-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

(sigh!)

I hate to do this BUT...

Things are pretty desperate here (financially speaking) at the old
Trout Family household. :(

We received an eviction notice on our door today (see subject line
above) telling us we have three days to pay our rent or be thrown out
on the street. :(

I was hoping to have some new versions of my products ready for
release before having to resort to whining (PLEADING!) for donations,
but I've unfortunately run out of time. I need those donations NOW!

If you haven't made one yet I'd REALLY appreciate you doing so today.
RIGHT NOW! Please?

I'm unfortunately still unemployed (as most of you already know) and
my wife still is too. My 26 year old daughter has been working two
jobs trying to keep us alive but it's unfortunately not enough.

I *was* earning some steady income for a while doing Hercules support
for a big West Coast client (which is why you've been mercifully
unsubjected to my pitiful whining/pleading/BEGGING for money
(donations) for the past two years), but unfortunately HIS company is
*also* experiencing some rather severe financial difficulties of
their own, resulting in his having to lay off a bunch of people and
terminate his Hercules support contract with me. That was 5 months
ago (end of March).

Since then I've signed up a new client up in Alaska, but its a "help
me now and I'll pay you later" type of arrangement unfortunately, so
I haven't seen any money from it yet. He's (or so he claims) sunk his
entire life's savings into getting his company started and as a
result doesn't really have much money at all to work with, but
promises me as soon as his doors open (he didn't say when that'd be
though and I didn't ask) he should be able to pay me all the money
owed by within a couple months at the most.

Being desperate for a client allowing me to earn a much needed income
(even if the income is "deferred" so to speak), I readily agreed.

I apologize to you all for not keeping my "Donations" web page
up-to-date for the past two years like I promised I would when I
created it, but it takes quite a bit of time to do so and time is
something in very short supply in my life unfortunately. It seems
like nothing I do these days gets done fast enough (if at all!).
That's probably because I'm running out of energy (physically) to do
it all, due to my ever-worsening sleeping disorder. :(

(sigh)

Well that's it I guess. That's enough whining I guess. Pretty pitiful
isn't it? :)

I promise you though I *am* close to releasing some new version of my
programs, but as I said I've unfortunately have run out of time.

I hate asking for money without having something to offer in return
(such as a new version of my products) which is why I haven't asked
sooner. I was SO hoping to release some things this weekend but
unfortunately things didn't quite work out that way. Oh well. :(

And when I DO eventually release these new versions, they're not
going to be THAT different from the existing versions either. Most of
the changes were minor fixes. Only AWSBrowse (and perhaps HercGUI)
has any new (fairly minor) features added to them, so don't expect
anything significant.

I wish I had the time and energy to get this new version of HercGUI
written (my famous vaporware product that's been sitting rotting for
the past several years) but it doesn't look like I ever will. I
rather suspect it'll continue sitting and rotting until I either win
the lottery or else die of old age or sheer exhaustion, whichever
comes first. :)

I better stop before I write even more meaningless, pitiful nonsense
and post this sucker so I can hopefully have some money show up in my
PayPal account tomorrow or the next day.

The total damage (the amount we owe) is $1189.00. We have slightly
over $400 in our bank account. My daughter WAS talking to one of her
well-to-do friends about a temporary loan (which we hoped would give
me time to get my programs ready so I could release them before
whining/asking for money/donations), but for reasons unknown we have
yet to receive it.

SOOOOOO......

PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE!

If you haven't made a donation yet, please do so today! (please?)

If SOMETHING doesn't happen -- and happen quickly -- I and my family
are going to be out on the street begging on the street corner for
food money. (Sad, isn't it?) :(

Thanks for listening and thanks in advance for anything any of you
can do to help.

- --
"Fish" (David B. Trout) - fish(at)infidels.org
Fight Spam! Join CAUCE! <http://www.cauce.org/>
(Any HTML email received will be deleted unread)
PGP key fingerprints:
DH/DSS: 9F9B BAB0 BA7F C458 1A89 FE26 48F5 D7F4 C4EE 3E2A
RSA: 6B37 7110 7201 9917 9B0D 99E3 55DB 5D58 FADE 4A52

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 8.1

iQA/AwUBRNbMEUj11/TE7j4qEQKX/QCgq16rxkdhrgsyclFVC6rSYpoasoEAnA3K
qRT04PdaJJ6pNtekHnLrTvRw
=5XnO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----