Unleashing Demons

Programming is like magic.  You write very specific instructions in arcane languages to invoke commands, and if you get it even a little bit wrong you risk unleashing demons and destroying everything.

-- Diana Carrier, writing on Twitter as @artemis_134, 23 June 2018

Deny Myself

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.

-- Christopher Hitchens, (1949-2011), Anglo-American author, essayist, and social critic, Hitch-22: A Memoir (1976)

Every 10 Seconds

Pay-television subscriptions are down to 93.7 million from just shy of 101 million in 2011.  About 6 Americans cancel their paid television every single minute.

-- Gerry Smith, Bloomberg, via Walt Hickey's NumLock News, 10 August 2018

Tendency To Miss Lunch

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.

-- Tim Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which oversees its continued development, in an interview by Kris Herbst for Internet World (June 1994)

Not For Itself

The truth is, that most men want knowledge, not for itself, but for the superiority which knowledge confers; and the means they employ to secure this superiority, are as wrong as the ultimate object, for no man can ever end with being superior, who will not begin with being inferior.   

-- Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845), English clergyman, critic, philosopher, and wit, Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849)

Wisdom And Efficiency

A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.

-- Primo Levi (1919 - 1987), Italian chemist and author of memoirs, short stories, poems, and novels; he joined an anti-Fascist group at the start of The Second World War but was captured and taken to the German concentration camp at Auschwitz.  Levi survived the Holocaust and returned to Italy, If This Is a Man (1947)

This Shit Is Expensive

My health is good.  And I've just reached a milestone or two. 

As many of you know, in late 2015 I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and since I drew the short straw, I received multiple modalities of treatment.  First there was surgery, then radiation, and finally hormone therapy, which is slated to end after 6 more months.  The first milestone is 2 years of zeroes on tests where I hope to score zero (knock wood).

But this isn't really a post about my health, it's more about the cost of treatment.  I maintain a spreadsheet breaking down the costs for my treatment as submitted to insurance (not necessarily as paid).  This shit is expensive.  Here are some totals, by category:

Diagnosis   :  $16,000
Surgery     :  $79,000
Radiation   : $236,000
Hormone Tx  : $174,000

The final category, hormone treatment, will continue to accrue at ~$5500 per month for another 6 months.  With my most recent treatment, I hit my second milestone, the half million dollar mark.

Grand Total : $504,930.64