The Random Acts of Kindness Thread

[Dirty n Evil]

I have a fondness for "little critters that end up stuck inside human places"... as long as they're not potentially harmful (like finding a spider of uncertain species), I do whatever I can to take them back outside and put them in somewhere nice and green. Today while at work somehow a little hedge lizard that are really quite populous here in Florida managed to find himself in the breakroom at my job. My co-worker Megan mentioned he was just sitting up on one of the cushions and at first he frightened her because she hadn't seen him get so close to her - but I quickly came around and scooped the guy up in my hands.

He actually didn't look well... his color was pale, and there wasn't much energy to him. I made sure to carry him over to the bushes that grow besides my store, and set him free. I was glad it rained that afternoon, so he was certain to have both what insects he could munch on along with some fresh water. I know maybe I'm a bit silly for still thinking about this lizard hours after I helped him out, but I really do hope he's okay now.

[Don Alexander]

I fully understand that, DnE. I always carefully catch moths and stuff and put them back out if they've flown into my room (here or especially at work). I do confess being a bit icky about letting spiders crawl over me (I guess I have arachnophobia 1 of 10), so I'd use a glass/cup with a sheet of paper. But I don't harm them.

Also, I pet any cat that wants teh pettings.

I actually find it much easier to do that than to help people, actually.

[Asaryu]

It's not my random act, but I was extremely pleased when I read my enormous backlog of work emails today and came across this little notice.

Library Management have just given the go-ahead to a Lending Services proposal for a Food For Fines week in December. During this time in December, library patrons with fines will be able to pay off a set amount of their accrued fines by donating non-perishable food items to a charity chosen by the Library. Library staff will collect the items at the Loans Desk and send them off to the charity.

[Otaku201]

Once upon a time, people were in the habit of coming to me with their problems, I was kinda like an unofficial community therapist. I just like listening, didn't think anything of it. But there was one instance where I did more good than I ever realized. Never spoke with this girl in my life, didn't know her at all, never spoke to her again. This was the thank you letter I received a few months down the line.

Well my name is ***** and when you and i first started talking a friend of mine had just recently died...he was very close and dear to me...(he died by overdosing on drugs.) A while after that you gave me a ton of advive on copeing with finding out that the man who has played the role of my father was not truly my biological father and my parents had just gone through divorce. I was a wreck but you really helped me and i can't even think of a way of thanking you enough. I am confident enough to say that probably if i hadn't ever talked with you i would be a emotional wreck or would have commited suicide. Even though i don't believe in ending your own life, i would have gone mad with all the pain that had been inside of me. You are my savior pretty much and i've always wanted to say thank you so very much.

Thank-You...
*signature*

[Swayambhu]

At the arcade yesterday, I won a bunch of tickets just playing the silly games with my friends up in the family-oriented section.

But I ended up giving away all my tickets to the kids.

They seemed pretty happy about it.

[Dirty n Evil]

Much better, Sway. Far less violent and sweetness to kids... Evil-mod approves.

[cyanide_sweet]

I'm not sure where else I would put this, but this is something you can do with very little effort to help a variety of causes. Since the official letter explaining everything the website gives you is boring, I'm copy-pasting this one instead:

"There's a lot of stuff wrong with the world. The fact that you're not dying of malnutrition right now puts you in a four-out-of-ten minority. Oil's getting more expensive, and as the population increases exponentially we're gonna be in trouble before too long. Cancer, Muscular Dystrophy, West Nile virus, Yellow Fever, Hepatitis C and AIDS all conspire to make their presence felt by the not-so-subtle means of killing our friends and family members.

There is something we can do about all this doom and gloom.

There's a lot of info here, so I'll just tell you how the first problem can be solved. Let's start with 58% of the world's mortality rate being tied in with malnutrition. The whole world hunger thing.

