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"He's not really a Doctor, just a sort of a Doctor."
– Charles Kelley "Chuck" Lundquist

My name is Mad Doctor Mike, and my days are numbered. How cool can that be? Now I'll get all the Chicks!

There may be a treatment - but not a cure - for what I've got, those being Theophylline - the stimulant in Tea - or Aminophylline. Commonly found in Asthma Inhalers, I'd get injections or tablets.

That Cheyne-Stokes Respiration or "Stoking" is commonly known as "The Death Breath" is due to it's being most-commonly experienced by those who are in their final hours of life. In this order, it is as well found in those who are about to slip into a Coma, have Congestive Heart Failure or as a - rare - Sleep Disorder.

None of these apply to me, though I do have some theories: secondary to my raging unquenchable thirst of Psychogenic Polydipsia, an uncommon, poorly understood symptom of Schizophrenia and my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, Water-Soluble Nutrient Deficiency other than Sodium or Potassium, that my Party Animal Life has finally caught up with me, that I have Temporal Lobe Epilepsy or that I've suffered five concussions, two when I was beat up by the Police that put me into a Coma for three solid days.

(I call that last kind of thing "The Cost Of Doing Business".)

Azuma Hazuki speculates:

I've actually been thinking about you and your case a fair amount, and am completely utterly baffled. My first guess was some sort of seizure disorder well beyond TLE, maybe with involvement in Broca's Area among other places, perhaps with the pons or other parts of the lower brain involved as well considering the horrible agonal breathing you're suffering. And that it may be secondary to an actual physical lesion (mini-bleeds? Transient ischemia?) rather than just electrical glitches.

My PubMed reviews of the Clinical Literature regarding or "The Death Breath" indicate that my own form of it - awake and physically healthy - is as yet unknown to Medical Science!

I'M NUMBER ONE!
I'M NUMBER ONE!
I'M NUMBER ONE!

Inspired by the film Lorenzo's Oil, the Made For Hollywood but arguably true story of Augusto and Michaela Odone's desperate, relentless quest to find a cure for their son's "most-cruel disease" of Adrenoleukodystrophy or ALD, as the Odone's ultimate success was to a large degree the result of their organization an international conference of ALD Researchers, I shall too, I expect at Portland's Oregon Health & Sciences University, perhaps late this Summer so as not to conflict with the researchers' teaching duties.

You drunken layabouts shall of course all receive free tickets.

There's a simple way to help:

I need Postage Stamps, Envelopes, Paper and Printing to mail a two or three page purely informal paper to those roughly one thousand researchers, in which I shall invite them to my conference but not yet call for papers, as well as lucidly explain what I know so far, for example that sleep eliminates my Stoking, but only until I've been up for an hour or two upon awakening.

The attacks of severe fatigue I call "The Wearies" have been my most-common symptom since 2005; there's naught I can do but lie quietly in my bed until it passes. Coffee does not help; neither does sleep in this case, as I cannot get to sleep when I have The Wearies. My - frequent - Syncopes or fainting that because each episode last less than one second I call "Drop-Outs" are far, far more severe when I've either gone for more than two nights without sleep or suffered just one night with poor quality of sleep.

United States Resident?

Please send me the Postage Stamps in your purse, briefcase, wallet or desk drawer:

Mike Crawford
707 SW Washington St, Suite 1100
Portland OR 97205-3528
USA

Damn Ferriner?

Snail a check or money order in any - RLY - of USD, CAD, UKP or EUR to my address in Portland, or:

Everybody:

• PayPal: mike@soggywizards.com
• BTC: 3QqqbegpkU9DzKZ8rCPfYSkiyWVGnDSE8J
• LTC: MTPPDPhxkW1nu52AqvCeSbSkD32L9Vjuab
• ETC: 0xF41Da126Da6f6238d71845dF807Fd48Fd7c87184

In return for your uncommon kindnesses, I shall invite you to my funeral, presently planned for April First of this year.

KTHXBAI

Dr. Hamburg,

I'm in your ER's waiting room now, at 4:10 on the morning of Sunday, March 17th.

Your ER staff leads me to completely overcome with the desire to take my own life.

I'll explain later, I can't just now as I cannot breathe and so am fighting for consciousness - Syncope is quite a common symptom of this.

I Beg Of You!

Forget my aphasia!

Please FIND SOME WAY I DO NOT HAVE TO DIE!

