NYC Journal

I just woke up. Don’t really know how long I napped. Maybe 40 minutes or an hour.

Looks like 5-8 inches of snow tomorrow. Blizzard like conditions.

Cal
 
Went to bed at 10, and now at 3:30 AM I’m up.

Coughing hurts a lot less.

Some snow on the ground already. I think there are suppose to have evil winds pick up.

The kids are looking at more houses today.

Cal
 
I’m back on schedule pooping. Less bladder spasm leakage than yesterday. My urine is more clear and not so amber and brown. Seems like I’m a fast healer. The incisions also look rather advanced, and don’t look like fresh wounds.

I seem less bloated/swollen, and coughing is less uncomfortable.

I pulled out the acoustic guitars. These are crazy-good. Checked the encased wet/damp sponges in the case for maintaining humidity to prevent cracking and other winter damage.

Had 4 eggs with only one yoke as a second breakfast. First breakfast was steel cut oats with fresh blueberries, and fortified with some wheat germ. Right now I’m drinking some white Miso soup for my gut health.

After I left the hospital no drugs, pain-killers, or antibiotics. The thing is I have no underlying chronic disease that plagues men my age. I have the rare Cold Agglutinin Disease, and now this Cancer.

“Maggie” says I look tired. I definitely am suffering from anemia. It will take some time for my bone marrow to make replacement red blood cells. Overall though I think I’m doing pretty good. No need for any pain-killers. Everything seems to be advancing day-by-day.

I’m really incapacitated though… Oh-well.

The expected storm they say will begin around 3-4. Five to 7 inches expected. Single digit low temperatures for 3 days.

I likely will nap-out in the late afternoon.

Cal
 
Calzone said:
I’m back on schedule pooping. Less bladder spasm leakage than yesterday. My urine is more clear and not so amber and brown. Seems like I’m a fast healer. The incisions also look rather advanced, and don’t look like fresh wounds.

I seem less bloated/swollen, and coughing is less uncomfortable.

I pulled out the acoustic guitars. These are crazy-good. Checked the encased wet/damp sponges in the case for maintaining humidity to prevent cracking and other winter damage.

Had 4 eggs with only one yoke as a second breakfast. First breakfast was steel cut oats with fresh blueberries, and fortified with some wheat germ. Right now I’m drinking some white Miso soup for my gut health.

After I left the hospital no drugs, pain-killers, or antibiotics. The thing is I have no underlying chronic disease that plagues men my age. I have the rare Cold Agglutinin Disease, and now this Cancer.

“Maggie” says I look tired. I definitely am suffering from anemia. It will take some time for my bone marrow to make replacement red blood cells. Overall though I think I’m doing pretty good. No need for any pain-killers. Everything seems to be advancing day-by-day.

I’m really incapacitated though… Oh-well.

The expected storm they say will begin around 3-4. Five to 7 inches expected. Single digit low temperatures for 3 days.

I likely will nap-out in the late afternoon.

Cal
Click to expand...
Nice to know you are on a good way to recover Cal, but do not try to hard!
Take your time !
 
"I likely will nap-out in the late afternoon." -- I'm detecting a theme here! ;)
Seriously, when your body says "nap!", listen to it! In my experience, frequent napping and lots of sleep are as crucial as anything else to recovery after severe trauma. Get in touch with your inner cat!
 
RG,

Like clockwork sometime after 3:00 PM.

I’m also eating 4 times a day to spread it out. I get the onset of cold, then I know I’m needing fuel.

That heated vest is getting lots of use also.

I’m still using this breathing cyclander to fully open my lungs. Last night I got repeatedly 3,000 ml of volume. Today only 2750 ml initially, but now 3K.

Its helpful to journal my daily results. Other than the three bouts of cellulitis that required three ER visits, I have never required biopsies of any major surgery. All this is new to me.

I learned that my Cold Agglutinin Disease (CAD) can make minor wounds into life threatening infections.

