I'm a first time Extra Lifer this year and had planned on playing and streaming some LOTRO during the marathon. And now, just now, 6 hours before event time, I find this thread and want to join Team Turbine!! What do I do or am I stuck till next year?
Hope to hear from someone!
Either way, Go Team Turbine!
Am I reading this right? You've shelled out $11K+ for your wife's medical expenses (hope she's doing well) AND you've still donated to this worthy cause?Quote:
Originally Posted by whosjgalt
You, Sir, are a hero in my book.
Hey everyone! I wanted to give a quick update. 7 hours in and spent a couple of those on Crickhollow playing with some nice folks and getting a newbie Hunter up to level 12. I'll be coming back to crickhollow later today on my newbie Reaver named FordaKidz (for obvious reasons), so I expect to be appropriately ganked!
I'll be popping up on other servers on freep side as well before everything is said and done.
It'll all be streamed when I'm in LOTRO or on other PC games at http:www.twitch.tv/Turbine_Sapience
I know some of you have been trying hard all day to donate and really push our totals over the top (we're currently at $42,700+!!!). Extra life is aware of the issues with donor pages and is working hard to get them back up and running. I'm very sad to have to pass along this letter from Doc, head of extra life as to the reasons for the outage...
Quote:
Dear friends,
We’ve discovered that the Extra Life website experienced a DDoS attack agianst our datacenter. I am not sure what kind of person would DDoS a charitable initiative.
I am so sorry that you are going through this frustration today. Our entire team is purely heartbroken that someone would do this. But it has happened.
As frustrating as this is for everyone involved, it pales in comparison to what the kids we’re trying to save go through. That reality, for me personally, is about the only thing keeping me somewhat calm right now.
I am very angry and very sorry. You deserve better than this. The kids deserve better than this. Extra Life has given a lot of us some of the happiest moments in our lives.
This is not one of those moments.
Please hang with us through this.
It is important that we spread the word. Please get on every form of social media you can and tell your friends what happened. We can overcome this together.
Be ready to make up for lost time and share the news when we go live!
Sincerely,
Doc
Glad to be of service :cool: Wasn't in the screenshot as I was elsewhere at the time. Glad to help in some small way!Quote:
Originally Posted by Sapience
Love the name, hopefully I'll be there too (even though I'm rarely on Crick)!Quote:
Originally Posted by Sapience
Also, this is a disgrace. Words cannot describe how they should feel of themselves, whoever did that. Hopefully whoever did it will get caught and justice will be served.
Looks like good triumphs! Donor pages are back online! Now, let's make up for some lost time!
http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?...cipantID=45752
When I first say "dye my beard pink" I thought you were talking about your game character. xD
Also I always thought Sapience was female... ;;o3o
Yay! I was gonna donate earlier and couldn't get on and now I'm back. I just started working again so I can't donate much but $10 will be coming shortly!Quote:
Originally Posted by Sapience
No, sir; my wife is the hero for all she's gone through; hence why I decided to get our kinship (the Knights of Valour of Vilya) involved with this... all I've done is hold her hand through it. The statistics for Cancer are staggering, and they cross all boundaries of race, creed, color and nationality. Thankfully, the treatments are far better than they previously were, but after watching what happens in a chemo ward, anything we can do to beat this disease should be done. This is especially so for any child affected by it. I watched a person code while receiving his "push," i.e. chemo is administered very, very slowly, i.e. over hours through an IV port installed (at least for my wife) in the chest. When the "bags" of chemicals are completed, they take a syringe filled with the final chemicals and "push it" through a massive shot. It's like 6 inches long and about an inch wide. I cannot even imagine what would happen with a small child who might have to endure it, and thankfully, as mentioned above, I never saw a child in the chemo ward. Everyone else... but no children. My wife was on the final stages of chemo when we saw the above patient code; it's a crazy process: You basically kill the person to cure them. People of Lotro: I know this is supposed to be light, fun and joyful to help this cause, but just imagine trying to go through the most terrible circumstances you can, where death is a real possibility, and your family could not be by your side. These types of hospitals have special living arrangements for the families (in Fl, for kids, its the Miami Children's hospital), and this type of fund raiser is what pays for these services. The survivors of cancer have an incredibly hard time paying for all the expenses; in my case, my wife has not worked since Feb., but for a child, the family wants to be by his.her side, which means, by definition, the breadwinners are not bringing home the bacon. FMLA (Family medical leave act) is great, but that just keeps your job, it does not pay anything. Long term/short term disability will not cover lost wages for a loved one getting ill and you missing work. The types of monies raised by Extra-life make the difference for those who cannot afford treatment. Just imagine a child you care about being ill, and the parent cannot afford treatment... or worse, cannot afford to miss work without losing a home, business, car, etc. Please consider this when determining how much to give, because truly, every penny counts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Feraxks
Sapience,
Perhaps Xtra Life might consider signing up for Google's new Project Shield, a free DDoS protection tool it is trialing:
https://projectshield.withgoogle.com/
A charity should not have to worry about this, but there are uncaring people out there, and I am sure Google will be happy to support Xtra Life in some form or other.
