Since having a child, I've been on a nostalgia Mega Drive. If you know anything about me, then you'll probably agree I was already at alarming levels of the stuff, and I've now likely reached the nostalgia mesosphere, even if just for a minute or so.

In particular, videos games are dominating my reminiscences. I've been thinking about their role in my development as a human. Spoiler alert: it's an extremely positive one.

There's one game that stands out: Mario Paint.

This 1992 "edutainment" title (a word seemingly devised to revile kids) is a forgotten masterpiece of creativity, fun, and weirdness.

At the surface, its existence doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's a digital art and music app on the Super Nintendo that uses (comes with!) a separate mouse controller. I can name exactly one video game like this, ever.

From what I've learned in my limited YouTube research, although the Super Nintendo was always the more-parentally-acceptable console of the early 90s console wars (see Mortal Kombat SNES grey matter vs Sega Genesis blood), Nintendo was feeling the pressure to demonstrate that their "family computers" were actually forces for good in the battle for the attention span of the world's youth.

And, thus, Mario Paint.

There's just no reason for this game to be this good. Sure, MS Paint on Windows was always a fun time-waster back in the day. But it certaintly wasn't weird. And Mario Paint is w-e-i-r-d. It's like Photoshop on Magic Mushrooms. Plus an animation studio. Plus a digital audio workstation (aka Garageband). And all this back when we were still recording our favorite songs from the radio on cassette tapes (if we were lucky enough to catch them, and even then usually missing the first few bars).

Don't talk to me about delightful UIs or UXs if you haven't played Mario Paint. Nothing makes sense at a glance. Instead, it's pure discovery. Click-and-see. The undo button is a dog's face. Why? Why not. The fill-paint animation is a break-dancing paint-brush with a smiley-face (that sentence had a lot of hyphens). I spent hours and hours clicking every button in Mario Paint, and just making weird shit.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like I exclusively played Mario Paint from 1992 forward (I probably didn't get it until 1993 or 1994 anyway). But I'd find myself drawn back to Mario Paint way more often than my parents even expected.

Thinking about it now, Mario Paint reminds me of that poster of kindergarten classroom yore:

Everything I need to know in life I learned in Mario Paint.

Why do I like making weird songs on Garageband? Mario Paint

Why do I like making logos for bands and apps and companies? Mario Paint.

Why am I a software engineer? Mario Paint.

But, Charlie, there's no "game engine" or programming environment in Mario Paint. What-so-ever do you mean?

Thought you'd never ask. In 2015, I was living in London working in business development for an edtech startup, traveling a whole lot, with a bunch of downtime in airports. I decided to Carpe Diem the idle-airport-time to teach myself programming (something I'd been trying to do, on and off, for the previous seven years), so I bought a Big Nerd Ranch iPhone book. When my company planned a two-day hackathon, I pledged to build a little iPhone app, following the book step-by-step. I've written about this experience before, so I won't fully rehash it. But the key thing is that, in addition to the basic Tinder/flash-card UX, I decided to add some fun little characters for the app (designed by my co-worker and pal Dan McGorry). Then, these characters obviously needed a backstory. A week or so later, I traveled back to New Jersey for my aunt's wedding and I was showing the app to anyone who would listen (not many). Except for my 9 year old cousin. She bit hard. She came up with even more ideas for their powers (hair that grows to become a bridge, melting down into a popsicle liquid so you can glide, and so on). The kicker: the next day, my aunt delivered to me some enemies for the game that my cousin had drawn, like Chill Factor:

I knew then and there that I wanted to create wonderful things, be good, and have fun for my career. I quit my job and studied to become a computer programmer.

Now, years in, am I creating wonderful things ever day? Not necessarily. But I try to keep the joy and weirdness alive in whatever I do.

Last week, I asked my mom to dig through my boxes in the attic to find my Super Nintendo Mouse. She graciously delivered. Even the intro screen screen to Mario Paint is a lesson in weirdness. I love-love-love it:

After about a half hour or so, I produced this masterpiece:

Yes, the main riff is more-or-less China Cat Sunflower by the Grateful Dead (I think).

