I was a patsy North Korean operative for a quick stint (just maybe) + I am your outsourced remote tech worker.

 After my workplace life fell apart, once more, back in the summer of 2012, I was sent reeling through what’s been over a decade’s worth of flailing attempts at recovering and rebirthing my professional presence, and, alternately, I’d gone through several incarcerations and psychiatric hospitalizations. It sounds pretty bleak, and it has been - I was faced with many an end-of-(work) life scenarios playing out, and I also several genuinely decent job placements that I’d secured through my extensive former work’s contacts list, which numbered in well over 6,000 emails and phone numbers. 

Before, and leading up to 2012, it was a period of ups and downs, likewise, in terms of that I’d started out with my newfound professional position, as a software installation gig worker, essentially, on craigslist's computers and tech section, mixed in with some hardware sales and repair work, here and there. Nowadays, I couldn’t possibly regain a foothold in that sort of workplace scenario and job environment, and I feel that, with the advent of App Stores and fully online software update fulfillment, the black and grey markets for software installation tech workers has all but dried up, not to mention that, collectively, on the community side and or on the backend of craigslist, the nomenclature of alluding to that a person is offering software installation services is practically banned, for all intents and purposes. 

Losing my way in that workplace came with innumerable complications, as I lost my 19th floor loft, where I stayed, in downtown Los Angeles, as well as that my car broke down, in coming years, thus creating an environment of reckoning with unexpected change and challenges. The welcome mat had all but been pulled out from underneath me, and I was no more prepared than I had been, when I started the work, for dealing with the consequences of a life without craigslist software installation gig work. 

During this time of transience and transition, I experienced the graces of kindness and hospitality, on the part of several various individuals and families that had taken me in, as well as some job placements, as I’d mentioned, from my former clientele. That being the case, I can attest to that job offers are truly scarce, in this sort of situation - I’d procured mid to long-term job offers from perhaps 1 in 1,000 people, or businesses, if I averaged out my contacts to the numbers of jobs I’d gotten placed in, within the context of me having lost my work. 

The homes I stayed in all had unique Los Angeles signatures to them, varying from Mid City, to the Silver Triangle, in Venice Beach, to Topanga Canyon, and it was a great experience for me, despite being down on life, in other ways, although they all came to an end, for some reason, or other. I suppose that it’s simply challenging to justify adopting someone in my circumstances, as an adult, that I was (I had functional challenges with doing things such as helping out, around the house, for example). I had been spoiled by a plush and volatile work/life balance that I’d eked out, for myself, doing this craigslist thing, and I was mystified, on a regular basis, by rich auditory hallucinations, and a daily variety of narratives of horror and reprieve. 

From out of that, and, moving forward, I experienced some renewed bouts of homelessness, one failed (short) long-term romance type of situation, and, the incarcerations and hospitalizations I’d previously mentioned. When I did have housing of my own, back in 2018-2020, the situation was likewise, to my earlier attempts in living independently, haphazard and messy, which eventually led to my being evicted from my Section 8 apartment. 

The Covid-19 Pandemic was a period of time that saw, for me, a great bound, in financial terms, as I took advantage of the stimulus and unemployment funds that were given expansive resources and funding during that time. I had, somewhat, of an unprecedented sense, a newfound precedent of having experienced wealth - this time around, I had a rich resource of personal sabbatical freedoms, since I lived in transitional housing placements that were paid for, combined with regular income, provided by the federal and California state government’s stimulus and pandemic unemployment funding - a long lacking financial support mechanism, which allotted me the freedom to deep dive into my research and development modes, with “work,” of other sorts, still seeming to be long and far away fanciful notions of security; things that other people could do, and have, for themselves, whereas I built my works and resolve from out of my skill sets, as a writer, a blogger, an animal lover, a researcher, an artisan, for example, whereas, inside of my mind, I still longed for the excitement of working in tech, and I wondered at the dint of what employed individuals and profitable companies had, that I didn’t have, about me. 

That being said, I was on my own, with the (at least) illusory circumstances of otherwise, in an alternate life, perhaps, that wasn’t really mine, having a relatively large regular expendable income, with unemployment payments coming to me, for about 2 years, or so. This windfall did not come without its own caveats and pitfalls, though, and I continued to struggle with mood disorders and delusions. I’ve also, unwittingly, been the victim of unwitting and accidental overdoses, due to fentanyl ingestion, in instances where I’d come across bags of white powder, whereas I found myself desperate, for something else, and I’d make-believe that the synthetic, pharmaceutical-tasting powder was, instead, somehow, my favorite.