I CANNOT BREATHE, AND YOUR EMERGENCY ROOM WON'T _DO_ ANYTHING ABOUT IT!

"Please I beg of you Sir, could you put me on a Respirator."

"No. To be on a Respirator is pretty extreme."

"Sir: I am going to DIE soon."

He didn't reply, just quietly looked down at the paper he'd brought for me: my Discharge Papers.

Surely there is some reason?

Thank You For Any Help You Can Give Me.

Anne: You are my only hope.

Mike

"But what can just one person do?"

-- Portland FBI Agent, after I explained to him the true meaning behind any flavor of Kool-Ade Mix other than Lemon.

It is a Technical Measure.

There is nothing in any way unlawful about it; thus your donations would not be regarded as facilitating crime.

I want you to understand that I am a very dangerous man, in that my chronic insomnia leads me to become obsessed with dreaming up such Technical Measures as for example dreaming up several significantly different ways not for America to lose the War On Terror, but for Vlad to Set Donald Up The Bomb without us G-d Fearing Americans having a whole lot of opportunity to do anything about it.

In that specific case, I dropped a dime to the United States Secret Service - Toll Free! - then after taking great care to reassure the - quite cheerful and friendly - agent who answered, I quite lucidly explained how I all by myself was The Antichrist, were I not such a nice guy. However, that security hole, while easily plugged with a technical measure of its own that would cost I'd say a half-billion or so - Chump Change to the Feds - remains exploitable, so instead I'll snail some dead trees to the National Security Council. But I digress:

I'd love nothing more than to lay waste to Silicon Valley right around now but to actually do so would result in Mom's California Public Employers Retirement System seeing a drop in its Portfolio Value. Thus, after A Great Deal of quiet contemplation, not only will I not release my Technical Measure as Free Software - Open Source misses the point, see - I will not release it for free along with a pint of Guinness, nor will I sell it.

No, I'm going to run in on my MacBook Pro while I relentlessly charm every last barista and waitress on G-d's Green Earth. Perhaps I'll even get blown on their breaks in the backs of their cars in their parking lots! How cool could that be?

Thus, I have some expenses:

Short-Term, I need just a few very modest things; some such as the Starbucks Card you can order online then send me an eGift Card - actually bar code: mdcrawford@gmail.com.

• $120.00 - TriMet/C-TRAN Thirty-Day Express Hop Card Transit Pass (The Mark Of The Beast)
• $30.00 - To get my shoes out of hock from the repair shop, as I walk like a duck
• $80.00 - Thirty Starbucks Grande Pike's Place Roasts with Washington Sales Tax
• $120.00 - Thirty free-refill coffees at Shari's Restaurant And Pies, Oregon so no tax.
• $225.00 - Thirty Portland Food Cart Burritos with Tip

That's it: $575.00 - but just for my first month.

• Michael Crawford, 650 NW Irving St, Portland OR 97209-1272 - but just this month!
• BTC: 3QqqbegpkU9DzKZ8rCPfYSkiyWVGnDSE8J
• LTC: MTPPDPhxkW1nu52AqvCeSbSkD32L9Vjuab
• ETH: 0xebb698DC6784461ca5Ef0a3338E8E389628389C1

After that, I'm going to need some wheels - that is, if you get my drift - but as I'm handy with tools, and Mom's been paying the rent on my locker, I've still got my tools, my father's tools, his father's tools, and because Grandpa's best friend had no heirs, Charlie Wilson's tools.

rdar://48664498
^--- This link works in Cupertino.

Preamble:

VLC 3.0.6 has been out for quite a long time; others complain of it online, but the VLC Devs must not yet know about it themselves, suggesting that it is uncommon configurations that give VLC such grief.

In my own case, I play YouTube Videos with _each_ of Safari, Chrome and Tor Browser, I watch local videos with _each_ of VLC and QuickTime Player, and I listen to music with _each_ of iTunes and VLC on my Mid 2015 MacBook Pro.

FWIW, I did the QA for MacTCP 1.0.1 and 1.1, and the plan and test tool for 1.2. Thus I know from Stress Testing as well as Corner Cases.

Summary:

Play a music video in VLC Media Player, then launch Safari. VLC's audio output halts though the video persists.

To activate VLC's window, to pause or resume then restart the music video are all of no avail. One must quit then relaunch.

Thus it is not possible to use VLC to listen to music videos while at the same time browsing with Desktop Safari.

Steps To Reproduce:

Drag any video file onto VLC Media Player's icon.

