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Just two things really sums it up:

When a man tells me he is a Sovereign Citizen, I give him a cookie.

Also, it is my understanding that Libertarians were diapers made of hemp, as that is what the Constitution is printed on.

What is your own personal take on Libertarianism?

I cancelled my Comcast Internet over the weekend because money is tight. I'm able to use my iPhone's personal hotspot which kinda sorta works most of the time. Strangely, the Personal Hotspot does not work as well at home as it does on the bus or train.

When I did that, I also cancelled my Antminer L3+'s Internet connection.

Well at least I'll get some quiet for once. LiteCoin is at forty or so; my Comcast was fifty so for mining alone it's not worth it.

However if you feel that cryptocurrencies aren't going to collapse anytime soon, it would be a good time to buy some.

(Reposted from my email to a cast of thousands.)

In Europe, they call November 11th Armistice Day, as World War I ended at 11:00 AM on November 11th, 1918.

I ask that you honor our veterans in quite a grim manner: please read "All Quiet On The Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque. "Western" because Remarque was a German soldier - but it's been long enough that we should not hang on to our anger anymore.

That same spirit of forgiveness is evidenced by Aircrew Remembered. My dear friend Stefan Pietrzak Youngs works on it with his brother Kelvin, who started this invaluable historical archive to honor their father, a Polish fighter pilot who perished in a training accident shortly after the end of the war. Here's one of Sgt. Aleksander Pietrzak's pages there:

• 316 Mustang Squadron III Fl./Sgt. Pietrzak 'Diver' Kills

When Sergeant Pietrzak perished, Stefan was only three months old.

In his book, Remarque mentions just one war atrocity that was committed by American soldiers: when fresh German troops arrived, the battle-seasoned soldiers advised them to file the saw teeth off their bayonets lest they be captured by the Americans then disemboweled with their own bayonets.

My own father served in Vietnam, a Missile Fire Control Officer aboard the USS Providence and the Wilson. The Fire Control Officers were the ones who pressed the buttons that actually launched the missiles; had my father not been so quick on the draw, hundreds of men - including him - would have gone to Davy Jones' Locker were a North Vietnamese MIG fighter to have sunk their ship with its own missile.

Dad never told us that the Talos Naval Anti-Aircraft Missiles could be fitted with nuclear warheads, but that fact was later declassified. An Air Force fighter pilot who was scrambled during the Cuban Missile Crisis regarded the nuclear anti-aircraft missile as "the stupidest weapon ever invented". When I mentioned the Talos' nuclear capability at Hacker News, someone replied that "The first Taloses had poor accuracy, and that was at a time" - the 1950s - "that atomic bombs seemed like a good idea for everything".

Grandpa Speelmon was a surgeon and a Captain in the US Army Air Forces Medical Corps in San Antonio, Texas. I don't know much about my grandfather - Estel Rex Speelmon, he went by his middle name - but reading Wikipedia suggests that he served in the School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, now Randolph Air Force Base.

Grandpa Crawford was a Carpenter's Mate in the Seabees - the US Naval Construction Battalions - in the New Hebrides, in the South Pacific. He later served in the Aleutian Islands during Korea.

I actually had two maternal grandfathers as Grandpa Speelmon died in 1948. Grandpa Swope was my grandmother Florence's second husband. He and I were very close. When he told me that he was a Police Officer in Los Angeles during World War II, I pointed out that he didn't seem like the kind of guy that would make a good cop:

"In those days," Grandpa explained, "You did what you were told".

One of Grandpa Speelmon's older brothers, Ray Bruce Speelmon, died in Flanders about three weeks before the Armistice. My mother once went there, to lay flowers on Great Uncle Ray's grave. Someday I shall lay flowers there too.

Mom and Dad understandably tried to hide the horrors of war from my sister and I. This led to me having the impression that the only time Dad ever fired a gun was when he came home from work - at the Concord Naval Weapons Station, in the San Francisco East Bay - to proudly boast that he shot the head off a match at fifty feet with a pistol.

Dad's take on Gun Safety: "Never point a gun at someone unless you intend to shoot them. Never shoot someone unless you intend to kill them".

I read "All Quiet On The Western Front" during the Summer of '79, when I was fifteen.