Rice is the main staple food of more than half the world's population. So, if we make rice better, more nutritious, easier to grow and cheaper, that should help things out at least a bit. We can make better decisions about what strains of rice to breed with each other to create our Super Awesome Rice if we determine the structure of the various different rice proteins.

Problem is, it's horrendously expensive to do that sort of thing. You need a supercomputer. And there are thousands of distinct proteins in rice. A bunch of clever bods at the University of Washington have sorted out some good software to do it, but we still need a lot of hardware, with massive amounts of computational horsepower.

There's an amazingly powerful supercomputer called the IBM RoadRunner - many hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than the computer you're using right now. RoadRunner would probably do the job, but right now it's busy trying to compute exactly how daft an idea it was to engage Russia in a nuclear dick-waving contest and then leave loads of rickety old warheads lying around all over the place.

(No, seriously - that's what it was built for. If you could call Douglas Adams on the Phone of the Dead and tell him that, I don't think he'd believe you.)

RoadRunner will probably be too busy figuring out an answer to this question to help us for quite a while, so we've gotta take matters into our own hands.

Using a little program called BOINC - and yes, I do find the name wonderfully amusing - we can make a supercomputer ourselves, out of our own machines all connected together. The idea is that whenever your CPU isn't being used for anything, the BOINC client will use it to make Super Awesome Rice. And dengue drugs. And a cure for AIDS. And cancer. And the next generation of ultra-efficient (IE "actually worth the energy taken to make them") solar panels.

What? I can cure AIDS and cancer while on the computer?

That's right! By donating your unused CPU cycles to boffins who need serious computing power, you can actually help make the world a better place. Come on, it's not like you're using much of your computer's resources anyway.

...what?

Let me explain. When a scientist wants to do something that involves an awful lot of computing power, he can go and book time on the sort of supercomputer that has to be cooled by liquid nitrogen and costs a couple of grand per hour to rent, or he can try to do the computation on his own computer and wait ten years. OR. Or. He can use a grid. Grid computing is where you've got a bunch of normal, everyday computers all connected together, working on the same problem and sending their answers back.

...what?

Scientists and researches want to use YOUR computer to fight AIDS, cancer, and world hunger! You download a little widget, and any unused CPU cycles go towards doing Wonderful Things!

...oh. Won't that slow down my machine? And it feels... icky, you know? I don't want strangers fiddling with my computer.

No, it won't slow down your machine. Not appreciably, anyway - the program only runs when you're not using your computer, kinda like a screensaver. I certainly didn't see any difference in the day-to-day performance of my computer. And there are no actual people involved with what your computer's doing - just a list of calculations to perform and send back to the scientists. And you know how much of a security freak I am - would I be using it if it weren't secure?

Okay, so what are they doing with my processor and memory?

Well, there's a bunch of things - the master list is on their site, and that shows you all the research that your computer can do while you're not using it. You can pick and choose between projects if you want.

So what's in it for me?

You get to contribute to humanitarian projects without having to open your wallet, get off your arse, or inconvenience yourself for more than about ten minutes. Every time a charity mugger tries to sign you up for a direct debit, you can say "Sorry, I'm already contributing to humanitarian research," and stroll on. You get to cure AIDS while in the pub, and address world hunger while puking in the toilet later on. You get to do something useful with your computer while you're not using it (and don't give me that "Oh, I always turn mine off to reduce my carbon footprint" bollocks, I know you've left your computer turned on and wasting electricity for ten minutes while you nip out for a ciggy or make a cup of tea, like I do every single day), instead of having it just sit there being useless.

OK, I've got it. Let's do this thing."

[Otaku201]

I gave $5 to a homeless guy downtown. This guy was civilized. Reminded me of what could have happened to me.

[Otaku201]

Random Act of Kindness

It was a dark morning. I just got off work. Supervisor arrived early. Wanted me to leave even earlier but I didn’t trust her. I have to be back at this exact spot at 2PM so I left a tad early. I walk one block to the bus stop.