Now, for analysis’ sake, I was still caught in, and subject to, unfavorable circumstances, in my own personal and psychological conditioning, and it would still be some years before the drug marketplace would give-ho to a new economy of profiteering, at the expense of putting quality first, alternately. Nowadays, I can take it or leave it, in most instances, and I’m making progress towards becoming drug-abstinent - fortuitous conditioning, as it were: favorable circumstances to wean myself off of drugs, meanwhile, I have richly embedded experientially rewarding hobbies that don’t pay, or get me high, such as caring for the town’s pigeons, to draw some correlation upon perhaps the wisdom of the younger generation, as I attempt to remake my image and portrayal of myself, professionally, given my former failures.

Nowadays,

there’s a lot of hype and buzz surrounding the place of work, itself, in a much more broad and societally-affective sense, with the storm of Artificial Intelligence upon us. I’ve found myself on the bright side of this situation, though, with two remote work opportunities having presented themselves to me, which I’d been accepted for a position with, for both instances. One of the jobs reeks of a financial fraud scheme, as it amounts to that I initiate, upon receiving instruments and instructions for payment transactions to be processed, by myself, through my own accounts, whereupon I would take a percentage, and deposit the sum in to a Bitcoin wallet - all brimming with mystique, and disappointment, as the “company’s” website claims to feature an extensive catalog of goods that they sell, supposedly, as an e-commerce operation (they only feature 4 items for “sale,” in truth). I went along with this mysterious remote work job, however - suspended disbelief, as it were, just to feel out the reality of what working for a company such as this would portend. I made a $50 USD commission, and I paid for a meal and some bank fees, aside from that, perhaps, but the confidence and hallmarks of legitimacy of a real company’s sureness, in operations, were just lacking. Moreover, a recent article by Wired practically mirrored my exact experience, in part, where the article details a woman now caught in dire criminal legal straits, and I figure that I could just as well end up not pleasing somebody, in a big way, somehow, if I likewise continued to do what I’d initially felt, and, moving forward, despite that, continued to feel, was something simply wrong and improper - fraud is a sort of situation that I’m not well-versed in, so I decided to try them out, so to speak, at their offer. My ChatGPT conversation about the situation pointed out some of these flaws, but reading the outcomes of someone else, who is facing prison time, for essentially equivalent circumstances, was enough to set me straight. I also had some moral support, from out of what was formerly cruel hallucinations - a voice that I could trust, for some various reasons of the characterization and nuance of the voice, calmly advised me against continuing with the scheme. Lucrative, sure, yet fumbling in execution, and lacking in full rationality and logic of as to why I was needed, or valuable. 

My other job, which I’ve just recently started, involves rating music search results, as a contractor signed up with an intermediary outsourcing establishment that specializes in training Artificial Intelligence models for various clients. I don’t directly work for the client, and the I’ve yet to receive my first payment, but it’s something I can feel much more secure and confident about, given that I’m dedicating real and legitimate hours on a big tech client’s web page portal, where work tasks are detailed, and are consistently fed through, to the task doers. The workers and corporate management and oversight commune on Microsoft Teams chat, and there are assessments that need to be done, in order to qualify as a task worker for the job. I was offered a second position with them, which I’ve yet to see through to the onboarding, so far, but I’m optimistic, as everything feels well-to-do and legitimate, in an organized business sort of way. 

So, I’m a remote worker, and my days consist of alternating between working on my iPad Pro and going to the library to work on a computer console - I’ve been feeling out which workstation environment is more productive: the computer has a keyboard and mouse, and a larger screen format, for referencing and researching the reasoning being fed in to the system, for the client’s AI models to be refined, but the iPad Pro is a newer machine, and I have a skilled aptitude in thumb typing, and I can use AZERTY, which I prefer, now, going on several years that I’ve been using AZERTY for my writing, and I find that it lends itself more so to better eloquence in execution, that the letters find themselves in, for productivity’s sake, and I experience fewer errors, and a more familiar and unified format of workstation environment on my iPad Pro.

I’ll write some updates, here, as they come, as to the status of things with my new job, as well as the outcome of the job that I dumped, perhaps.