Dad passed away during peacetime, in 2003 at the age of sixty-eight. His mortal remains lay for eternity in Willamette National Cemetery in South Portland, Oregon.

I will leave you with a happy story:

In Concord, Dad worked at a very small, very secure facility where they assembled and tested Terrier and Talos missiles. The Terrier was a single-stage solid-fueled rocket, the Talos two stages, the first if I understand correctly was solid-fueled, the upper stage an liquid fueled air-breathing ramjet.

One day Dad brought home a piece of the Terrier's solid fuel that was about the size of his thumb. That solid fuel looked just like automobile tire rubber because that's just what it was made of.

After advising me and Jeannie to stand well away from it, Dad placed the piece of fuel in the middle of our concrete back deck, stood well away himself, leaned out then stretched out his arm to light the fuel with his cigarette lighter.

That automobile tire rubber burnt just like the head of a match!

        "Nitroglycerin."

Never Forget Those Who Gave Their Lives For Us.

Michael David Crawford, Navy Brat

Specifically, the AC who claims that all job posts are works of fiction and that Soggy Jobs is a fraud.

It is specifically for people like him that I built it. I want to facilitate the employment of those who find it difficult to find work.

However, I am forced to concede that I'm stymied by this particular AC. I expect he has some manner of mental illness whose paranoia leads him to be completely convinced that _nobody_ actually works as a coder.

The booming Portland economy is centered around the Pearl District and its Downtown. Locate your startup there and you'll get VC like there's no tomorrow.

But you won't hire any coders.

Have you any advice as to how I can help him? Help me out here, I'm begging you!

I at first intended to list the openings at each of Google's locations, on the city pages for those locations. That is, on my London page I would link to Google's London listings.

That no longer seems possible.

Possibly I am wrong so I'll screw around with Google's job board some other day, but I was hoping to while away my afternoon doing something totally mindless. Listing all of Google's locations would have fit the bill.

I'm going to make spaghetti for supper tonight, but I'm not going to make my usual mountain of the stuff.

Later tonight I'll take the significant step of taking two busses to North Portland so I can visit a close friend who is a waitress at Shari's Restaurant And Pies, a 24-hour restaurant chain. I haven't visited her at work for a while because I've been busted flat. She always likes it when I do visit.

I've spent the entire night at that particular Shari's a great many times. During my homelessness they were completely cool with me doing that provided I buy just one coffee. I didn't even have to leave a tip.

I wrote quite a lot of The Frog there.

One time I was sitting at the counter while talking on the phone to a cop in Santa Cruz, California. He got all pissed off then told me he would trace my call - from his patrol car, leading me to believe that _all_ cops can do this:

"The Northwest.. Oregon..."

"I'm sitting at the counter at Shari's Restaurant And Pies just off Exit 306 off I-5 near the bridge over the Columbia River. Care to elucidate?"

Strangely, Santa Cruz' Finest didn't appreciate my kind assistance.

I was only out of bed for two hours yesterday, but today I was able to work some.

I expect I'll start going back in to my office in Portland on Thursday. That would have been Wednesday but I have a follow-up appointment then. Getting to my surgeon's office and back on the bus is a huge PITA so I'm not going to compound it by going to Portland.

My doc said I'd have my pathology report by now but I don't. While the CT scan of my abdomen led him to say that my tumour was not malignant, we won't really know until I get that report.

He has a private website for his patients, which has my blood and piss test results, but not yet the pathology.

I've managed to use my laptop for over an hour without puking.

I can pretty much walk normally. I'll go farther today. Just after my surgery and the next day I had to get the nurse to help me walk; one of them gave me a walker. I haven't yet had a problem with walking too far.

I've eaten an entire peanut butter and jelly sandwich two days in a row.

However, William Jefferson Clinton remains reluctant to sign an Executive Order.

I'm up so early today because I slept all day yesterday.

When I asked my surgeon's receptionist if they'd mail me my pathologist's report, she said it would be in my private area on their website, then give me a sheet with login instructions. That means I have to find it.

In a little bit I'll go to the donut shop for a donut and some tea. I'll get an unglazed/frosted donut if I can, but their selection has been cut back because they're not getting enough business - I'm their only regular.

