Donations / Commissions



Probably about time I got this page up.  What follows at the end of this page is the text of a post I made on my Blogger Site last November.  At the time, I didn't feel like asking for handouts from the Linux Community.  I had, effectively, dissapeared from MepisLovers and the Mepis Community Scene for well over a year. Aside from Sporadic updates to Fade to Irrelevance, I hadn't been around. I didn't feel it right, or appropriate, to go around myself, or using MepisGuides as a platform, to seek financial aid. Now, with several new guides published, I'm a little bit more comfortable with doing this.


I am, at this point, opening this site up to Monetary Donations and Commissions.  The Make a Donation button up top should take you to a PayPal account for Gamenikki.com / Mepisguides.com. I am quite simply, not in a position to turn down finacial help.  Money from Donations and Commissions will go into paying for the site, paying Cblue for hosting, and probably buying new hardware.

Basically, the commissions are as follows: If you pay $20 for a particular guide, I'll do it. However, I would prefer that you email me first at mepisguides (at ) gmail dot com first. Reason why is that I've gotten some requests before on how to do compiling or get a TV Tuner working. Both are things that I have, quite frankly, failed miserably at.  Make sure it's something I can do.  The length of time it takes to get the guide up will depend over how difficult the task will wind up being.

In addition to Monetary Donations and Commissions, I am accepting Hardware Donations and Commissions. In several of the recent Guides I have started adding the hardware specifications for the computer used to make the guide displayed. If you have a Graphics Card, Motherboard, Processor, Memory, Monitor, Hard-Drive, Optical-Drive, network card, or any other computer peripheal, and you send it to me, I'll work it into a Guide.  If it's something odd like a USB convertor for Parallel ATA drives, I'll create a new Guide Specifically to show your device in action. If it's something like Speakers, Headphones, or SoundCards, I'll be happy to add a hardware report about those as well, even if it isn't something is easily screen-capped.

If you do have hardware to offer, contact me through jason (at) gamenikki dot com.

I also want to open myself up to doing contract documentation.  If you already have a set documentation for a product, I'll be glad to help you create Video Documentation, and MepisGuides style picture documentation for the product. Again, contact me at the Mepisguides email address through Gmail.

Beyond that, I am also offering my services as a Technician to be Technical Trainer.  If you run an Outsourcing or In-House Technical Group, I am available to train them. As evidenced in the FTI pages, and the more recent WinNT 5.0 guides, my skills are not limited to Linux Technical Support.  Put me on a flight, find me a cheap hotel room with broadband, and I'll gladly spend 4-6 weeks walking your trainees through their first steps of supporting Windows or Linux.

If you are in the Augusta Area and wish to hire a skilled cross-Platform Techician, feel free to drop me an Email and we'll talk terms.


And yes, I know this isn't the most typical way of announcing availability. I only claim to be technical support, not Customer Service.



Alright... ... I'm kinda embarrassed to write this, don't really want to... but here I go.

I used to write the Live journal over at http://saist.livejournal.com/ I had started that livejournal when I went to work for Sitel, an outsourcing company. We worked for Cox Communications for about 3 years, then our assets were sold to Suddenlink. About 3 months after Suddenlink took over, I finally quit Sitel. The paycheck just was not worth the amount of pain we were being put through.

After I left Sitel I joined up with a local gaming center, for a couple of reasons. The owner had been a friend of the family for years and he was looking at a theft problem that had been continuing since the gaming center had opened. My initial job, as such, was to basically babysit the place. Get it open for business and make sure nothing went out the door.

Unfortunately, when the past months I've feel victim to the thefts as well with somebody stealing system memory from my computers, my Nintendo DS has gone missing, several of my Nintendo DS games have also gone missing, and I've gotten shorted cash on the Soda fund. Basically, I've gone broke from the Tournament Center.

And thats where I am now. Yesterday I gave the owner a choice. Either he could get rid of the person who I believed was committing the thefts, or I was walking out the door. The owner chose to keep the thief.

So, as of now, I am jobless, and broke, and I haven't a clue what I'm going to do from this point. Part of me wants to start Mepisguides.com back up, but the guides are fairly time consuming considering the way I do them. Another part of me wants to go back full time into tech support or into fixing computers again.

Now, when I was updating Mepisguides on a regular basis (how long ago was that?), I had several emails from people wishing to donate money. I turned those requests down asking that money be sent to Cblue or Warren for Mepislovers or Mepis itself. Now... as embarrassed as I am to admit it, any of those donations would have been nice...

So... I guess here's an outline for the deal. If people still want to donate to this loser, you could donate via paypal to mepisguides [space] @ [space] gmail.com

Part of me wants to guarantee a new guide for every $50 donated, or a remixed guide for $25. Remix being updating existing guides in Mepis6.

That... should allow me to continue to pay off bills for food and electricity, and if the pace keeps up, might turn into a livable income.

The other outline is that if you do want to actually hire me, I've put my most recent resume up:

http://www.fcs-inc.biz/saist/trg/resume.html
http://www.fcs-inc.biz/saist/trg/resume.odt
http://www.fcs-inc.biz/saist/trg/resume.pdf

And yes, in 3 different formats, HTML, Open Document, and Portable Document formats.

While I would personally prefer continuing to work in the Augusta Georgia Area, I'm realizing in my current situation that if I'm offered a job somewhere else, guess I will move.

If you are interested, please send emails to jason.frothingham [space] @ [space] gmail.com


I'll... update the blog with something else more in the lines of what you probably would want to read later. For now though... I still have some systems on the test bench I need to finish up.

Oh, and if you are interested in a Mepis Linux loaded computer and you want to buy one... I'm willing to work on those too.

(and don't forget to remove the [space]'s from the emails.