Oh-well part of getting old: new limitations. Everybody is different…

The bloating is much reduced. The other day my side profile resembled Alfred Hitchcock’s, meaning a pronounced pot or beer belly.

The wounds are healing, but they are getting itchy. Been moisturizing them, but the itching is getting worse.

Don’t know how bad the scars might be. I tend to develop thick keloid scars. Pretty much my arms and legs are all scared up, so I don’t need any tattoos.

I think RG has it right, my body shuts down to rebuild. The way I am eating I think is accelerating the process.

I have somewhat a schedule: bed at 10 PM; wake up at 3-4 AM; nap around 6-7 till 8-9; then a nap after 3:00 PM.

My body is telling me to eat more frequently.

Cal
 
I broke a high “E” string tonight. The strings are kinda fresh, and be a “12” this is heavy string on an electric guitar. Kinda macho breaking a 12.

Upon the restringing the “B” tuner displayed a lot of slop. Seems like a teflon bushing worked its way outward. These are Gotoh tuners made in Japan, so these are usually decent quality tuners that look like the old vintage Kluson’s.

I opened up the tuner and moved the errant bushing back into place, and upon tuning it worked its way out again. Not good because this is a guitar I pretty recently put together. I’m on the second set of tuners and I got to replace them already.

Anyways I’m annoyed.

I also restrung a el cheapo Ibanez acoustic that is the son-inlaw’s. Put on heavy guage strings, but I tuned it down a half step. I was surprise how well it played and it has mucho volume. Does not compete against any Santa Cruz, but I was muy surprised for an el cheapo guitar.

So I usually play another guitar and I’ll let the strings stretch at pitch overnight.

Back to the guitar room…

Cal
 
Today I got up at 4:30 AM, went to bed last night at 10:00 PM.

There is a lot less inflammation and swelling. I look less bloated.

It is easier getting into and out of bed, and coughing is less painful. All this in baby-steps.

Some hopeful progress, but it is obvious in small measured doses.

The itching where the incisions were made is bad. I might have to use Cort-Aid a steroid cream to fight the scratchy urge that is growing.

*************************

I think eventually I will use a set of tuners I reserved originally for the Thinline Tele. These tuners are retro styled, came with the Strat Callaham hardware kit. On the Strat I upgraded to big custom color locking tuners. These surplus tuners got bumped to the Thinline, but now could be used elsewhere on the 2-pickup Cabronita.

Adding heavy tuners is a Jazz thing that adds sustain and warmth. This Strat will feature the larger CBS size headstock to compound the heavy tuners. These Jazz pickups certainly have the warmth and clarity. The Strat hardware I’m using is also heavy. This Strat seems to becoming a “Porker” meaning a heavy guitar. It has a steel inertia block, mucho heavy.

So pretty much I’m building a Strat that I could not buy. Pretty much custom built.

Pretty sure from my Cabronita experience that the Alder bodied guitars will favor steel saddles on the bridges for bonus brightness and steely articulation. This will be new for me.

The lead time on the necks is 5-6 weeks, so maybe the first or second week in February for delivery.

Was able to get in some good practice yesterday. Let’s see how much stamina I have today.

This white 2-pickup Cabronita was just an experiment, but it turned out to be a novel guitar. Avoiding using a toggle switch and using a blender pot instead ended up creating an interesting very different guitar that sounds and plays well. The huge surprise though is the big huge Jazz sound this guitar can produce, and on top of that it offers some versatility. Not a ne trick-poney.

This is really what life, my life is about, discovery and experimentation.

Cal
 
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Devil Dan,

On EBAY is some supplier that has ten 8x10 floating lids for $20.00 each. Seems if you buy 3 the cost is $17.00 each.

Cal
 
Morning Devil Cal,

Yep that's where I bought my floating lids. He also has Kodak Camels Hair Negative Brushes, I bought three of those for dusting my negatives. Thanks for thinking of me.
 