Update: June and July

Some time had passed, since I first published this article, and I learned the outcomes of these two job-seeking aspirations. The AI search results training job ended up paying too little for the amount of time and for the degree of difficulty of the job. Meanwhile, I suffered an acute bout of a back injury that gave me some pause, and I had to lay in bed for a week or two. It started to feel nice, to “be lazy,” for once (perhaps it was prudence, rather, of not exacerbating my back injury, though). I extended my restfulness a couple of more weeks, it seemed it ended up being. I didn’t go in and donate blood plasma, like I usually would have been doing twice a week, since it ends up being a several or more set of hours invested to head out to the valley, wait in line, until the blood sample and vitals are taken and analyzed, by the phlebotomists or nurses, and then wait some more, for a bed, and there’s more waiting, once donors get in to their beds, typically, and then, the blood plasma donation itself takes around an hour, sometimes up to twice as long, for me. 

That was that one. For the transaction fulfillment job, I got a sobering reckoning dealt to me that started with a phone call from an unfamiliar number. There was an elderly lady, on the other end, and she asked who I was, and she asked about the charges on her card bill. I advised her to report it to the issuing company, and that I was caught in a scam, in this instance. It took her some weeks until she filed the claim, apparently, and, eventually, I got a notice from PayPal that a chargeback had been initiated by the “buyer,” or, in other words, the lady whose card information was stolen for the sake of putting it to use for these nefarious purposes. I was left with the short end of the stick, since it was my “job,” in this fraud scheme, to put the transactions through, with my name on it, and, with me as the PayPal payment processor. 

All in all, it wasn’t all that bad, or as big a hit as it could have otherwise have been, if I was in more dire circumstances, and without support, for example, but I’m not. Anyhow, I have some money coming in, in August, which will cover my financial mishaps and skeletons in the closet, so to speak, this scheme being one of them that I’ll be able to cover, with funds to pay for it, and I’ll chalk it up as a lesson learned. Sure, I should have known better, and part of me did know well enough, at the outset, but I was fraught with an overly optimistic outlook about things, being that I was unsatisfied with my financial situation, and I was searching for jobs, at the time, as well, and these two prospects nudged me along to try to fit in, somewhere, like the proverbial carrot on a string, for a horse. 

That’s all. I tend to not give negative outcomes like this too much thought, just some consideration for how I conduct myself in the future, and where I place my trust, as well as how much I listen to my intuition and common sense, from here on out. Aside from all of this, AI search rating job did end up paying, albeit less than I would have liked, and, less than I expected, as well, but I bought myself some nice things, with the money. 

A peek at my room at the Russ Hotel.

 I've been assigned to Interim Housing, through the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, since around February of this year, after spending a spat of perhaps 8 or 9 months, or so, being out on the streets, wherein I moved out to Century City and Cheviot Hills Sports and Recreation Park, to be specific, around this time (October) of last year. I'd been haunted by voices in my head, throwing me out of town, so to speak, and I was hinged upon negativity surrounding me, within my personal space. All of this was preceded by an apparent overdose, in July, where I don't remember much of what happened, and I lost all of my belongings, including my beloved iPad Pro. I'm only now within sights of recuperating and procuring another iPad Pro, soon, perhaps before the holiday season, if my estimations are seen through to fulfillment, and, that being the case, a large portion of those hopes are already accounted for and paid, or, as good as paid... since I want to have another iPad Pro so dearly (I had to pay off the balance on the one that I lost). 

In any case, my housing wasn't all that friendly towards me, in my first interim housing assignment, and I got thrown out, at the same time that I was taken in to this new place, which has been a huge boon to my wellbeing and progress, both in health and in my work life, which is, essentially, ordering and reviewing products from Amazon, donating blood plasma, and, here and there, recently, I'd gotten in to some tech industry user studies and product use in-person interview studies sorts of things.

Anyways, no one is allowed to come and visit my room, according to the rules, here, but I get the place to myself, and it's located right next to all of the spots I would normally frequent, out here, in the Skid Row portion of Downtown Los Angeles, CA, but I've gotten my room up to fairly impressive interior design status (aside from the slight mess, pictured below; it's just that the space is small, and it's a hassle to reorganize everything. I just wanted to show folks the lighting and the wild array of products that I have, which are nearly organized; at least, as best as I could fit them in and on to things that I use as storage and display shelves). For a decade and a half, or so, now, I've been fortunate enough to, in some way, or other, have the means to develop the aesthetic of my home (when I am housed, that is).

These are my toiletries, fragrance bottles, and my home and living storage and display spaces, with some art work, up top. To the left, I have a mini closet that's full of boxes, currently. Art buffs and art critics might liken the organization and display aesthetic to the "cabinet of curiosities" style.

