September 2009
15 posts
It's simply a relaxing yet productive activity
Up until about eighteen months ago I was a successful executive at a Fortune 500 corporation. I had never had to worry about job security or money before even as a single head of household. Then came the recession of December 2007 and I lost my position to a corporate restructure. I found myself, a single mortgage holder with no income other than unemployment insurance. I continued to be on the...
By May of next year I will be $120,000 in debt
I entered law school because I had no idea what else to do with my liberal arts background. To my surprise, I developed a passion for public interest law; to my dismay, that area of the law is not particularly lucrative. Having attended college on a scholarship, I was ill-prepared for the penny-pinching that would mark my law school tenure and, in all likelihood, my future career. By May of next...
This is the memior of a klutz
This is the memior of a klutz. A klutz who surrounds herself with other klutzes. It was the winter of 2006. I was a college freshman with a shiny new Macbook Pro, perfect for my major in Graphic Design. I loved that computer. Everything about it. And one day my roommate, and evil spawn of satan “Greta” decided to spill lemonade all over my laptop and not tell me. Needless to say, she...
I want to get my wife the CD she has been looking...
In the town where I live we have been hit hard by the recession. A lot of jobs have been taken away including mine. I want to get my wife the CD she has been looking for but unfortunately no store around here has it. What I have been trying to do is to earn enough money here on Mechanical Turk to but it for her from Amazon. I know it will take a while to do but in the end to see the look on her...
Show Me The Way To Go Home
Show Me The Way To Go Home…. We’re broke right now – covering the bills and that’s about it. Nothing new there, then – a good proportion of the country is in the same situation, if not worse. However, my family lives overseas and my Mom is not well and cannot travel. Being able to earn a few bucks here and there online is a godsend. Every penny is going towards an airline ticket back to the Old...
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Children have this innocence that we can only...
Children have this innocence that we can only dream of. The world will rob them of this in time and it will never return. In the sweetest voice earlier today, my two year old daughter asked me “daddy, where’s my mommy?” How do I respond to this, she was about a year old when everything happenend. I’m sure she has no recollection of that night since she was asleep and stayed asleep...
I'm a country girl, born in michigan
I’m a country girl, born in michigan. A child of the 80s a teen of the 90s and an adult in the next millenium. Growing up in the country, I was in a tight knit community where I knew almost everyone in my small class;if not personally than by face and name.Was a part of the local girl scouts and youth group at church. Also did volunteer work and grew to love the area I grew up in, so much so...
I am an insomniac
I am an insomniac It’s tough not being able to sleep at night. I dont know if it’s a medical condition, or I have just cultivated this habit over the years. I used to enjoy staying up late and watching the late night shows. Then along came the WWW. My ISP provided unlimited free access from 12.00AM - 8.00AM. So then i started watching sitcoms online! And after a while, I discovered I...
Say it with me: “Amazon Mechanical Turk”
Say it with me: “Amazon Mechanical Turk”. Sounds kinda strange, right? Right. I honestly can’t figure out how I stumbled upon this interesting website; I could probably just say that I found it while going through all the fun stuff on amazon, but no…I didn’t. Maybe it was just meant to be. WE were meant to be! Oh Mechanical Turk, how I love you so! You give me extra money for doing some simple and...
Are the good old days on the Turk coming to an...
A tough couple of days on the Turk, as the usual sources of easy HITS seem to have dried up. Yesterday I pushed through some image tagging and identification tasks, combined some sentences, and did a variety of other odds and ends to make my quota. The usual quick and easy hits, image moderation, quick polls, and categorization, seem to be scarce and rapidly snapped up when they do appear. You...
I remember the very first HIT
I first heard about Mechanical Turk from National Public Radio, my addiction at the time. I was skeptical at first; as a college student, I had tried the whole pyramid schemes, online paid surveys, and all of the other marketing ploys that people use that just end up as junk mail in my e-mail inbox. So, the idea of an online tool that had me investing time in order to make money from anonymous...
Last friday I went with my father and his...
Last friday I went with my father and his ex-girlfriend to the sea. It was so blue, so blue! Fucking blue, I mean, it was nice, it was as if I was on an island. It was nice. I swam this wonderful crystal clear sea … Maybe it’s dirty, I don’t know, but if I see what’s at the bottom of the sea, I have such a nice feeling when I swim … And I was thinking, that if J...
One actually asked me whether I enjoyed taking...
When my significant other first told me about the mechanical turk site, I thought she had lost her mind. A site where you did tasks for as little as a penny? It sounded like the type of setup one would find at a sneaker factory in southeast Asia. But when I accompanied her to the office one day, I decided to bring the laptop along and try out the site while she took care of some paperwork. I...
My husband and I don’t have as many marital rights...
One would think that as someone who tests software for a living, that one wouldn’t want to work outside of the day job on a site like Mechanical Turk, but in my case, it’s a big help. I get lots of experience writing, and I earn a few bucks for some of life’s little luxuries. Why do it? Well, right now it’s because I have a husband who is sick and can’t work. I make enough for us to live on, but...
I am more interested in growing food...
I am a 40 year old female college educated mechanical turk. I am a new turk too. My husband and I moved our family to a large piece of land in the middle of nowhere last year in an effort to provide a better environment for our children to grow up in, and I just discovered this about three weeks ago. We are raising our own food, both meat and plants, for the most part. I was once part of the...