyone in the history of my family has ever seen?

Gee…

is food delivered? do I have access to my meds? can I bring friends? is there cell phone service in emergencies (eg I fall off a scenic cliff)? are there any social opportunities in meatspace or am I just in solitary for six months? what sort of library does the house have? can I leave to go shopping, or do I have to order shit like shampoo and craft supplies delivered too? are my living expenses coming out of the million dollars, who’s paying for them?

*always gets tied up in the logistics of that sort of thing* (also people go literally crazy without human contact for extended periods)

Everything JT said (except I’m not on meds). Additionally, you said no internet and TV. Does that mean I can have a computer as long as it has no internet access? If so, how much preparation time do I have to stock this computer with entertainment supplies? (Can I use external hard drives for more space?) Does non-streaming video count as TV? If videos still count as TV even when locally stored, is that all videos, or just videos that have also aired on television networks? (I’m pretty okay with no video at all for six months, but I’m asking anyway on principle.)

And JT, why limit cell phone service to emergencies? Limit data service to emergencies, sure, but technically nobody said anything about not being able to call people. (I’m less sure about texting, since as we learned recently texting is, for most practical purposes, the same thing as email.)

Also, 1 million what?

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#reply via reblog #fun with loopholes

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