I’ve sent a contribution in memory of marque elf, who would have done the same.
Good luck to you and your family.
Awww. What a great picture and what cute kids, RyJae. It’s so easy to forget that there are real people behind the words I see on my screen. That picture made me all teary.
If you guys ever come to Toronto, I’ll show you around for a day. We can go up the CN Tower and the kids can jump on the glass floor of the indoor observation deck. 
I’m so glad people reached out to help. I just got here and see it is all taken care of, but would have been glad to pitch in.
No good deed goes unpunished where PayPal is concerned. I signed up for a PayPal account from here in Egypt specifically to make a donation to a non-profit organization. AFTER letting me create the account, the whole process went on a major hiccup because my ISP is in Egypt (which is enough of a source of international credit card fraud to come up on a lot of radar screens). The story would bore you all to tears, but lets just say I spent HOURS on the phone in an infinite loop like this:
“We can’t close the account until you do X.”
“But I can’t do X because the account doesn’t work.”
“So just keep the account.”
“I don’t WANT a PayPal account.”
“Then request us to close it.”
“I am. Please close it.”
We can’t close the account until you do…"
Oh, it was classic. PayPal is doggie doo-doo, in my book.
Rick: are you still taking donations? I would need to send a paper check to you via snail mail.
Thanks for doing this.
RyJae, if you return me the money I’ll find out where you live, come on over and beat you up. Worse: I’ll send my mother and grandparents to visit with your for a month. Even if you can’t understand a word they say you’ll be hating me within five minutes 
Pay it forward, please
Oops, sorry Rick, I didn’t realise you’d get charged for an international donation. How much is it?
Sent. Thanks, Rick.
RyJae, them’s some beautiful, lucky kids. All the best…
Rick, my check went in the mail this morning. It was for $5 more than I’d originally promised. Maybe you can use that extra bit to pay for the Paypal insanity.
Yeah, I’ll send Nava’s mother.
Internet Legend helped me out and didn’t ask for anything in return, you help someone sometime. Or just take care of those kids of yours - that’ll mean more to me.
I was in the process of thanking each person individually, either through email or private messaging. My fingers gave out before I was done. But your hearts didn’t give out, they gave and gave. We received a check today, I cannot type the words needed, I cannot say the words needed, I can only say this. There is not a group known more giving, I asked my wife to say something and she couldn’t she is crying as I type this, we couldn’t stop since it came. I’m lost, searching for words, searching for a way to say thanks, there is no way. None, what you’ve all done for my family isn’t just helping, you’ve gave us so much more, you’ve gave us your love and believe me our family loves you back.
You’ve all became our family, if anyone ever needs anything, if you’re within a 400 miles radius and you need someone to help paint your house, I’ll be there. If you live anywhere in the world and you need something I’ll help you the best that I can. Basically what I’m saying is what you gave I cannot fathom not giving back. You’re in our hearts, and I will share this in the future, but for now all I can say is thank you, thank you, and thank you.
So where exactly do you…ow! Ow! I was just trying to lighten things up a little!
You bastards, you’ve all made me cry.
RyJae, I’m late to the party as usual, but if you’ve got some leftover change from this please go buy those adorable little spawn something fun and frivolous and noisy (because those toys are the best!)
We’re family here? Okay…Wacky Aunt Lane is checkin’ in.
I’m late to this, but Rick, please e-mail me the address. It’s been too long since I did something good. Something will be in the mail tomorrow.
RyJae, it’s bad latin but nolo te bastardes carborundum! *
Don’t let the bastards get you down!
I haven’t spoken to RyJae yet this morning, but I got an voice mail from him. Overwhelmed? Yeah that is probably as good as word as any to describe the voice mail.
here is the text of the letter I included with the check:
I have not totaled up the contributions since yesterday at noon, but there is at least another $150 there. So unless RyJae’s light bill is the same as Yankee Stadium’s I think we can say without a doubt that the lights will continue to burn at his house.
At this point I would like to thank each and every doper that responded. The response was way way beyond what I expected, and speaks well for this community. As I said before, I have never been so proud to be a doper. I had dinner with a non-doper friend last night, and I told them about this thread, and Ryjae’s plight. The were amazed at the response “Wait none of these people knew this person, and they sent money?” Yes they did, because we are all family here. 
