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I am mildly anemic. I expect this particular occurrence of anemia is due to blood loss during my kidney removal surgery.

My most-recent blood test leads me to believe I need more Vitamin C, Iron, and Vitamin B12. Vitamin C increases the bioavailability of certain iron-containing compounds; looking into these suggests that one orange each meal would be sufficient.

I emailed my relatives about this, and mentioned that the 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was shared by George Hoyt Whipple, George Richards Minot and William Parry Murphy "for their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anaemia."

It seems that eating large amounts of raw liver was an effective treatment for Pernicious Anemia. This was later found to be caused by the victims being unable to absorb Vitamin B12 in their food - Methylcobalamin - because they had a lack of something called Intrinsic Factor, a protein produced in the stomach that binds to Methylcobalamin in the small intestine.

The lining small intestine has receptors for Intrinsic Factor but not directly for B12.

My great grandfather, the father of my maternal grandfather Estel Rex Speelmon, died of Pernicious Anemia. Just eating lots of raw liver would have saved his life.

I've had a vague idea for an essay for a year or so, that will discuss the crucial importance of simple kinds of information: just knowing that eating liver treats pernicious anemia is all that was needed to save a great many lives.

Methylcobalamin is required for the production of red blood cells. The Cyanocobalamin that's labeled as "B12" in most vitamin pills and fortified foods isn't actually B12, rather the liver processes Cyanocobalamin with a small fraction being transformed into the Methyl kind.

I also mentioned to these relatives that I was going to eat a whole lot more red meat, because the only human-edible food that B12 is found in is blood. That led one of my relatives to protest vigorously, he advised me to adopt a Vegan Diet - but gradually - and to get my B12 from Vitamin Pills.

I was a vegan for six months. Most of that time I exercised vigorously every day. At the end of that I'd lost forty pounds, was in great physical shape, looked really good and had boundless energy.

Then I started eating meat, eggs and dairy again. The result is that I gained all that weigh back and more, and when I start to sing on the street, after I put my Tip Jar on the ground, stand back up then walk a few steps away from it, I have to stop and breathe deeply for thirty seconds or so before I can start singing.

Because standing back up from putting something on the ground leaves me short of breath.

I'm determined to lose all that weight again, not at all for a better physical appearance but for my blood pressure, as well as to prevent heart attack, stroke or diabetes. Diabetics often die of heart attacks, they go blind or their feet rot off because their poor blood circulation leads excess blood sugar to cause open sources.

I've not yet been prescribed blood pressure medicine but if it goes any higher I surely will. My pressure has been creeping gradually up the last year, with the highest I've seen it being 170 over 110. (It's generally not that high, but still too high.)

High blood pressure is called "The Silent Killer" because there are no noticeable symptoms until it's too late to save one's life: it will destroy your kidneys, one will need a transplant but I expect one wouldn't qualify for a new kidney until one's blood pressure is back down to normal. That would totally suck to try to get in shape while on Dialysis.

I've only got one kidney left. My surgeon advised me to take good care of it.

PS: "certain seizure medicines" prevent one's body from absorbing B12. Does the Trileptal (oxcarbazapine) that I take do so? No. How about the Depakote (valproate) that I took from 1994 through 2014? No as well.

(I was taking Depakote just for Bipolar Mania, however many anti-seizure (anti-epileptic) drugs are effective for mania as well. This leads to speculation that Mania is some form of seizure.)

In about 45 minutes. I just got downtown and want to chill in my office for a little bit.

This page is about my singing. There's a free instrumental piano EP that you can download or stream. Please drop it right in your shared folder.

I haven't posted any of my singing yet because I'm unhappy with the ways I've tried to mix it so far. When I sing in a quiet place, my recordings sound like I'm in interstellar space. Those are called "Dry" recordings. They're "Wet" once mixed. I've got some good dry recordings but it needs a modest amount of reverb. I'll keep working on it.

I'm planning a vocal album that I will sell: Michael David Crawford LIVE! On Broadway (... and Morrison, Portland, Oregon).

Later tonight I'll visit a friend who is a waitress at a 24-hour restaurant. We are close friends however after we met for coffee a couple times she told me that she didn't want anything romantic. Even so, we remain close friends.

She is anxious to hear about the pathologist's report from my cancerous kidney. I've got the printed report with me now. Most of the text is about the analytic methods they used - the type of microscope stain and so on - but the key words are "Negative margins of excision" which means there were no cancerous cells in the normal tissue surrounding my tumour, so it is exceedingly unlikely to have spread.

That bad boy was 5.6 cm across. His own observations during my surgery as well as my pathologist's report led my surgeon to unequivocally state:

• "Your cancer is cured!"