This is my bed, my slight art exhibition, some messy product box stuff, and, to he right, is my small utility cart, which stores some of my hopes and aspirations in which I fancy I'd do a pop-up shop, and come out with a bunch of products, for the public, somehow; hence, a utility cart with mostly miniature and small knick knacks. I have some lighting set up, here, for decorative effect, and a big lot of nutritional supplements that I take, which I procured from my product reviewing gig.

A different angle of my bed, with knick knacks everywhere, my charging station, nutritional supplements, etc. 

I'm going to be moving to a new place, in November, or so, so I'm planning on doing some fire sale stuff, and giveaways, I suppose, locally, as well. That's my estimation, in any case. My phone service just got cut off, so I'm a bit in limbo, as far as posting items for sale, since the Internet connection I do have access to is spotty and slow, at best. All in all, though, it's hard to stop myself from ordering yet even more items, and, to be honest, I don't even try to stop myself. It's just fun.

Update: October 27th, 2024: I got a new storage rack, for boxes, and I took some cleaner photo close-ups of some of the detail portions of the room. I also got a new panel lighting piece. Plus, I included the digital photo frame of the still life with pigeons image, sitting across from the foot of my bed.

A look at the lighting scheme, in front of my bed - blue, red, and violet-purple.

A lower view of my cabinet space, with a weaving loom (bottom left), and my new shelving racks, with LED lighting for the middle shelves (the lights aren't on, here), a moon-surfaced globe alarm clock and tea kettle, up top. In the middle shelves, there's food and nutritional supplements. 

The MIDI keyboard 🎹, and the still life with pigeons digital picture frame (currently, that's the only image on it).

Some of my current favorites in nutritional supplementation, recently, as seen here, are ML Naturals New Zealand Green Lipped Mussel 50:1 Extract (great for inflammation), ML Naturals Biotin, Sunflower Lecithin, SAM-e, Berberine Phytosyme, Iodine, and pill-form electrolytes (they work well). In the lower left hand side, I have stacks of product boxes, waiting to be sold or thrown out, perhaps. On the center-right-lower portion, I have a display case of some of my aroma chemicals.

A corner view of my fragrance ingredients collection (left), my tea rack (center), currently featuring Lapsang Souchong Black Tea (it's smoky), Coffee Cherry (Cascara), Jasmine Pearl Tea (traditional), and Tulsi Licorice Root (non-caffeinated) and some detail of my cabinet shelving top portion (top, right), which features my cosmetics and toiletries, such as finished and retail colognes and perfumes, perfume single ingredients, a hydrogen generator water bottle, humic acid and minerals, some other supplements, such as liquid zinc. I also have an electric water atomizer, for humidifying the room, when necessary, and to water seeds and seedlings that I grow.

Finally, (I say “finally,” because I’m running out of space, in my room, and I doubt I’ll be adding much more things for very long), I just got my new iPad Pro, and I made a Polycam 3D model of my room. It’s pretty amazing to view, with all the stuff, and the lights, with a 3D .obj file viewer, either online, or as an app; I’m sure it’ll provide some amusement. . 

Here’s a link to the .obj file of the inside of my room. Just download it annd open it in the online web app link, or discover an app for viewing 3D .obj files in Google Play or the App Store. Enjoy!

The spooky psychedelic ceiling cat mashup photo montage, included in the zip file.

I finally got an iPad Pro back in my life.

 I probably vaguely covered the topic, as well as that I vaguely disappeared from updating this blog - I'm referring to last year (2023) around the beginning of July, which was when I woke up in a nurse's dorm, completely naked; I was the victim of an overdose (apparently). 

I struggle to recall the precise details of where I went wrong, leading up to this occurrence, after the fact, and I swear that I had identified that my personal belongings were somewhere in the nurse's dorm, yet I was too much out of it, at the time that I was transported to the main part of the hospital by the emergency medical transport personnel, to make certain that my belongings weren't lost in the shuffle, being that these were items most surely attached to my body (I wore my iPad Pro, at the time, inside a bag that I never took off). I can recall that I found a fentanyl-tainted methamphetamine sample inside a  silicone container, nearby where I slept, back then, as a homeless person, but I recall that I consumed it without issue, at the time, and that I went about my day just fine, at the time - not quite in fine form, as I had to resort to shopping-carting around, since my baby stroller broke down (I used the stroller to transport my items around town). The reason I reported to the shopping cart was, ironically, related to my iPad Pro, of back then, to begin with - I had a delinquent bill, with AT&T, and, as I was, at the time, I could only imagine making payments for the device, and for my service, with recycling money (collecting and redeeming recyclable bottles and cans). 