Launch Desktop Safari.

Expected Results:

One will continue to enjoy one's listening pleasure with VLC's window in the background while browsing with Safari in the foreground.

Actual Results:

VLC's audio output abruptly halts.

Upon activating VLC's window again, you will find that while the video continues playing, it is not possible to restore the sound. One must quit VLC then re-launch it.

Under certain conditions which I have not yet identified, one must reset VLC's Preferences to restore audio output. That is, it's not always sufficient to quit then relaunch it.

Regression:

Safari does not stimulate this behavior in QuickTime Player 10.4 (894.12).

To run two instances of VLC, one for video and one for audio will exhibit a similar bug but not reproducibly so. In this case - with two running binaries - one must always reset VLC Media Player's Preferences.

Configuration:

In addition to your sysdiagnose log I have attached a System Information Document; that's more convenient for most configuration reproduction than is the far-more verbose sysdiagnose.

Also attached is the VLC Media Player 3.0.6 Source Code.

Note that my day-to-day system is Sierra, as I'm a driver developer. Late tonight I'll regress with Mojave.

• macOS Sierra - 10.12.6 (16G29)
• Mid 2015 MacBook Pro with Retina Display
• Model Identifier - MacBookPro11,5
• 16 GB RAM
• 4-Core 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
• Boot Rom Version - MBP114.0172.B25
• SMC Version (system) - 2.30f2

• AMD Radeon R9 M370X
• Vendor ID - ATI (0x1002)
• Device ID - 0x6821
• Revision ID - 0x0083
• ROM Revision - 113-C5670E-777
• gMux Version - 4.0.20 [3.2.8]
• EFI Driver Version - 01.00.777

• Intel Iris Pro
• Max Dynamic VRAM - 1536 MB
• Vendor ID - Intel (0x8086)
• Device ID - 0x0d26
• Revision ID - 0x0008
• gMux Version ID - 4.0.20 [3.2.8]

• Safari - 10.1.2 (12603.3.8)

• VLC Media Player - 3.0.6 Vetinari (Intel 64bit)
• VLC Media Player - 3.0.2 Vetinari (Intel 64bit)

I regressed with:

• QuickTime Player - 10.4 (894.12)

I Am Absolutely Serious.

It was dark there. I could have been eaten by a grue.

I just googled for "Ammonium Nitrate" without thinking to use Tor.

It's for a book that I'm writing.

A novel.

A work of fiction.

At least they're using mothballs so as to keep a lid on the Body Lice.

I would not wish Scabies on my worse enemy.

It's not that I'm homeless again, but that I've been putting in such long hours that I didn't want to go all the way home to sleep.

After I post this I'll go sleep on my cold, hard office floor.

No Vermin There!

Not Yet Anyway.

"Good compost is a wonderful thing!
-- Efren Lizardo Ibarreta

"What do you want to be when you grow up? A fireman? An astronaut?"

I was but four years old.

"I want to be a farmer."

While puzzled, Mom was pleased as we come from farmers. I expect most people day.

"Why so?"

"Everyone has to eat. I could charge as much as I want. I'll be rich!"

Dad was quite pleased and so purchased some gardening tools and seed. This was in 1968 yet I remember as if it was yesterday that very first carrot he harvested for me.

It was good.

Fast forward to today. Being winter I am preparing for the coming Spring by composting food scraps.

Having established that collecting them in a small bag works well, I tried a large bag - a full-sized paper grocery sack.

That works well too; the fruit flies are very pleased with their new digs.

Most know Free Agents such as myself as "Vigilantes", but I actively discourage the application of "Vigilantes" do those who really _do_ aim to do right by others.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Clark County (Washington) Sheriff's Department as well as the Multnomah County (Oregon) Sheriff's Department _all_ know very well that I _relentlessly_ hunt down Child Pornographers.

To the extent I can come up with one such that is within the reach of at least INTERPOL, I file a _detailed_ report with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center.

While to the very best of my knowledge my IC3 reports have yet to lead to actual prison sentences, I can claim some success, in that I've gotten two _particularly_ egregious E-COMMERCE - "ADD TO CART" - SITES taken down; that same IC3 complaint led to a _modest_ reduction in CloudFlare's _similarly_ egregious_ caching of Child Sexual Abuse.

I had to laugh just now when searching for a particularly well-known - former - Child Pornographic Actress; she was during her... uh... "career"... even _more_ widely known for her Still Photo work so from time to time I search for some of her such Photos for the most part at Bing Image Search.

