[planetzero]

"Recruiters tell me that I'm a "job hopper" and that "it'll be difficult to place you."

Just explain that you have been contracting for the past couple of years and are now interested in something more permanent..or just look for contracting gigs.

You will most likely need to be more creative when looking for these types of jobs (contracting). Major job boards are filled with recruiters..which makes it difficult. Your best bet is to find companies that aren't using a recruiter.

"far out crazy idea for a hardware device involving Lidar that nobody else is doing"

This is probably not realistic. First find a way to actually make some money now.

[unhomedcoder]

"One day when I was having lunch with Richard Feynman, I mentioned to him that I was planning to start a company to build a parallel computer with a million processors. His reaction was unequivocal, "That is positively the dopiest idea I ever heard." For Richard a crazy idea was an opportunity to either prove it wrong or prove it right. Either way, he was interested. By the end of lunch he had agreed to spend the summer working at the company."

http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine...

i never said i prioritize the only great idea for a startup that i have ever had above my job search. obviously, since i have been sitting on the idea for 8 years and only half-heartedly tinkering with building it, "making some money now" is what i have been doing instead. all i said was that it was an idea for a dream of mine that i've had for a very long time. isn't this a forum dedicated to startup dreamers--"the crazy ones... the round pegs in the square holes"? i only mentioned that i had a startup idea to show that "hey gang, i'm one of you too."