Wishlist

I have been unable to think of any polite way to tell this to people directly, so I'm going to say it on my webpage. I have enough stuff. If you want to purchase a present for me, please donate as much as you would spend on me to one of the following charities. A $5.00 donation means so much more to me than a $50.00 gift certificate. Of course if you want to make me a pizza or just say, "John, you're the bomb." that's okay, too.

Every charity I list is one whose goals I agree with¹ and your donation is tax deductible except for donations to SDF since it's a §501(c)(7) non-profit (public club).

• Humanitarian and social efforts

  • The Book Thing of Baltimore

    Need a book? Take. Have a book? Give. You can donate physical books or money. This is a local Baltimore charity.

  • St. John's Huntingdon

    This is my church in Baltimore. If you're likely to donate to them, maybe you'd like to visit. They offer a welcoming Christian community and beautiful traditional Anglican mass.

  • The Red Cross (ARC Charity Navigator Rating)

    This is one of my favorite charities. Giving blood or platelets means a lot more to me than money. No amount of cash can generate human blood. To donate blood, call 1-800-GIVE-LIFE (1-800-448-3543) or visit http://www.givelife.org.

  • Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America (BBBS Charity Navigator Rating)

    This is a mentoring organization which pairs up volunteers with children in need of guidance, friendship, tutoring and other older-sibling type services.

  • The Marrow Foundation (NMDP Charity Navigator Rating)

    This is the non-profit organization which helps fund the National Marrow Donor Program. You should also submit a blood sample to the NMDP to save the life of somebody who matches your marrow. Any donation can be done completely anonymously.

  • The National Federation of the Blind (NFB Charity Navigator Rating)

    This organization is by the blind, for the blind. They provide job-training, legal advice, braille materials, computer usage advice and much more to blind people across the United States.

  • Bread for the World (BFTW Charity Navigator Rating)

    Who they are.

  • Oxfam International (Oxfam Charity Navigator Rating)

    What they do.

• Computer oriented and technical things

  • SDF

    This is the non-profit educational UNIX system that hosts my website for free, gives me my e-mail and lets me compile programs and do lots of other neat computer-geek stuff. You can join, too, if you'd like to learn more about UNIX.

  • netBSD

    This is the operating system that the above mentioned SDF runs.

  • OpenBSD

    Similar reasoning to netBSD above.

  • PuTTY development

    It's a little too complicated to explain what this is. You can look it up in the Wikipedia. The point is, it's a free program that I use and donations help them.

  • Pentadactyl

    This is a firefox add-on that changes the entire functionality of Firefox to one that is maximally efficient (for nerds who can handle it). It's a free program that I use and donations help them.

  • Project Gutenberg

    A resource for free electronic versions of every book that is out of copyright.

  • Videolan Project

    An open source video player