I'm not the only one who loves Mario Paint, particularly the music-maker. There's a whole Internet of magic Mario Paint music like this, the entire back-side of Abbey Road (including secret track Your Majesty!):

I can't believe that this game exists (and still works!). I guess edutainment ain't so bad after all. For now, back to the drawing board!

I'm typing this post on my iPhone in the Obsidian iOS app using a Logitech K380 Bluetooth keyboard and I feel like a 90s computer hacker.

Not enough? How about this: I just SSH'ed into a Raspberry Pi on my home network using Tailscale via the Termius iOS app to restart a YouTube-playlist-to-podcast-feed Docker container.

Don't get me wrong -- the other stuff is pretty magical, too, especially Tailscale. But this keyboard-to-phone takes the cake.

I mean, look at this:

It's downright cute, aside from the legs.

You kinda forget that your phone is a computer, personally-speaking. Instead, it's usually just a vehicle for social media nightmares. Given the choice between doing something semi-arduous, like checking in for a flight, on a phone app vs the website (on a desktop/laptop), I always choose the latter. Somethings always missing from the app, and if you really want to get all fiddly, which I usually do, they kick you out to a crappy webview anyway.

So, I'm usually a laptop-bringer on any trip. Except, this time, I didn't want to. Firstly, my alu-min-i-um portable computer is just plain heavy and bulky, and I was adamant that we were going carry-on only on this voyage. Even more damning, I recently discovered that opening the laptop screen beyond 45 degrees results in the black screen of death. That's something for the Geniuses, if they're willing indulge an admittedly long in the tooth 2016 MBP (I'm doubtful).

But I did want to be able to work on edits for my book on this trip. You never know when inspirations gonna strike (usually, for me, around midnight, when I've already gone to bed), and while I'm reasonably fast thumb-typist, I just don't feel the flow feels on the phone keyboard.

Luckily, we had this little Bluetooth cutie tucked away in a closet. I'd purchased it as a gift for Carly, so that she could write stuff on the go (very much the same need I'm talking about here). We'd extensively discussed the need for a mobile keyboard writing thingie early in our courtship, and we even entertained the idea of building it ourselves (hint: I'm still entertaining this idea).

We're not alone. See the FreeWrite products, which somehow don't quite fit the bill for me, despite almost exactly delivering on our dream product (full-sized keyboard, e-ink-like screen, and supreme battery life). Mostly it's the calculator-sized screen (and the perceived bulky size) that's scaring me away. We want something that you can keep in a purse or a pocket.

Now this Bluetooth keyboard doesn't fit in a pocket, but it's also pretty darn cheap, enough so that I'm not going to be devastated if I lose it or spill a beer on it.

So, I thought I'd give it a try this trip. And I'm sold. It's legit fun to type on this thing and I think I'm going to bring it with me more places. Along with things like Tailscale and Termius, I can treat my smart phone as a dumb terminal to my real computers.

Carly still hasn't given the keyboard a try, but I'm holding out hope. She's watching me tap-tap away right now, and I think this is a gift that just takes a while to kick in.

And, meanwhile, I'm going to keep thinking about keyboards-as-computers, whether that's scouring eBay for Commodore VIC-20s, ogling over the latest Raspberry Pi 400 keyboard-computer, or sketching out our still-yet-to-be-realized "Kindle for writing."

On the latter item, I'm also ogling the ReMarkable 2 as an potential winning entrant, but the lack of keyboard and the lack of backlight are keeping me away... for now. If they're tracking dropped cart analytics at all, I'm just going to apologize now for what I've been doing. You can keep retargeting me if you'd like. You'll get me one day.

Earlier today, I texted some friends that I regret using Gatsby for this blog. It came at a moment of frustration, when I was stuck in some weird Node dependencies hell and all I wanted was to write another blog post.

If your static site generator does nothing else, it should make it frictionless to write a new blog post. It's hard enough to make the time to write, your software shouldn't be making it harder.

