Where We Go From Here...

When I look back upon it, being invited to give the closing keynote at the Ohio Linux Fest will be at the top of my "2014 Cool Stuff I Did" list. From the moment I arrived, I was made to feel at home and welcomed. It is an experience I will remember always. My special thanks to +Beth Lynn Eicher for pulling all the levers and switches early on to help make it happen.

You can see my keynote below if you like. My special thanks to +Randy Noseworthy  for the hours and hours he spent editing the keynotes into a decent form. Given he was using and old Android phone and a tripod, he did a great job.

In a room with 300+ filled seats, I told the people in that room just how important their efforts are to Reglue. From answering questions in the various forums to submitting timely patches to the kernel, every bit of it eventually funnels down to complete the tools Reglue needs to do our job. And it's just as important today as when it was first uttered in 2005:

A child's exposure to technology should never be predicated on the ability to afford it.

But as great as this was, we may be facing a rocky start to 2015. For those who might not know, I received an aggressive regimen of radiation and chemo therapy to attack an equally aggressive form of throat cancer. Things looked fairly good until 35 days ago when a biopsy showed that the cells surrounding the scar tissue were "precancerous".

As well, a number of  keratosis patches have taken hold on the top and the side of my head. These rough, patchy skin outbreaks can be a sign of more dangerous things to come, such as lesions of squamous cell carcinoma. I've had a number of these removed over the years, but coupled with a diagnosis of throat cancer, these can be troubling.

And all of this leads down to where we are now. Should it be decided that a
laryngectomy is my best bet to kill this cancer once and for all, then that is what I am going to do. I've already talked it over with Diane and my ENT and should this latest scan and scope come back as "troubling", I will elect for the removal of my larynx.

And let me say this now. This is a self-inflicted wound. Decades of smoking and drinking, coupled with pizza and hot fudge sundae dinners have finally come home to roost as it were. So the last thing I am looking for is sympathy.

I will be off of work for 90+ days and while two of our stellar volunteers have promised to keep the doors open and the lights on during my recovery, there's a matter of having the money to do so.

15 days ago I began our annual fund raiser. It has taken a while to take off and at this present rate, we're not going to be able to make our goal. Pete Salas, a Reglue volunteer said it better than I could:

"A lady who gets harassed as a bus monitor has over 700K raised on Indiegogo and we struggle for a few grand for a year's budget."

Yeah, that has crossed my mind from time to time, and I am understandably concerned. None of my projects leading up to Reglue has ever been shut down due to a shortage of funds. It's looking more and more like this may be the case for the first half of 2015.

There are lots of ways to donate. You can donated via www.reglue.org two different ways, either by clicking the top banner mentioning Indiegogo or by clicking on the paypal donate button on the right side of the page.

Or you can do so here.

And I do want to thank those who have helped so far. With a blog site that has surpassed one million page views, it would seem simple to get this fund raising done and back to our business. It would seem. Heck, a 5 dollar donation by just half of our monthly visitors would almost triple what we need to keep Reglue running.

And yeah, this probably comes close to "begging" for money. I despise fund raising more than anything else. I'd rather have back-to-back root canals without anaesthesia than try to raise money. I just wish that I didn't have to spend so much of my time doing it.

If you can help, I would appreciate it. Truly I would.

All-Righty Then...