Nowadays, things are different from all of that, lifestyle-wise, and to my benefit - this model iPad Pro is the latest model; it had been a while, since I was out on my own, without an iPad Pro to prop me and my project aspirations up, and make things presentable. My financial situation, on top of my housing circumstances, are much more well-supported, at this point. On one hand, looking at my own iPad Pro, after experiencing, first hand, an Apple Vision Pro, which is fantastic, and a heap of fun to play around in - it's challenging to portray the experience to somebody else, but, in short, it is a truly immersive augmented, camera assisted, operating system, run primarily on eye-tracking technology, whereas the controls of the device (keyboard, scrolling, etc.), unless the user implements the Dwell option, which means, essentially, that the user's gaze, and a certain amount of time afterwards, upon a single object, such as a link, the corner of an app window, a menu list of items(s), basically any individual selectable item within the operating system and apps is gaze-able. The cool thing about the Vision Pro, though, is the augmented reality feature of resizing screens, such as video screens, as can be imagined, I fancy, by referencing my iPad Pro, in my room.

The Christmas season 2 episode of Ted Lasso, a show I came to be fond of, after trying out the Vision Pro.

Now, imagine that the iPad Pro screen is resizable, up to virtually the entire visual field, and all of it (apps and VisionOS) is controllable by camera-tracked fingertip pinches. The resizing feature of it would amount to that there is now a 100-inch projection screen in front of the viewer, all done virtually, with some simple finger gestures, done in thin air. It's quite fantastic, and it makes watching media on smaller devices a bit dull, although the iPad Pro does have a gorgeous color profile to it, and great apps, which aren't matched by other platforms - that's what I really missed about my lost iPad Pro - the accessibility and the diversity of activities that I could achieve in the iPadOS platform, with an iCloud backup installation of an iPadOS that dated back several or more years, which I had been building upon. I lost access to my backup, this time around - I guess that I was fooling around with tightening up the security of my device, out of paranoia, I'm sure; I became convinced that somehow, people were tunneling in, or had peeked over my shoulder, on the bus or train, for example, and I changed my password in to something hopelessly complex, prior to losing my device, due to the hospitalization. 

Anyways, here's to a new season of better photo captures and high-resolution video, as well as advanced graphic and image creation, for the Sticker Time collection. Who knows what'll be next?

Anyways, I purchased up the iPad Pro in-store on Cyber Monday, and it arrived near the end of the week, and I picked it up. I was expecting to slip right in to my trusty old iPadOS installation and configuration, with over 700 apps neatly organized in to folders, if I remember correctly, but I apparently did some screwy stuff with my iPad Pro that I had previously, right before I had my misfortune last year, when I lost my device, and I locked myself out of getting the configuration, itself, (which amounts to a lot of work - the configuration of the apps in to folders). I must have changed the password on myself, or something like that, because I couldn’t sign in with my previous iPad password, for my old device; hence, I lost that section of the work I put in to the device, but it amounts to only the encrypted information on the device, itself, not iCloud-stored information. So, I’ve got to make out a new, or makeshift, configuration with a new set of folders, but I’m definitely glad to have the device back in my hands - this one’s thinner than ever: Apple calls it “impossibly thin,” and it’s practically true, yet it’s a very sturdy device. One of the first things that I did was LiDAR-scan my room and port over my video game accounts, that I started playing on my other, Android devices, and, as luck would have it, the progression ended up being a passing of the torch, completely, from an Android tablet experience - not a bad one, with this Yatiom model tablet, “for kids,” it had been marketed as, yet, it came with 10 GB of RAM: pretty competitive, as well as intelligently put, although my new device has 16 GB of RAM. There were some processes that I was running, in audio, on my old device, that pushed the limits of throughput and available memory (apparently), and I encountered an app crash, from out of running those processes on my old iPad Pro, which only had 8 GB of RAM. In any case, somehow, serendipitously, my Yatiom Android tablet got it’s screen broken, the next time I looked at it, after receiving the iPad Pro, so I’m lucky to not have had a lapse in tablet format and a higher-RAM-running operating system.

R.I.P. to my broken YATIOM Android tablet, which gave out, just as soon as I received my new iPad Pro.