Why did I use Gatsby in the first place? Well, it was new and shiny and uses GraphQL. That's enough, right? Really, at the time, I had these grand ambitions of interactive React components within my posts, which I knew would be possible, and possibly easy, with a React-based static site generator. To this date, I've written exactly one of these interactive posts, and that was before I made the Gatsby-switch and I still have never actually ported it from my original Pelicon static site. This post used to have all these Tie Fighters flying around and now it doesn't and I'm still a little bummed about it. If any of that intrigues you, my little Star Wars game is still online - it's one of the first things I ever made when I learned how to program.

So, anyway, why not switch away from Gatsby? Am I using any of the advanced features of Gatsby? Yes, I am. There's an active plugin ecosystem and I use a bunch of them for things like generating my RSS feed or rendering images or displaying my library or my Instagram posts. But I've realized that some of these, especially the ones that leverage external APIs like the Instagram one, are more trouble than they're worth.

With the Instagram plugin/API, all I want to do is display a neat little grid of all the "walking man" street signs I've discovered and posted to Instagram. But, like all Web 2.0 API platforms, Instagram's API usefulness was continually walked back until it's virtually impossible to do basic things like display your photos (because they want to keep all these useful actions within their own platform/app), and I'm now forced to create a "test account" on a Facebook "app" with a temporary token that expires like every 30 days or something. Now, every time I go to write a new post here, which is usually > 30 days, I can't even build my blog locally because the Gatsby build process fails from the expired Instagram token. I want to blame Instagram here, or Gatsby, but instead, I blame myself.

Keep your friends close, and your blog's dependencies closer.

A simpler static site generator

Here's where I announce that I've written a new, better, static site generator, the fourth step in the hero's journey of software engineering.

But, nope. Instead, I'm just gonna use the one that my pal Ben created. It's called Syte. It's extremely lightweight, fast, and does exactly what I really want -- render Markdown files in an HTML template.

So, have I switched my blog over to Syte yet? Not yet. But I'm gonna. The main thing that's missing (for me) in Syte is RSS feed generation. I'd like to contribute that back to Ben's repo at some point. I can probably live without the rest of the junk I've bolted onto this site. It may mean that I temporarily dismantle my cool, query-param powered library searching page, but that's a worthy price to pay for being able to write a blog post exactly when I want to, no questions asked.

My inability to bear the blog switching costs at this moment isn't going to stop me from another time-waster of a side project: a new interview site, using Syte, that asks writers about the stuff they use to write, edit, and otherwise create their books!

Writes With

The Writes With syte is already live, with two interviews: Brian Dear, author of The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture, and Pooja Reddy, author of The Big Bold Blue.

Making it was a joy with Syte and I'm happy with it, even if my "design" is still pretty bare bones. I also deployed it with Cloudflare Pages, which mostly importantly comes with (at least for now) free bandwidth. This blog uses Netlify for hosting, which I do like, but occasionally suffer from bandwidth spikes near the end of the monthly billing cycles that trigger their bandwidth "add-ons" fees.

Writes With is directly, clearly, obviously, duh inspired by one of my favorite websites: usesthis.com. In fact, I chatted with Daniel of usesthis.com before launching it, just to make sure he was okay with it, and he gave the thumbs up.

I like this little project, because I'm going to get to talk with more people who've published books. As a cub writer myself, I'm happy for any tips and tricks I can get.

And I know, I know, the tools aren't the important thing about writing... but I think we all still want to know about them.

I've been doing a lot of research into the history of computers¹ for my forthcoming Middle Grade novel about robots (as of March 2021, I'm linking to a largely blank page here, which I assure you will one day be filled with the multitude of books I'm going to write - end Daily Affirmation now).

I'd like to share my current, wait for it, mental model for how I'm thinking about the evolution of computing over the decades. I'll also highlight some current companies that I find interesting because they seem to be fellow computer historians.

First, a caveat canem: 🐶 Since this website is my little corner of the dub-dub-dub, I reserve the right to update this framework as I learn more. And I will be learning more, because I can't stop reading about this stuff. I love it. So, there, take that, fellow computer historians! Even better, please let me know what I've messed up or got wrong so I can learn. Woof!