You know you can wash negatives by soaking them in water with agitation, five times five minutes each. If you then save that water, can you water plants with it? I'll bet you can. It's the "Ilford Water Conservation Method". Archival and Thrifty.
You'd need a rain barrel or similar.
 
I was just in a peaceful semiconscious state for a while. Not asleep, but very relaxed. Almost sleeping.

I wonder how much a “Calvin Coin” would be worth. My value would not follow crypto and would be based on savings using coupons, my recycling what I own, and buying stuff on sale or at a discount.

I have no problem garbage picking to save money. I have 4 pressure treated pine posts that were gifted to me by a union truck driver that was part of the gas pipeline contracting crew that worked for Con Ed. These are 3x10’s over 8 feet long that I set aside for my garage door replacement to carriage house doors.

Insulated higher end garage doors would cost me about $7K-$8K to be installed. So this idea of “Calvin-Coin” can grow at a crazy pace. But how do I calculate the added equity on my home. Do I count that? Hmmm.

Certainly I’m adding real value. The banks and real estate agents would see the value. Its not me just making this up.

On Reverb there is a used Santa Cruz that is about the same vintage as the guitar I named “HOG” because it is made of figured mahogany. The Santa Cruz advertised on Reverb has 1929 appointments like mine, and the price is $6300.00 used.

I only paid $4.2K, so in this example I saved $2100.00. Know at the time of my purchase a custom order would of cost north of $10K and would of taken about a year lead-time. My HOG effectively was a 10 year old brand new guitar that was never played. Pretty much I bought it “as new.”

So in my “Currency” I kinda created value from nothing, but is my value more real? Would I be wrong by inflating my savings from $2.1K to say more than $5.8K because effectively I bought a NOS guitar that was basically new?

I see value via savings, but of course this is all an invention from nothing. Glad I saved money, I was very lucky, and HOG is a mighty fine guitar. Unlike crypto it is a physical object, and it has real value.

I’m not draining the grid or in need of more data-centers to grow. The math I use is simple subtraction and addition, and I will base my “Calvin Coin” the arbitrary release of 10:05 AM today the 20th of January 2025.

I got this idea because The Donald performed a crypto release, and then Melania in kind did her own crypto release.

Pretty much, this Crypto market is getting oversized in a manner that suggests not only is a Ponzi Scheme, but also a bubble.

How do I create billions from nothing? Am I seeing the forest through the trees?

Everybody should release their own crypto and invent value from nothing. Say from a year from now my Calvin Coin is valued at perhaps $10K-$15K, pretty easy for me to save that amount because I’m a cheap bastard. The three Kodak floating lids I just bought off EBAY I saved $3.00 each, and I compounded that by the shipping savings.

But at the end a year from now will I have $10K-$15K set aside in an account? Only if I create a fund and put that money on the side. So in my example, a year from now, my perceived valve is not really real. It is just an invented number.

So now pretty much I need to place the savings I made today on EBAY into a slush fund, otherwise it is just consumption. No real value or worth unless a fund is created.

So do I create a Ponzi Scheme and lie to myself, or do I make the value real?

I’ll post more about this “Calvin Coin.”

Cal
 
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Devil Cal,
Beautiful Guitars and Beautiful Cameras.

SONY DSC by Nokton48, on Flickr

Here I'm testing my suspended Broncolor Hazylight Modeling Light On. Additional FOBA F1000 Head down low left to illuminate shadows. The 3D Printed Tophat appears robust to my eye, we will see. This I intend to test out in the field soon. I can carry it around assembled for now. I will put the 5x7 Bag Bellows and Monocular on the back, for outdoor viewing. I do have the Reducing Back for 4x12/9x12 as well if I need cropping.

Here the Broncolor Hazylight Head is doing what it does best. Providing beautiful simulated "window lighting". I'm using the Broncolor Hazylight 1600 Head which is an unusual design. Makes a loud whumping pop when it fires.

