h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks! Much appreciated.

SEF, I just floated the "pledge time to charities in return for donations" idea - he's delighted with it and asked me to pass on his thanks. He's going to phone around local charitable organisations tomorrow and see which ones would like to get involved.

I'm glad he likes that one. It's win-win all round. It will make the donators feel better (should perhaps set some sort of minimum pretend rate for his time), he isn't feeling like just a taker, the charities and community benefit and he doesn't even have to fit his payback commitment in all in one go - it can be spread over as long as is appropriate around his work (and according to what people actually might want him to do).

And it's in the interests of the charities concerned to promote the site and get him the maximum number of large donations...

Hi,
At the bottom of this page is a link to the Re Store. Should your friend want to build stuff to sell, this is one way to get cheap supplies. This is also a reputable charity that might be able to help.

http://www.habitatdetroit.org/

Another suggestion: Churches, quite often church congregations will hold fundraisers for those in need.

Best of luck.

I'm floored. I spent the first 19 years of my life about 5 blocks from his house, roughly N Wilson and Girard.

The economy in Michigan is desperate now (and for the past couple of years); my father had a really rough time trying to keep his house after my mother passed away. He tried a number of charities and a church, all of which helped, but only a little; in my dad's case it was enough. There was no internet then, not like there is now. I wish your friend success.

SC

Evangeline, thanks for the info. I'll mention it to him tonight - that sounds like it would also be a good place for him to pledge time to, as SEF suggested, since he has building and woodwork skills and access to a van.

SpaceCadette, thanks, I'll pass on your kind wishes.

"he's helping to support a son at college at the same time"

I missed picking up on that before as a separate brainstorming issue. Given that their financial circumstances have changed, are there any scholarships, grants, benefits etc (I've no idea of the right buzzwords for the US legal/IRS/education system) for which he could now apply/qualify?

I don't know the full circumstances at the moment; I just know his son's home from college for a visit, and helping to field the calls from the media. I probably shouldn't have mentioned that originally, as he said he was trying to keep his family out of the media coverage.

you can get free webpages from www.geocities.com as for making a webpage, that take a long time if you want to use html, but you can use frontpage which is really easy, or god forbid you use the page builder off yahoo

His original webpage was on GeoCities. The message was being "diluted" by the pop-up ads and widgets they insisted on having there. And when he did the first page himself, he used a Yahoo! template, which made the picture the size of a postage stamp and added sections like "My Cool Yahoo! Sites"...

That's what first prompted me to help out; I donated my ISP webspace for the length of the campaign, and tidied up the original page to clear out the Yahoo! rubbish, and fix a few spelling errors.

Has there been any progress?

Very little; we keep missing each other on the IRC. The two days he turned up looking for me I was too ill to hang around for him to arrive.

The all-time low of *3* hits a couple of days ago (including me, going to check the hit counter... ) was pretty disheartening.

That does sound low. I don't think I really want to know how many hits go to my website. Not least because hit data is fairly unimportant given that mine is an educational site rather than one trying to sell anything. People will probably only find it if they need/want the information enough to search and that isn't the same thing at all as me needing them to find it. In your friend's case, he does need to sell the page and himself somehow. I'll add his problem back into a holding pattern in my brain and see if anything else falls out in any direction.

I managed to talk to him last night, briefly. He's been in touch with "Habitat for Humanity" (http://www.habitatdetroit.org/getinv/index.html) and is waiting to hear back about what projects they're currently running in his area. He also said he had "an idea" and was e-mailing it to me; I haven't checked that account yet...

It's gone rather quiet on this thread.

Normally I'm opposed to gambling. However, this seems to be a one off occasion when it would be foolish not to buy a state lottery ticket (or whatever the system is) for just the month/weeks/days leading up to the deadline. The cost is limited for just covering that period rather than having an ongoing habit and getting lucky would make all the difference.

I've heard a rumour that he might be "getting lucky" on the publicity front; researchers from a major new US national chat show (really!) have contacted him about appearing on the first episode, in the first week of September. I won't give any more details until it's settled, in case I "jinx" it. Here's hoping...