PSA: Help Dr. Mike help others

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Verbatim, from the help forums:

As some of you know, I’ve been trying to raise money to pick up a laptop. I have a new job (which one day I’ll have the time to talk about) and it’s been keeping me away from the schools where I normally do my online volenteering. With a laptop, I would have a lot more flexability to access the net and spend more time trying to help folks. Right now, I’m lucky to get less than an hour a day and even that’s tight.

I’ve set up a collection over at fundable. I’m trying to raise $650 to pick up a laptop and I need your help. Right now, I have raised a total of $610 with a due date to raise the rest Tuesday evening. I’m down to the last 28 hours.[Update below]

If I can’t come up with that last forty bucks, all of the pledges go back and I don’t get anything off of it. That would mean I would have to start over again from the beginning and right now, that’s not in my budget.

I’m hoping at least 4 people will step forward and pledge ten bucks a piece. That way I can continuing helping folks online with all of the projects I do. Receipts will be provided and posted online. I’ll even take pictures.

Thanks for your assistance,
-drmike

edit: Please remmeber that I don’t get paid for any of this. :)

Update:

The site is secure and there’s an 800 number as well.

We made the goal (It’s still showing as 76 – 99% for me as well and I didn’t get any emails on the newest donations either. Something may be up on the site) and I want to thank you all.

Short story is one of the churches I volenteer with has been “taken over” by one of the larger mega churches here in town and they’re going to rebuild it as an inner city mission church. They asked me to come onto staff as the “Morning Volunteer Coordinator” (How ever you spell that) which means I’m there from about 6am until I finally have all the fires out in the afternoon. The community college that I use for my internet access is basically telling me that my access to going to start becoming limited and it’s about a 2 hour bus ride out to the university to use their computers. (I can only have dial up at my apartment and that’s pretty much useless.)

You are free to post it on your own blogs if you wish. We still have a few hours. I have a laptop sort of picked out but anything extra will give me a bit more leeway to play with. (I really would like a gig of memory on this machine)

when giant octopus attack Goonies!

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Stole this from Cracked‘s piece on Most Absurd Deleted Scenes of All Time. Definitely worth it for the Steve Carrell, not to mention Jay (of “and Silent Bob“) scarifying a couple of hookers into giving up the profession. via Defamer.

Movie: The Goonies
Director: Richard Donner
Why this scene was deleted: Because having a giant killer octopus appear in the final act of a movie that, up to that point, had at least pretended to exist in the real world, makes absolutely no fucking sense. If Donner had ended his next film, Lethal Weapon, by having Pterodactyl fly out of the sky and attack Riggs and Murtaugh, it wouldn’t have been any less nonsensical. [raincoaster knows, as the editors of Cracked apparently do not, that Octopi of this size do, in fact, exist]

Also, by cutting the infamous octopus scene and leaving in Data’s line later in the movie that confusingly refers to it (“The octopus was very scary!”), Donner was able to push his apparent belief that Asians are prone to exaggeration and not to be trusted, an agenda he was able to further explore in Lethal Weapon 4, quite possibly the most racist movie ever made.

Why this scene was ever shot: Probably because some old college buddy of Donner’s was on the payroll as “Unit Manager, Octopus Effects,” and kept nagging the director and bringing up “all those times I bailed your ass out in the Quad” until Donner finally sighed and said, “Alright, fuck it. Let’s shoot the ‘pus.”

when tiny, pretty octopus attack!

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More serious than it sounds.

Blue Ringed Octopus on toddler prowl

Honestly, what it is with Australians? I heart Steve Irwin and all, but is it something in the gene pool or something in the water that makes them go, “Crikey, it’s a deadly wild animal. I’m gonna down me a few Foster’s and then make friends with it!“???

Steve, I told you not to do that!

In this case, some Outback Sheila saw her toddlers playing with the “Blue-Ringed Octopus” and apparently didn’t clue in from that there might be some danger involved.

A THREE-year-old Brisbane boy is lucky to be alive after being bitten by a blue ringed octopus at Suttons Beach in Redcliffe on Saturday.

Minutes after little Anthony Cerasa and his siblings were playing with the octopus, he complained to his mother that he “couldn’t walk” and was rushed to hospital.

Apparently he’ll live, but ICU is no place for a toddler, even one from that shallow gene pool. Let’s get some background info on the deadly critter, both for purely informational purposes and because we here at the raincoaster blog are far more interested in deadly sea creatures and cephalopods in particular than we are in Australian children, however towheaded and cute.

The blue ring octupus is quite small and beautiful but extremely poisonous. A bite from one acts so quickly that death may occur before a diver can even make it out of the water. Still, this octopus is a master of disguise and is rarely seen even though it is not uncommon. The blue rings are only displayed as a warning of its lethal bite. Otherwise it is a pale color.

and a little more, from Did You Know:

The world’s most poisonous octopus is the size of a golf ball

First you will feel nauseous. Your vision becomes he is watching! Cthulhu fhtagnhazy. Within seconds you are blind. You loose your sense of touch. You cannot speak or swallow. Three minutes later you are paralysed and unable to breathe…The last thing the victim sees are the blue rings – visible only when it is about to attack.

The blue-ringed octopus is the size of a golf ball but its poison is powerful enough to kill an adult human in minutes. There’s no known antidote. The only treatment is hours of heart massage and artificial respiration until the poison has worked its way out of your system…

There are two species of blue-ringed octopus: the blue ringed octopus, still hunting toddlersHapalochlaena lunulata, which is the larger and grows up to 20cm (8 in) across its stretched tentacles. The other, the Hapalochlaena maculosa, is small and more common, weighing a mere 28 grams (1 oz). They are found in the shallow coral and rock pools of Australia. And they’re rather cute, being brown or yellow in colour. But don’t pick one up – by the time you see the electric-blue rings, it’s too late!

graffiti of the day: Kate Moss, Cocaine Mademoiselle

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Cocaine Mademoiselle. Pretty, Lively.

from a Parisian bus shelter, via Gawker.

photo o’ the day: shadowcamels

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from National Geographic, via Raj. Look closely, or you’ll miss the actual camels.

Shadowcamels