Jason Pearce

On Saturday, the sewage line in my condo complex backed up again. The same problem occured two years ago, causing quite a mess.

According to the Indianapolis Star, the city has a sewage problem, saying “sewers in the oldest parts of the city overflow about 60 times a year or more, inundating waterways annually with 6 billion to 7 billion gallons of wastewater contaminated with raw sewage.”

While 6 billion gallons of wastewater didn’t enter my home, I’d say about five gallons did. I spent much of the day mopping in an effort to contain the wastewater that kept coming in from the drain my HVAC unit accessed for overflow.

To fix the problem, a plummer opened up a relief/overflow valve, which dumped a bunch of sewage into the parking area. It was rather messy.

I received a call from the Wikimedia Foundation today. They were trying to track down the owner/creator of a German website that I’ve never heard of, but I immediately knew why they called me.

In April 2005 I developed a MediaWiki Skin and released another in October 2005. At the bottom of this skin is a link that says “developed (by Jason Pearce of Lambda Chi Alpha).”

While I developed the MediaWiki skin and freely share it to the world, I don’t deserve (or want) the credit for the hundreds of sites that use my skin.

Once I explained this to Wikimedia, they quickly understood. More so, they thanked me for participating in their project. I told them I appreciate their code and all of the things they have offered me and millions of others.