Life, The Universe, and Everything

[Doug Coulter]

Yup. I chose that over the "official" one which was just a slideshow of pictures of Frank. I thought it was more interesting.

[Doug Coulter]

Well, this is utterly insane on a few levels.
I went to the Sake house where I get my favorite food and drink - as the owner pointed out, I've been a customer for a couple decades, about as long as they've been in business. We're family now.
Gave them the bad news, they really treated me xtra right (even better than usual, which is almost miraculously good already).
After eating great food,I got hammered on Sake...it happens sometimes. And as also happens sometimes I want a smoke after that - like with sex.
Having quit a long time ago, my little stock in the console was gone, so I stopped at a gas station and bought my old fave, Newports, and smoked ... a few of them.

And then a miracle occurred. My BP went way down despite skipping the drugs, and to me, more importantly, my pain - all of it - just went away. Some had been bothering me for years,
but if I'm functioning, I'm generally not whining, I figured everyone has the odd ache and pain and it's not news.
But this was - it all just went away. Opiods, GABA stuff, other analgesics never touched this level, ever.

So, being me, I fished around and of course, as I say at the bottom, if you want to find something you agree with, it's there somewhere on the 'net.
In this case, it's our government NIH, though, not some whack-job alt medicine scam.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23061635/

“menthol exhibits cytotoxic effects in cancer cells, induces reduction in malignant cell growth, and engages in synergistic excitation of GABA receptors and sodium ion channels resulting in analgesia.”
“The internet, where you can find bullshit justification for anything you want.”

Nope, not re-addicted, thank $Deity. But I'll say this - I ordered some menthol parts - you can now get them cheap for vape juice - and we're going to try that for awhile. I can do without the nicotine, don't need
that buzz, and especially don't need the other damage and additcion. Now, I only have one pretty noisy data point, but that was so dramatic...just totally a wow experience, and best of all - it's still working today, and my BP is low despite a very reduced dose of the usual meds. Too low in fact. And no, I haven't smoked any more.

Normally, on the med schedule, it's 173/96 until the morning meds kick in (couple hours) and bring it down near ideal.
This morning it was 127/74...took my BP meds anyway ( do half a dose in the AM and the other half at bedtime as my metabolism prefers that) and almost got in trouble as it went down to 85/60 for awhile - I had to get up and run around some to even get the blood oxy finger thing to read at all.
Which I could do - and that's huge too.
Let's hope it's not a fluke and I found something that works, at least for me.

Sorry to burden the board with this crap, but that's why this is in water cooler and not somewhere it pollutes the science.

[Bob Reite]

Would be great if you can get the menthol without the nicotine.

[Donovan Ready]

Almost got in trouble?

almost got in trouble as it went down to 85/60 for awhile

Jesus. That's freaking scary.

[Doug Coulter]

Bob, you can, and I am, it's going to be here in a few days, along with a vape compatible solvent. I have some very nifty hardware for that from when I did that while getting off smoking. Fancy enough to real-time measure the resistance of a high temp-coefficient heating element and control power to keep temps at a setpoint, and thus not create destructive distillation products if you set it correctly. I hear it's really good for hash oil too, but I long since gave up those kinds of things - they stopped being fun.

Donovan, yeah, almost was a euphemism. That was a real near-death experience - I almost called 911 but felt that the trip from my door to the ER would have killed me. Couldn't make it to the doctor's office - hell, couldn't make it to my car and wouldn't try driving anyway. Called them up and got a televisit (zoom, which sucks compared to google meet other than preserving the secrecy of email address of whoever starts the meeting). Another pretty soon today. And an in person visit from a nurse. Seems when you get to a certain point, people start behaving like they care. I'll take that.

I got an interesting call from the nurse involved in the osteocool/anesthesia process - they have a long dropdown list obviously. Every real programmer agonizes on what to put on such lists, as they are for ease of use by morons. Anyone who knows jack s**t about medicine knows it's the exceptions that are often the most important, but any deviation from answering the exact question on the list is rebuffed by a supposed expert.
Even "what's your dose" - and if I take a certain dose per day but split it up into 2 or 3 because my metabolism is too fast for 1/24hr to work - well, that just gets a snotty response, and a wrong thing put into their little one size fits all box. This issue isn't unique to medicine, Every MBA seems to want to make their "Big dada" cheaper via reducing the number of variables even if that makes little sense - heck, it saves on having to hire competent programmers and buiy/rent the tools you need to enhance their teamwork. That crap is going to destroy the world, now (Shakespear) it's not the lawyers we have to kill...MBAs and marketing show up real high on that list too as being far more destructive wastes of oxygen than mere telephone sanitizers (Hitchiker's Guide ...).