Its a 5x7/13x18 Sinar Norma, with Norma Shutter and 500mm Schneider Tele-Xenar in Compound. Forward mounted so it will work with the shutter. 5x7 is a good size to carry out in the field.
 
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You know me: I tend to brag. Today is a double pooper. I don’t know but there might be a third.

I think a lot of the bloating evident is actually the result of a backup of sorts. I’m actually normalizing.

I calculate that the 4 over 8 foot long 3x10’s are about $200.00 worth of pressure treated lumber.

I paid $64.59 for those Gotoh tuners with staggered posts. They still function, but that one tuner is defective that has a lot of slop. The spare backup set of vintage tuners are not staggered and only cost $45.00.

So for the sake of value the $64.59 is still serviceable and functioning. Perhaps not just cosmetic, but kinda like how a car with a dented fender is still a working car.

The $45.00 replacement cost I used comes from the set I have reserved for another build. Basically I would have to buy another set because these reserved tuners are not spares.

So to conflate matters replacing the set with one defective tuner would cost me $90.00. I am unwilling to do this. I am vain, but not that vain that I need that Cabronita to be perfect.

So at 11:54 AM 20 January 2025 “Calvin-Coin” is worth approximately $290.00. Since I just released my Calvin-Coin I could make some crazy headline increased in value upon it’s first offering of 10,000%. Remember I created value from nothing. I don’t want to exaggerate the value too much, because it will become unbelievable.

So did I really save money here: $90.00 for two sets of tuners; and free lumber donated to me because I’m cool.

Would you pay $290.00 for a “Calvin-Coin” and see the value?

Hmmm. I’m doing the crypto thing: creating value from nothing. Mine I think is less abstracted, and is not like a data-center in environmental impact. In fact I might of saved that 3x10 lumber from a landfill by my recycling.

I want to overstate, how much crypto is really needed. It is all about “perceived” value, kinda like the fashion industry.

Is my Paul Smith suit worth ten-times more than the $250.00 suit at Walmart? Perceived value… Hmmm…

Then again would having 10 suits from Walmart be better? Again perceived value…

A while back I was crazy and was considering buying a 23 pound full suspension IBIS made in the USA (California) that would of cost about $12K. Pretty insane, but I figured I’m not a racer, and pretty much my goal here is just fitness and good health.

All my old bikes are still great, and because they date from back in the day, and I have owned them for decades, they all are mighty cool.

No need for any penis extension via a high-ended full blown racing bike.

So I wonder one day when the crypto bubble will pop. It is becoming a popular and crowded market. To me just insanity.

Also know that the $290.00 valuation, and the 10,000% increase I’m promoting as it’s debuted value could easily disappear tomorrow. All smoke and mirrors…

Cal
 
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Just had 3 eggs, only one yoke, 4 small slices of bread, some hummus.

I’m ensuring a bonus in protein to rebuild tissue and to speed healing.

I’lI have some white Miso soup to add in some probiotic action to the mix, and to also flush out my system.

Let’s see what I can do on the guitar today…

Cal
 
I forgot to place a limit on the amount of “Calvin-Coins” I can produce.

This too seems to be an arbitrary number. It seems to require a lot of thought, and somehow also needs to be a fixed number, otherwise things could get inflated.

So let’s go with 123,456 789,000. Big numbers are impressive. When in doubt, just add a few zero’s to enlarge things bigger.

I’ll take ownership of 80% and only sell 20% on this initial offering. Eventually I’ll be able to sell the remaining 80% in a few years.

So now I need a data-center to calculate the minute fraction of the $290.00 perceived value. My calculator can’t carry such large numbers, even though the math is simple.

Anyways this is an easy way to become a billionaire.

Anyone want to buy a “Calvin-Coin.”

I have 2.46913578 to the tenth power or 24691357800 coins to sell that are available.

How many do you want?

Cal
 
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