I was making my 3rd call to the CTA since the busses didn’t seem to be running yet. Put the phone in my chest pocket, and a man crosses my path very quickly from out of my line of sight. I jumped, fuck me, I let my guard down. He asks if he can borrow my phone. I tell him no. He accepts that and begins to walk off. The nonaggression wasn’t expected, so before he gets more than a few steps from me I ask him what happened. He gives me his story. He’s clearly drunk. Came into town to party with his friends, had sex with some black girl he just met, blacked out. When he woke up his debit card and all his cash was gone.

I take my phone out. “I thought you were gonna run off with it. You understand. *hands the phone over* You need to call the cops? Go right ahead.” He responds that he’s not calling the cops but for a ride home. He sits down “Don’t worry I wont run off. Thanks man, you’re a lifesaver.” I never do anything without at least 2 reasons. He was too drunk to run anyway or I wouldn’t have handed him the phone.

He tries calling at least 10 people. Starts realizing in a non angry and non depressed way that he’s got no friends because of the fact that no one is gonna save him, hell no one is even answering their phone. I slowly begin to feel empathy, an emotion I haven’t felt in years. Eventually he gets through to the voicemail of the man he originally went partying with. Leaves a very long and full of swears voicemail. Tries to get me to call his friend a homo. I politely refuse. “What if I told you he sucked dicks for a living?” “Still no.” I don’t hate any class of people and would never say “homo” with even an ounce of insult to it.

He asks me about the girl who is the background in my phone. I tell him, lying selectively. Due to my lack of morality, lying has become painfully easy for me. Me talking about the woman I love is clearly affecting him who can only be painfully reminded of the roberry fuck he just endured. It’s going on an hour and a half that I’ve been at the bus stop talking to this man. Clearly there is no bus at this hour. I ask him if he could call his parents. Said his dad would never let him hear the end of it.

So for some reason I still don’t know I helped him out. Maybe somewhere deep down I have a soul. Maybe I had some happiness lingering from earlier in the night when a woman randomly gave me a footlong sandwich. Maybe my ego was inflated from learning earlier tonight that a girl is on suicide watch because I denied her contact with me. Maybe it was the fact that I was wearing a suit and felt compelled to be a big man. Maybe it was the fact that I was armed. Maybe it was just plain the fact that I’ve been abandoned before and felt this mans plight. Being all alone in a strange place with no one to help you. Self reliance is a painful existence. And since my bus clearly wasn’t coming I said “Come on, lets head to the train station. I’m taking you home.”

Due to his drunk stumbling it takes twice as long as I take to get to the train station. We share some personal details. He catcalls every woman that passes by, he calls every black he sees “nigger.” Now this has become a matter of life and death. If I don’t get this drunk home soon, he’s going to get himself killed. I would say me also, but I had my vest and pistol. Still I tried to talk some sense into him. Clearly he’s pissed over the black girl that robbed him earlier tonight. “Don’t you hate black people?” I reply a stern “No”. He goes on “Not even a little?” I tell him I don’t hate anyone. I start to wonder if he’d have complimented the girl in my phone if she hadn’t been a blond haired white girl. He scares some pigeons. I restrain him from kicking a dead pigeon. He got away from me for a second and kicked a sleeping homeless man.

He asks me about my family. When he learns I’m not rich he is shocked. “But you’re so smart. And you’re wearing a suit.” I coldly respond. “So only rich people can be smart?” Finally we get to my train station. He doesn’t want to go home. I practically have to drag him in there by force. I tell him “I brought you this far. Now I’m not gonna have you get yourself killed out there because then I’ll feel responsible.” This train station isn’t the one that takes him home though. Again he insists I just go on home. I ask if he’s a white supremacist given the comments so far. I remind him that I am Puerto Rican. We walk out. The first black man he sees “Nice Hat. Michael Jordan. Yeah.” His tone isn’t exactly authentic, but I say “That’s better.”