-Bel
It's also hard for us Australians to understand this US model, too. Although our healthcare services are slowly being switched to a user pays model and less is covered than it used to be, sick kids don't need private insurance, or to be wealthy, to get treated here, and our kids hospitals have tax payer funded housing for parents. Although more money always helps with the other bills.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macroscian
Wishing you all good luck with this cause!
(and maybe the PR and resultant awareness of how it's done elsewhere may help with changing your health system to one easily accessable by sick poor kids. Now that's something to really aspire to!)
ok, time for this hacker to hater rant, some 'Black Hats' have no class, to run a Denial of Service attack on a charity is just rude, especially on game day!
I hope the donation capability has returned to full force, we all should want to help them kids, not cause harm by shutting potential donors out, for shame on all classless Black Hat Hackers worldwide
White Hat hacking is for the benefit of those who require such skills, as a White Hat you wont see me pulling such hateful pranks, WH's require permission to use our skills, I'm thankful for all the education I've received to be more of a benefit to society than to exercise harmful pranks as those committed against helping kids who need the support of the global community as a whole, as Bruce would say 'Be the miracle' better than the cause of harm on such crucial days like marathon day!
glad, though, the attack wasn't more extreme cutting out more LAN's than what was reported, May God Bless the bored and help them to make better decisions with their lives going forward so future attacks like this will cease altogether!
Ravenfist, CrickHollow
Early EL '13 Donor
What a heart breaking story, thank you for sharing. I'm training to be an oncologist in the UK and it's devastating to hear such news. luckily here people in your wife's situation are given free healthcare, and there are carers allowances for their partners. The thought of only treating those lucky enough to get cancer when rich doesn't bare thinking of.Quote:
Originally Posted by whosjgalt
The richest country in the world and this type of thing goes on is incredible. I'm proud to pay 40% tax to pay for our NHS and I'm sure if the whole world had one , it would be such a better place to live and die. I'll have to make sure i donate to the fund when I'm home.
bless you all for donating and I'm sorry for bringing a whiff of politics here. Keep strong whosjgalt and all the best luck in the world to your dear wife.
Edit: This from the New England Journal of Medicine makes for very sad reading, and really makes you think about the insurance system and those it fails to serve, because they are humans too and deserve better.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...y=TOC&#article
Lewis
Thank you to everyone who donated to ExtraLife - you are heroes :) For anyone who donated to Tales of Arda, the winners have been drawn and can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKwmR5EIhJs. Emails have been sent to winners directly, but a few came back with errors. If you are listed as winner and didn't get an email, then contact me please.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sapience
Dropped another nickel in the bucket, bumped my DDO-side thread...
$45K is easy-peasy-done at this point. :)
In order to support both Rick *and* my local hospital, I've registered for Team Turbine. With so many worthy causes, your enthusiasm is why I've chosen this one; thank you all!
Karen W
http://www.extra-life.org/participant/Darvien
All is well then seeing how it got lost. Hope you made your quota. You must of lured a few hobbits in as you lured this Elf in. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Whiteberry_Laurelin
I'm not sure how technically feasible this would be, but I think it would fun if next year you created a new character on the server that donated the most, and then spent a good portion of the day leveling up that character. (Maybe in honor of the movies, 4 hours of LOTRO, following by a 4 hour "intermission", another 4 hours of LOTRO, another 4 hour break, and then the last 4 hours of LOTRO.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Sapience
And then, and here's the part that I'm not sure about, the following year continue on with that same character on the server that donated the most that year. If a different server won, I don't know how difficult it would be to transfer your Extra Life character to that server, but it would be cool to have a character whose life was built upon these events. It would give people an avatar to rally around, and some continuity from one year to the next.
Congrats on dinging 45!
I just wanted to pop in and thank evyerone who participated in the Live stream on Saturday and into the small hours of Sunday. Those of you who stuck around for huge portions of it and gave up your own Saturday night to sit in the stream and chat with other players. Especially those of you who occasionally dropped my donor link into the chat at regular intervals so new arrivals could make donations as well.
