I’m having so much fun doing this that I barely spotted that I’d crossed the thirty days mark! Luckily now I have noticed, so I can re-adopt my grudging acceptance of another month’s hard labour, thanks to my new, much despised by me, blog sponsors, who all joined the Open Rights Group to watch me suffer.
I’m now looking for five more donors to make me look the chump in September. If you’re enjoying this (you sadists), do consider joining the Open Rights Group for a fiver a month (cheap), and mail me your reference, and what you’d like the money to go on.
At the risk of sounding like some sort of endless Nerds In Need campaign, I’m amazed we’re up to over 900 members.
My personal goal for this fund-raiser was to hit our original 1000, but I’m afraid I egged the ORGsters to take it up to 1500, because that would let us do a bunch more work, and gain independence from other sources of funding. I find it fascinating how different EFF feels from other non-profits I’ve worked with because of its strong reliance on individual donors (it’s usually around 70% of our income). There’s around 13,000 EFF members from across the world, and all you have to do is say “Hello, I’m an EFF supporter, and…” to get my undivided (if ADD-ridden) attention. I guess I’d describe it as having a huge crowd of incredibly smart, but somewhat vocal, hands-off managers: when they drag me into their office (or just corner me at a conference) usually the start of a very high-level conversation.
I’ve noticed the same with ORG supporters. Oddly, my main involvement with ORG is because it’s part of my EFF job to help out other digital rights groups internationally, so I don’t see myself as an ORG representative per se. But whenever I speak to someone who starts with “So, I’m an ORG member and…”, we usually both end up scribbling madly in notebooks at the end.
I’d be more involved in day-to-day UK issues if it wasn’t for the time difference, which is nasty for a late-night person like me, so the UK falls under the same “all communication via email” shadow as India and Russia.
This may change. Next week, Ada starts kindergarten (the weirdly teutonic name for junior school here. Guards, take zis child to … DAS KINDERGARTEN). As some sort of punishment for living in a 21st century hyperpower, school starts freakishly early here. Ada needs to get to school at 7.40am. That means I have to get up at 6am (2pm UK time).
As some of you remember, the very reason why I started the whole Life Hacks™ thing was because I couldn’t get up in the morning. Now I have to, otherwise I get prosecuted for secondary inducement to truancy or somesuch. I have already warned everyone I know that the consequences will be dire. I will wreak my revenge on the species that plans to keep me a prisoner of the burning day-star. It will be World War Bedtime, let me tell you. Even worse, Ada has inherited my nap rage, so we’ll both be punching milkman in the face and snarling at postal workers for five hours of the “day”. Europe, you may quake now.