We get to his train station. Wrong end, have to walk all the way to the other end of the block. Union Station, perhaps you’ve heard of it. It was Gotham Bank in The Dark Knight. This place is gigantic. No clue where to go. He starts insulting people for being useless. A cop walks by and I ask for directions, in my sociopathic politeness that has long since gotten used to the notion of being a walking felony. The drunk calls him “pig” even as he is helping us guiding us to the right place.

I buy him a ticket. I take him to the rail. I make sure he’s in the right spot so he can get home. He insists that he wants to pay me back, so I write down my address for him. I shake his hand and roll out. Passed by the cop from earlier. Thanked him again. Power walked back to my train station. I get back to the attendant who saw me with him before. “Did you get that man home?” In a split second I realize how unpredictable I am. “Yeah. To be honest, I have no idea why I helped him.”

Then on the train home, something happened. I felt good about myself. Old familiar thoughts disappeared. I felt happy. Keep in mind I’ve been in a state of perpetual numbness for months on end. I wish I had a friend to tell about this, but since I don’t have many friends these days, I at least wanted to post this. I still don’t know why I did this, but it felt good. Best logic I can come up with is my subconscious projection of myself. Another “That but for the grace of God could be me.”

[Don Alexander]

Okayyyy, so this doesn't really belong in here, since no actual act of kindness was involved, but I think it is a very nice little story so I shall threadlich with this in the hopes of getting some others to post on topic.

One and a half months ago, a scientific paper came out that I had been looking forward to very much. I immediately read it, found a few mistakes (I always do ), and contacted the lead author, a young Indian woman working in the States and informed her about the (small) errors. She quickly wrote me back, thanking me, and said she would check them out as soon as she left the hospital.

Now, I am always very uneasy around hospitals and stuff. So I did not answer initially...

Yesterday, while going through mails, I saw this one, and decided it would be a nice thing to write back. So I did, just hoping she had gotten better, and that the revision of her paper was coming along.

Again, she quickly replied. Telling me, no, no, she was fine! She had been in the hospital bcause she had given birth to her first son just a day after posting her paper and me contacting her!!!!!

*IS TOTALLY DELIGHTED BY THIS*

New life!!! Little astromnommers!!! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

[Tenjen]

*plays the music from the last scenes of Space Odyssey*

[Asaryu]

I think there is a random act of kindess in there.

You did email her to wish her well, Don and I htink that counts. ^_^

[Don Alexander]

When I came to work today, it was already dark, and there were like 10 cm of snow on the steps leading into my building. Normally, this would be the night assistant's job (who would not get there for another 1.5 hours), but I swept the steps clean anyway.

Which did nothing more than expose the layer of ice underneath...

[Don Alexander]

Double post because I have a live one here!

This morning, before driving home through ice and snow, Asaryu loaded me up with many of her awesome safety kisses!! Once again they proved their efficacy, they even help others!!

Between two villages on the way to Jena, I cam across several cars parked by the side of the road with their warning blinkers on. I slowed down and saw a BMW which had slid off the road, but this one was less lucky than me, since his snout was in a ditch. There were a bunch of 20-somethings around the car. I asked if I could help, and they said, yeah, I could help shove. So I turned, parked, got out. There were two girls there and one immediately exclaimed I must be crazy since I was wearing only a T-Shirt...

It was clear that we could not get the car up the ditch, but there was a flat field behind it, and not a dozen meters away a tiny "bridge" across the ditch. Another car had already come across it and they were wondering if they could tow it out, but the BMW had nothing to attach a cord to. So we had to push. Seems these people had been standing in the cold for quite a while already, but right on the second try with my help, we got the car out!!

While we were at it, several cars drove past, not stopping. So I felt really good about helping!!

At least one guy actually thanked me before I drove off again.

[JVDifferent]

I cleaned for my grandma today. I might be getting paid for it, sure, but I'm taking that as compensation for cleaning the bathroom belonging to an old madam from the Eastern block.