[Doug Coulter]

FWIW, anyone interested in a marginally coherent and terribly organized logs of my medical stuff can find it here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
I'm doing this as a way to share things with my GP doctor from whom I have no secrets. And then I thought, well, I really don't have any secrets from anyone (other than the jerks trying to help me get expensive stuff from medicare that I don't want or need, but HIPPA is a joke and my phone rings the instant I'm back from a new doctor with people trying to sell me stuff that is related to that doctor's specialty - it'd be uncanny if I didn't know how the info selling economy worked - since the bad guys already know, why not the good guys?), so if you're interested in the sometimes gory details, here they are.
The logs are in the 2021 folder. There is the occasional good rant in there too.

And yeah, smoking gives you lung cancer. Kind of late for sweating that one, eh? Stinks on other levels though.

[Bob Reite]

I think that the MBA degree was the worst thing ever to come along.

[Doug Coulter]

Making short term mentality officially OK - MBAs being just one example, was evil. "It's all connected". Pay your execs in options so they make out if company stock rises - easier to get that past shareholders than a big salary. Since most CEOs don't last that long in that job - built in short termism. Then...look, most of the money is in grandma's retirement fund (the actual money, not the fake leverage rehypothecation stuff). And if something doesn't go up fast and consistently, her manager sells it, driving the price down because he wants her business and she wants a better grade of cat food to eat. All that bad behavior is at the end driven by -- there's plenty of blame to go around. As someone who swam with the sharks in the markets and did ok - but it made me want to wash my hands after - I found out quite a few things most wouldn't even believe about how things work - what I'm saying here is common knowledge, the deep pits are ... really deep - and the conspiracy guys have it mostly wrong, their thinking is far too simplistic, the usual human failing of a lazy brain wanting to know "that one weird trick" or ideology so they can now stop having to think or absorb any new facts to have to analyze. And "fixing the blame isn't fixing the problem" anyway. Do I have a poor opinion of a lot of humans? Is it justified?

I'm not real sane myself just now. Whatever is driving my fight or flight response just won't quit, it's the whole deal, like an endless auto accident, time slowed down and all. I didn't know a body could DO that.
Here's the best expression I've heard of it.

In the shuffling madness
Of the locomotive breath
Runs the all time loser
Headlong to his death

He feels the pistons scraping
Steam breaking on his brow
Old Charlie stole the handle and
The train it won't stop going
No way to slow down

He sees his children jumping off
At the stations one by one
His woman and his best friend
In bed and having fun

He's crawling down the corridor
On his hands and knees
Old Charlie stole the handle and
The train it won't stop going
No way to slow down, yeah

He hears the silence howling
Catches angels as they fall
And the all time winner
Has got him by the balls

He picks up Gideons Bible
Open at page one
God He stole the handle and
The train won't stop going
No way to slow down

Of course I didn't make that up. Someone better than I.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i19d1Qn ... enMcElvain

[Doug Coulter]

This is an astonishing vdeo, live right now, of a volacanic eruption, starting quite awhile ago as a puff of smoke in the daytime, and evolving into things like this pic:

From the middle of the stream

Dunno if this link will persist, but here goes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O46nVKT ... jar%C3%B0a

Welcome to the future, just starting now.
I think we're all bozos on this bus,
Firesign theater

[Doug Coulter]

If you look, Iceland has a new stream up now. It's still cool. Daytime there as I post this: https://youtu.be/9d2pk38VdqU
(edit, had pasted the wrong link)

RARE and unusual -
I got a nice letter from the IRS! Let me explain.
"Somehow", the stimulus checks were held up - for conservatives who get things like NRA mail - for over a month - not sure who f'd up, but some USPS guys are now out of a job -lost my favorite mailman for one. Probably some IRS too, but news is mum about the whole affair.

At any rate, since I hadn't gotten mine by the time I E-filed, I put that info on the filing. Then the IRS said, no wait, we've decided not to look at E-file till .. a month later than usual, no warning.
Of course, during that month, I got my check and cashed it. Dreading the IRS giving me another and then making it hard to return, and adding penalties, their usual schtick.

Nope, they just noticed the error - unusual for them - and said "it's all fine, we're not sending you an extra one" which is also fine.

No blood, and no foul, I'm good with that. I've had to fight them twice, but it took "it's a matter of principle" money to win - nice to win but it cost lots more than giving in in one case - their usual plan.

By comparison, this was good behavior out of them. I'll take it. I'm sure there will be no issue with checks that don't have a certain president's name on them.