Please help support Amber and Pete Graner after some devastating news

By Benjamin Humphrey, Published October 31, 2010

Last week while Amber and Pete Graner were attending the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Florida, they received some very bad news. Lightning had struck their home and it had caught fire, burning to the ground.

Luckily, no one was injured – their family and their pets are fine, but their house is now gone.

I met and hung out with Amber last May when we were both at UDS-M in Belgium planning the Maverick Meerkat release. Amber is an awesome long standing contributor to Ubuntu, with significant contributions to her LoCo team, the Ubuntu Women project and she is one of the driving forces behind the Ubuntu News team responsible for the weekly newsletter and ubuntu-news.org.

Pete Graner works for Canonical on the Kernel team, and is responsible for keeping your system stable and fast, among many other things. Together they’re an very valuable part of the Ubuntu community.

As far as I’m concerned, such a terrible and unfortunate accident couldn’t happen to nicer people. The insurance will take a while to process, and in the meantime they have nothing. To help them buy things like clothes, food and temporary accommodation, Amber’s friend Rikki Kite set up a chip in page to help.

Please help Amber and Pete rebuild their house, if you can spare a few dollars then I’m sure they would appreciate it.

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  • Anonymous

    First Shawn Powers [Associate editor of Linux Journal for those who don't know]. Then them. This is a year of Linux guys losing their home to fire. :-(

    • https://launchpad.net/~seahorsepip Seahorsepip

      maybe some people from microsoft secretly putting the house on fire?

      • Anonymous

        That’s one hell of a conspiracy theory ;-)

        • http://twitter.com/rev087 Bruno Daniel

          You haven’t heard how M$ _generated_ the lightning bolt yet…

          • Anonymous

            Lemme guess – a Windows Server 2003 crash made a server go mad, and do it?

      • Anonymous

        not funny :-(

  • http://twitter.com/njc_bcn Neil-J Currie

    Good luck to the guys with getting things back together, I know that money cannot replace some things but I hope the support from the community helps.

  • daas88

    That’s the problem with wooden houses… I guess it’s good for them that they were in UDS and not home at that time…

    • https://launchpad.net/~ethana2 ethana2

      If you could bring all the metal from the core of the earth to the surface for us to use– would you give up earth’s magnetic field to do so?

      • http://openid-provider.appspot.com/hushnecampus Sam Illingworth

        Why would metal be less magnetic when it’s dug up?

        He was probably thinking of stone or brick anyway.

      • daas88

        As Sam said, I was thinking of concrete because it’s not flammable.

        • Anonymous

          Thinking of concrete furniture and possessions too? Because those are still highly flammable.

          • daas88

            I agree, but at least the house itself wouldn’t burn to the ground. The furniture and possessions should be cheaper than the house.

          • Anonymous

            The adavantages of wooden houses are far less as compared to amount of safety, care and maintenance they require.

  • http://sythe.me Xavier Sythe

    See, UDS saves lives!

  • https://launchpad.net/~brettcornwall Chauncellor

    Wow, a lot has been raised so far. Chipping in the pile.

  • https://launchpad.net/~moisesmata moises

    Amber is such a wonderfull person, she deserves all the retribution this community can give back to her. She has been an exeptional inspiration, helped me to join and begin to cooperate with the ubuntu comunity, even while she was miles away and in the middle of his busy time. Keep chipping please

    • Anonymous

      “…she deserves all the retribution this community can give..”
      I think I know what you meant to say, but your choice of word here is wholly inappropriate! Perhaps you were thinking of remuneration?? Still the wrong word but better!

      ret·ri·bu·tion: Punishment that is considered to be morally right and fully deserved.

      Good luck to Amber and Pete, sorry for your loss guys!

      • Anonymous

        lol, didnt know that meant that :o

      • daas88

        If he speaks spanish then I guess he misused the word because it’s a fake cognate.

        • https://launchpad.net/~moisesmata moises

          You’re right. My fault anyway, sorry :/

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/7GXJ4CL5A6A5YPPUO47UQXGP5Y Johan

    Well I threw in $10 USD, which isn’t a whole lot but I hope to be able to chip in a bit more later in the month.

 
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