I pointed out to him that "I'm a computer programmer. When I screw up on the job, you'll lose your document. I'm very, very happy that you are willing to bear such a weighty responsibility and that you use it so well".

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?

New York Parents Are Turning to Reiki Healers for Their Stressed Kids

Wikipedia: Reiki

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!

4 green cabbages
4 lbs carrots
2 bunches of green onions (about 10-11 oz total)
1 lb radishes

Sauce contains:

8 tbsp soy sauce
8 tbsp sugar
1 cup canned crushed pineapple
12 tbsp ginger paste
3 heads garlic
2 onions
1/2 cup red pepper flakes
Some MSG

I'll put in some store bought kimchi to use as a starter.

1 cabbage makes about a gallon, so I'm using a 5 gallon food grade bucket. I bought these silicone grommets. Drilled a 9/16" hole in the bucket lid, popped it in. Airlock fits great. I'll put some vodka in it to ward off bugs (they probably won't get in, but could drown in the airlock).

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.

It's an old cliché, right? And, you don't talk about it in mixed company, or polite company, amirite? It's just something we all live with. Ehhhh - keep reading, maybe you'll learn something, as I did. Dude has done the research for us, and compares 8 different brands of men's underwear, highlighting their strengths, and shortcomings.

https://snarkynomad.com/the-best-mens-underwear-for-every-guy-out-there/

The best men’s underwear for every guy out there
December 12, 2016 - by SnarkyNomad
Welcome, friends and loved ones, to what is going to be the most detailed discussion I have ever produced. And that’s saying something.

I’ve written about men’s underwear before, specifically regarding how incredibly difficult it is finding something that works. So many designs out there are total garbage that most guys don’t bother sifting through the selection to find something good, and end up just living with whatever’s cheap, because the fancy ones don’t work either. Add to this the fact that underwear is incredibly polarizing, with some people liking a loose boxer fit, while others prefer a boxer brief, along with all kinds of other preferences that are more divisive than a heated political debate. And I think I finally know why.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen––but mostly gentlemen––I think I’ve actually figured out why some people like one design instead of another, and I also think I can articulate this problem without resorting to obscene diagrams. It’s all going to start making perfect sense, and by the end of all this, I think you’ll be able to find something that’ll work for you, without having to spend $30 on something that fits horribly and gets thrown in the garbage by the end of the day.

So go ahead and get comfortable, because this is going to be as thorough as a nuclear submarine technical manual.

How men’s underwear discussions tend to miss the point
I will begin by saying that everything you’ve been told about men’s underwear is wrong.

Everyone talks about “support,” claiming that one pair of underwear has good “support,” while another does not. But this doesn’t make any sense. “Support” is what happens when you’re lifted up from underneath. But what good is that?

The constant readjustment problem that plagues every guy all day long has nothing to do with a lack of “support.” It has to do with a lack of containment. Walking around for a while will dislodge whatever you intend to hold in place up front, and it’ll start migrating into various positions and start chafing against the leg and ruin your whole day. This is why underwear with good “support” isn’t going to do you any good.

As I say, he did all the research, and he notes within his blog that these brands start at about $5.00 per pair, and get very pricey from there. I don't suppose that many of us can justify a $50 pair of undies - I know that I can't. I started with the lowest price available, and experimented.

https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/men/innerwear-and-socks/boxers-and-boxer-briefs

People, you won't believe it until you try it. Some of those higher priced garments could possibly be better, but I don't know how. The ONLY thing that I don't really like, is the fabric. I've spent a lifetime wearing 100% cotton, in the thickness and texture found in Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, and other common brands. Very thin, smooth, moisture wicking cotton - certainly not silk, but it does have some silky qualities. My initial impression of the fabric was, "These are kind of effeminate, aren't they?" But - I've gotten used to them.

Blurb here about that cotton: https://authenticity50.com/pages/supima-cotton

WHAT IS SUPIMA COTTON?
"Extra-long staple Supima cotton is the crème de la crème in the cotton world" -GEAR PATROL

There’s a reason the American-grown Supima® cotton we use costs more than 2x the price of regular cotton, and it shows in the product. It's finer and more expensive than Egyptian Cotton and traditional Pima cotton. Its extra-long staples allows us to spin an extremely fine yet durable single-ply thread, which results in a softer, more breathable, and longer lasting bed sheet.

EXTRA-LONG STAPLE
In fact, Supima® is 35% longer than regular cotton, which makes the fiber 45% stronger and considerably softer. Supima® accounts for less than 3% of the cotton grown in the United States, and comes fully certified by the Supima® association.

Imagine that - high tech underwear, that doesn't even plug into a computer!! All you need is a connection to milennia old Pima Indian cultivated cotton!