A few notes about this
Names I have kept a spread sheet with RL name, doper name amounts and how the money is/was sent. In many cases I have a doper name, but no real name, or a real name but no doper name (paypal). In addition several contributors asked that their name not be mentioned to RyJae. For these reasons, I have not told RyJae any of the names of any of the contributors. If you have not posted to this thread, you will not be known. Obviously this also keeps RyJae from knowing who sent how much, which I think is right. Based on some of the notes I read with the contributions, some people had to scrimp a hell of a lot harder to send $5 than I did for my contribution. In any event what matters is you stepped up and handled the mission.
Pay it forward When I first contacted RyJae, he was disinclined to accept our help as he did not want to have to ask for help. I explained that he was not asking, we were offering, and there is a huge difference between the two. I told him that if he could consider our contributions a “loan” to be payed back to other people in need in the future. Other dopers, or people he met in RL. Based on my conversations with RyJae, I have no doubt that this will be done, and with interest.
If however anyone does want a payback, contact me privately via e mail, and I will handle it. No names will be mentioned, just the amount.
Paypal fees Don’t sweat it guys really. When I started this thread, I was prepared to write a large check myself, because I thought I might get another $50 from you guys. I was wrong. Boy was I wrong. I was wrong on toast. after all I am a member of the SDMB fucking moron club, why should I be right? So I cut my contribution back to what a lot of people sent, and tossed in the paypal fees, the fedEx fee, and the cost of the cashier’s check as my contribution. It came out to less than I was prepared to offer up front, and we got it done, so it is all good.
Accounting I just typed in the amount given to an online converter and converted it to metric. The conversion amount is a metric butt load.
I want everyone to be assured that the money was handled properly, and none diverted for any other purpose. I think the best way to assure you is to make this offer; If anyone has a question about the handling of the money, we can pick one mod and I will send them my excel spread sheet, and I will give them access to my paypal account for them to verify that everything is on the up and up.
Thanks again everyone for you help.
Rick
Thank you for being the catalyst!
I read RyJae’s thread immediately before reading yours, so I didn’t even have time to think, “I ought to help somehow,” before seeing that you and everyone were already on it…
Hold on.
Who’s the joker that contrbuted eighteen cents? :dubious:
[old joke punch line] They all did! [/ojpl]
The real answer is foreign currency conversions. We got contributions from Canada, England, and Australia.
That was the conversion from Canadian dollars for my donation.
Ah, that makes sense. I was just wondering if someone donated an odd amount, like $10.18. Makes me wish I’d thought of it.
Here’s what we just did, thank you!
Got 100$ worth of food, thank you thank you thank you, no mac and cheese for us tonight. Chicken salad my wife says!
Put 25 in the gas tank, I can make it to work next week safely now, without worry. Thank you!
I want you to know something, not sure if I wrote it here in this or the other thread, or possibly in an email, but where I’m from a lot of things are cheap, rent is 300 for a okay home, 500 gets you the plush homes.
You can still buy a house, a move in to house for 30K, not a mansion but a 3 bed 2 bath.
To save the money we did it took years and a lot of buying things at discount stores. We always made “just” enough not to warrant any help from the gubmint.
We don’t go on vacations, (can’t this year anyway, this is my vacation week :mad: needed to, to figure this all out) Getting paid monthly, I learned well how to manage money, the bank was our friend. We eat out at once a month if that, we both drive economy cars (honda civics) and we do spend a bit more than most on our children, Jaelyn in particular. Only because if one of the therapists brings something that she reacts positively with, we try to get it for her.
But to put this all in perspective, you’ve given me what I make in a month. This is hard to swallow, hard to imagine.
In the time between now and the bank refunding my money, my family can survive, and afterwards when our money is returned I can give back to another in need maybe the “Doper In Need” can have a fund I’ll contribute immensely now or in the future. And with the donations left over we’d love to buy Jaelyn an outdoor trampoline, she loves them and the safest one we seen is 199.99 with the netting and 100 for the padding to go on the ground around it. We got her an indoor jumpoleen (sp) that she uses all the time, but she is outgrowing it. And it’s only a few months old!
We don’t want to spend your contributions on a “wasteful” item but its something she does love, and we wanted to get her for so long and well this may give us the chance.
More thanks have been sent, and a lot more to go. It doesn’t cover what you’ve done, but if it makes you feel better we actually took a nap today, we where so spent emotionally and the release was huge anyone else know how that feels may understand that hour sleep was just so nice.
Thank you all. Warmest, and deepest regards,
Lloyd & Kristy
Ryan 11 son
Jaelyn 3 daughter