Or maybe I'll take the bus downtown then get a cheddar, egg and sausage sandwich at The 'Bucks.

(I just now emailed the following to a vast multitude of completely innocent victims.)

I Have A Problem:

Recall that I got my kidney taken out last Wednesday morning. I'm
recovering, but slowly.

Upon finding that spending more than five minutes at my computer will
lead me to be overcome with dizziness and nausea - thus this mail.
cannot be a Wall Of Text - I decided to spend the day lying in bed and
listening to music. Letting my thoughts wander for a while led me to
come up with a really compelling topic for a truly length Wall Of
Text.

Were I to attempt writing it, it would be no time at all before I was
Praying To The Porcelain God. Perhaps it would be better to lie in
the dark, listening to music and letting my thoughts continue to
wander?

But now those thoughts are obsessed with the topic of that essay. If
this continues, my thoughts will start to race. Racing thoughts are
commonly my first warning that I'm getting manic.

However, I have a fresh refill of Industrial Strength Happy Pills -
Zyprexa (olanzipine), 5 mg. Just one tablet of it and I'll be a sleep
quicker than if you hit me in the head with a break.

But I got up at 2:30 this afternoon. The single-most effective way to
prevent both mania and depression is to regulate my sleep. To stay
awake long enough that I don't spend too much time sleeping, I need to
be up until dawn.

But I can't write while I do so, so I'll lie in bed, listen to music,
and let my mind...

... obsess on that new essay.

Nauseously,

Misha

I at first planned not to take any pain pills last night, but upon concluding I wouldn't get to sleep without one, I took it. I am prescribed 10 mg oxycodone every four hours, which would have me stoned to the gills. Even just 5 mg puts me to sleep, and since I've been home I took at first 10 mg a day, then since night before last, 5 mg.

I have a pill splitter so that rather than going from 5 to 0 I will go from 5 to 2.5. Tonight I will take 5.

I managed to walk two long blocks to Taco Bell, where I availed myself of their $2 Duo, that comprising a burrito and a medium soda. I was able to eat the whole thing, which is a milestone for me.

During my surgery they inflated my entire intestinal tract with air. Here it is a week later and I've still got some - my first nurse led me to expect I'd get rid of it all at once. From time to time it causes worse pain than the surgical wounds.

When I awoke this morning there was no pain and all, but upon getting up and moving around the pain returned. Even so, my surgeon wants me to walk as much as I can. I'm also at a loss as to how to pass the time at home, and came to The Bell so as to be at a loss there.

I got a call from A Highly Respectable Company this afternoon, asking me to apply. My response: "I'd love to work for $HIGHLY_RESPECTABLE_COMPANY but what I'm actually going to do is bet the farm on Soggy Jobs."

"Would you like me to call you around the middle of next year?"

"Yes."

I feel a lot better than I did yesterday. Part of that is that I bought some Calcium antacid; I had nothing yesterday. Towards the end of the day I bought some generic Pepto-Bismol, but didn't realize until I was about to take some that its Bismuth Subsalicyclate might cause bleeding, because it was Salicyclate in it - as Aspirin does. My doctor and two different nurses repeatedly asked me if I'd taken any "aspirin-like drugs", then after my surgery my surgeon advised me to continue not taking any.

My incisions are sore. I have a long vertical one where my kidney actually came out, and two short horizontal ones for the laproscope. I've been concerned they could get infected so I inspected them all carefully just as soon as I got up and bed, but no they look ok. Look man, if you tore out your own spleen with a rusty entrenching tool that would hurt just as bad.

I'm puzzled that my doc advised me to eat anything I want. What I want is a big steak that the food pantry gave me, what I can really eat are a half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as well as a tossed side salad that Mom bought me.

I'm going to do a few hours of work tomorrow, mainly to fix whatever is wrong with my mail server, which won't relay outgoing mail. It started doing that spontaneously, I had not changed anything. For all I know I might just need to restart the postfix process.

But what I actually did was subscribe to Google G Suite so as to receive an anal probe with the above-mentioned entrenching tool.

And what is an entrenching tool? The gentle reader quite reasonably asks. It's a small folding shovel that trench soldiers always carried with them in the event they needed to dig some cover. I expect they got rusty quite a lot, as it rains quite a lot in Europe.