(This because Satya Nadella is surely so-egregious himself; that is, if you catch my mother fucking drift.)

And why did I have to so laugh?

This because Bing Image Search quickly turned a quite a low low low price of a particularly hard-to-find... uh... "collectible"... Still Work set, but with the at-first puzzling result that at the actual eCommerce site that TURNS RIGHT UP IN IMAGE SEARCH, that very same Still Work set did _not_ turn up in a great _many_ purely-local searches I tried.

As For Why I'm a Free Agent?

When I find the man who published my own Still Photo work, I'm gonna tear him a new one with the rusty entrenching tool that I keep in my toilet bowl for just such an occasion.

From time to time, as events wend their merry way through the Courts, I'll submit an SN Story Submission that summarizes the plot that has transpired so far as well as links to my detailed chronicles, each such chronicle packed solid with wall-to-wall Civil Procedures that use all their holes. Our Story So Far:

• Standing to Complain, Or, C-TRAN Kicks a Cripple

tl;dr:

The C-TRAN Clark County Washington Rapid Transit System used a FIFTY-TWO MILLION DOLLAR local sales tax increase to retain a firm of uncommonly sadistic banshees to build these quite cool Avant-Garde Installation pieces that I remain flummoxed are denoted as "Bus Stop Shelters".

Flummoxed because The Vine's alleged "shelters" do not protect either the waiting passengers, nor the benches within in _any_ way.

Redoubling my sorrow, is that as each Vine Avant-Garge Installation piece was... installed... the old, quite pleasant, inclement weather-protective though rather prosaic True Shelters was destroyed.

In this evenings mail, I received a Tort Claims Form from a Mr. Cedric Adams, Claims Manager for the Washington State Transit Insurance Pool. My _polite_, _respectful_ as well as I'ma Gonna Tear Ya A New Asshole reply:

Mr. Adams,

Thank you for sending me C-TRAN's Claim Form.

Note that I've CCed my Legal Advisor Rod Schmidt; when you mail me yourself, please CC Rod as well.

While I will fill it out and submit it tomorrow (Wednesday), I really don't see a way for C-TRAN to remediate the ultimate cause of the cruelty C-TRAN's Vine Bus Operator other than to either redesign, or perhaps to replace _each_ of the bus stop shelters for The Vine route.

This because those "shelters" do not, in _any_ way, shelter the benches from the wind, rain and snow. Nor do the protect either those sitting on the bench or those standing from the cold, wet winds which are so common in Vancouver during the Fall, Winter or Spring.

What led me to be so profoundly overcome with grief was the great pain I experienced due to having been forced to stand during most of the forty-five minutes I awaited The Vine's arrival on this last Saturday morning, February 9th. That grief was compounded by the knowledge that I _voted_ for the local sales tax increase that at the time of the election was intended to raise fifty-two million dollars for the construction of the Fourth Plain Rapid Transit Corridor.

Despite C-TRAN quite admirably sparing no expense nor effort to provide - in the parlance of the Americans With Disabilities Act - "Reasonable Accommodation" for those who cannot walk and so require wheelchairs, no such Accommodation was provided for those who do not use wheelchairs, but for whom walking or standing are excruciatingly painful and difficult.

For that reason, my monetary claim on our form will be a largely arbitrary, quite large amount, with the expectation that my claim will be denied. I will then proceed with my Civil Complaint through the Clark County Superior Court.

I shall do so with the expectation that C-TRAN's attorney and I - with the assistance and advice of Mr. Rod Schmidt - will negotiate a settlement which stipulates that _each_ Vine Stop Shelter be protected from the elements.

Enclosed please find a photo of one of the two snow-covered benches at the 12th and Broadway Vine Stop. I shot that with my phone upon my arrival on the C-TRAN #60 Delta Park Regional Bus.

Warmest Regards,

Michael D. Crawford

Indeed I did request my 9-1-1 call's audio file, but it's going to take CRESA (not "CRESPA"), the Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency, ten to fourteen days to get it to me.

I await my Emergency Call's arrival with bated breath, as I _begged_ CRESA's Dispatcher to deliver unto me a VPD Officer who would not arrest my Evil and Cruel Bus Driver, but _reason_ with him so that he would stop insisting I get off his bus. That would have condemned me to another forty-five minutes of standing, with _great_ pain, in the snow for the next bus.

The Mind Simply Reels