A HUGE shout out to everyone on Crickhollow who made playing on creepside so much fun I stuck around for five hours instead of the originally planned two. Also a big thank you to those who came to Crickhollow and Elendilmir whie I leveled up a couple of characters on freep side as well. I may roll those characters out again in the near future for more LOTRO live streams and I'll be happy to have any of you join me.
I woke up this AM to see you guys have been busy and our total has climbed to $45,800+. Team Turbine is now over $55,000. Jeromy Adams of Extra Life announced that all donor pages will remain open until December 31. So if you haven't contributed and still wish to, you have time to do so at this link: http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?...cipantID=45752
maybe we can get it rounded up to a nice, even $50k for 2013.
For the incentives, largest single donation, and kinship totals, the cut off will be December 2 at 11:59PM eastern time. But, if you donate after that time I'll make a second batch of mailings at the start of the year to make sure any last minute donations also get all of the codes promised to everyone.
Finally, a huge huge huge shout out to two Team Turbine members, Alfred, who is a member of our QA team and raised over $1200 and Whiteberry of Laurelin for raising over $800 for Extra Life and Boston Children's. She came up with some killer incentives to drive her fund raising and you guys responded in amazing fashion.
I was trying to think of some way to properly convey how this year's fundraising made me feel and this was what I came up with. It's true, this community bows to NO ONE. You are all, Heroes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URmQXIeVpN8
Sapience -
I'm curious, for those of us that donated - I know you said you'd have a second round after year's end, but when would the first round be? (God, that sounds greedy, just curious to see what happens with the various incentives). I participated as part of Team Turbine and didn't raise much, but every little bit counts, right? :) It was a lot of fun and I made it through the whole dratted 25 hours. I think I must have slept ten hours when it was over. And I'm still going to do it next year if I can! It's a worthy cause and I appreciate Turbine more for participating in the drive.
Aww, darn it Sapience. If there is any 60 second clip from LoTR that's guaranteed to make me cry, it's that one. Every single time. And you are also a hero, for without you coordinating the whole thing, it would not have happened.
I'm pleased to have been part of the team, and had fun watching your live-stream while on those long taxi-horse rides between Thorenhad and Rivendell. Giving running commentary to my fellowship, who did NOT have the luxury of a second monitor. "Woops, he's dead again. C'mon, Sapience. Respawn and show those guys some attitude...."
Now I'm looking forward to the green and pink beard, and the Defender of the Little People title for my hobbit Warden.
Absolutely every little bit counts! No matter if it's $5 or $500 or $1500, it all makes an impact.Quote:
Originally Posted by Littlesky
I know my last post was a little wordy, so I'll pull out the relevant part.
So basically nothing will go out until after the second, and then around the first week of the year I'll do a 'catch up' mailing for everyone who donated after the second (but the Top donor and Top Kinship are done on the second, no last minute additions to those after 11:59PM Eastern time on Dec 2.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sapience
While I'm on the subject...
We're at $46,000 raised. That's incredible. But today Extra Life announced they will be having a "make up" day on Saturday November 9 due to the large amount of time the site and donor pages were unavailable due to the DDOS attacks throughout the day on the Second.
I'm not saying I have another 24 hours in me so soon, but I do have at least a good six or so in me and I do think we have another $4k in us to round us up to a nice tidy $50,000. Anyone on board? if so... I'm in for a 5PM Eastern to Midnight on Saturday November 9th. All we need is $4k.
http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?...cipantID=45752
Thanks for the clarification!
As for the make up day... I'm in. Which server are you gonna be on? I didn't get a chance to catch up to you the first go-round since I was busy running around on Landroval doing Things. Hobbity things. You know how it is.
Ooh, just thought of a second question. What about the beard? When are you gonna do the beard? Don't hold out on us, man!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sapience
From my perspective, there's really little point in you posting in any other threads but this one, since every time you do, I just end up clicking the Extra Life link to see what the total is.
Anyway I sadly missed the whole Nov 2 thing... I even logged on to twitch just to see you log off, (after I slept a day or so lol)
So if you are up for a mini marathon, I'll check the sofa.....
Haven't decided on the server, yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Littlesky
As for the beard. No holding out, but I am told I have to let it grow out a bit before I try and dye it or I'm going to end up dying my FACE. Which was not part of the bargain. :)
It could work...
http://www.blueman.com/