Fiverr.com: What Texans Will Do For Five Bucks

By Craig Malisow
From http://blogs.houstonpress.com/

For sale, cheap: Critiques of your dating profile

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Hair Balls has five bucks burning a hole in our pocket, and we're thinking about spending it on a postcard from a Houston-based model no one's ever heard of. Or possibly a Texas State Fair award-winning pecan pie recipe.

The problem is, there are just so many awesome things we can get for a five-spot on www.fiverr.com, a website where people offer random/borderline sociopathic services, and we need your help making the right choice. Here are five things Texans will do for $5. We don't know how to feel about this.

1) This woman from Houston will "like any facebook page, follow any twitter account, and subscribe to any youtube channel." If NAMBLA has any social media presence, we're totally taking her up on this.

2) Melany will talk to us "over Skype for 10 minutes." Topics include, but are not limited to, "fashion advice, hair styling, makeup, boyfriend/girlfriend advice, school issues, bullies, etc." Given Melany's apparent young age, we don't know how far to go with the joke possibilities without popping up on some FBI radar, so we're going to leave this one alone.

3) This dude will "post your band sticker on the most popular street in austin texas, s. congress." We were going to go with this right away until we remembered that we weren't douchebags.

4) This woman, who is licensed to practice law in Texas, "will send you a photo of the world's cutest dog, my Scottie glen, with your choice of pose and personalixed message, and all proceeds go to local animal rescues...." She had us at "your choice of pose." But since she also provides a service whereby she'll critique your online dating profile and pic "with brutal honesty," we'd like to get all meta and use the pic of her and her dog as our profile pic, thus making her critque her own picture, and her own dog. That shit's deep.

5) Of course, we've always dreamed of having a message carved into a tree behind a complete stranger's house, so you can imagine our near heart attack when we came upon maliciousdelano's offer: "Send me your name and whatever message you want carved into a tree behind my house."

We were also intrigued that maliciousdelano's 8-year-old son "wants to try his hand at selling online also!" He'll paint you a picture of anything for $5. But based on the samples his mother has posted, the lad has no sense of advancing and receding colors, atmospheric perspective, negative space, or, for that matter, basic perspective: in a truly haunting portrait of what appears to be a deranged man in blue coveralls and wizard hat and his dog on a boat, moments before they're devoured by a phalanx of headless, multi-colored sea-birds whose terrifying wingspans nearly blot out the entire sky, the man's hand is practically as large as his head. What the fuck, Michael? That's worth a buck-fifty at the most. But if we give you $5, will you promise not to blow it on Legos like you say, but to invest in art school instead?

Let us know if you find any other good offers, 'cause the holidays are right around the corner, and we've got a ton of gifts to buy.

Texas Teen Builds His Own Electric Car on $10,000 Budget

Written by Andrew Williams

17
votesBuzz up!

This fall, Texas teenager Lucas Laborde will be driving to school in an electric car he built himself. The 17 year old spent last summer converting a conventional gas-powered car to run on batteries. Total cost? Around $10,000.

Luke’s EV is based on a kit car, known as a Bradley GT II, which his father bought on eBay for just $5000 splashing out a further $5700 on electric conversion parts and batteries. The rest was left up to Luke’s ingenuity and technical know-how.

After 150 hours of work, Luke had hooked up eight 80-pound lead-acid batteries in the space left after removing the fuel tank, as well as several other ‘creative locations.’ He finished up with an EV capable of travelling 40 miles between charges, a top speed of 45mph, (more than enough for the local school run), and heaps of low-end torque. As Luke told reporters, “it has a lot of power.”

The car isn’t without a few ‘quirks’ though; the weight of the batteries has caused the fiberglas body to twist slightly, meaning that the gull-wing doors don’t completely close. However, by using his own initiative, and making use of widely available existing components, Luke Laborde has put many global car companies to shame by creating a working, highway-ready EV, in far less time and on a much lower budget.

Image Credit - Steve Striharsky at bradleygt2.com