So, here's how I see the evolution of computers over the decades (including some predictions):

Lemme recap these a bit (in a freewheeling manner). We see the first "stored-program" digital computers coming to life in the late 40s. These are your o.g. "Von Neumann" architecture machines, the real-world implementations of the universal Turing machine vision from 1936. Goodbye, Vannevar Bush's Differential Analyzer -- we've now got computers that we can "re-wire" themselves with "code" instead of electromechanical widgets and whatnot that had to be manually reconfigured for different problems (usually military applications around this time, like calculating missile trajectories).

Then comes the era of the ominious Warehouse computer, dominated by Big Blue (IBM) and the angry BUNCH (Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data Corporation, and Honeywell) -- aka the FAANG of days of computer future past. Computers were huge, literally, during the 60s and 70s. Actual insects would get lodged inside them and wreak havoc -- "bugs"! This was also around the time that people thought there might only need to be a handful of computers in the whole wide world -- that computers would be a public utility like telephone service.

Along related lines, this is where folks started experimenting with "computer networking." Let's layer that strand into our decades framework:

Timesharing. You've probably heard of it before. Essentially, the few people lucky enough to have access to these machines would sit at "dumb" Teletype terminals and their commands would be executed in some mainframe somewhere else (usually their university). You didn't have to own a computer to use one, you just needed to pay for access (sounds a lot like "cloud computing" nowadays, right? Time is a flat circle). It wasn't just all university-work. Games were being created and shared, and projects like PLATO at University of Illinois were doing interactive things that seem impossible for their era:

Take a look at the rows for 80s and 90s - you're basically looking at Halt and Catch Fire season by season.² Personal computers. The World Wide Web. AOL Instant Messager. This is where things start hitting hard on the nostalgia receptors for me. I'll never forget the early `90s Christmas where we got our SoundBlaster 16 sound card. Carmen Sandiego never sounded so good.

Let's fast-forward to the new millenium. Frankly, I'm increasingly less interested in the more recent eras of apps and smart phones. Even my predictions are boring to me. I don't have an Apple Watch. I know "AR" is coming (see recent WWDC teaser). I know we're going to be able to read brainwaves of pigs soon (or already are). I should probably keep more of an open mind about these upcoming technologies, so I'll try. But the history major in me just wants to go back and play with my Apple IIe.

When I think about it, there's tons of additional "strands" that could and should be tracked in this framework. For example, the evolution of memory type and memory capacity over time is super fascinating, and probably is the number one driver of the changes in the "computers" column.

Or another idea, even closer to my heart, would be adding the "definitive" book that should be read for each era. Actually, let me try that one.

I need some suggestions for the more recent eras!

Three Companies That Seem to Also Appreciate Computer History

Okay, onto the best part...

Replit

Replit is a company that makes it easy to spin up an IDE in any language, right in your browser. Goodbye painful local dev environment setup. Students LOVE it. Teachers LOVE it. School administrators apparently DON'T LOVE it (according to what I've seen on Twitter).

So, what does Replit know about computer history?

They are the modern timesharing system - global, instant access to compute, with collaboration as first-class objective. It's a place to learn, play games, write your own games, build apps, ship stuff. They're even talking about building their own hardware "dumb" terminal that connects instantly to Replit.

We're prototyping a computer that boots to Replit and is hardwired with a VPN to make it impossible to block.

If it works, it will be free for students. Devs will pay full price with each computer sold will sponsor a student. https://t.co/8cQdhJqvFv pic.twitter.com/Qu1eTYYa1x

— Amjad Masad ⠕ (@amasad) March 20, 2021

Timesharing is back. And this time you don't have to share, unless you want to!

Tailscale

Tailscale is a company that makes it dead simple to set up a VPN for all your devices: phones, Raspberry Pis, laptops, desktops, you name it.

So, what does Tailscale know about computer history?

They are making the 90s-LAN party possible again. It was a beautiful thing when you could "easily" make your computers talk to each other, but then the Internet got scary and hard, and Tailscale makes it safe and easy again.

I recently used Tailscale to set up a little Raspberry Pi-powered robot car. I can SSH into my little robot and drive it around, and I'm feeling like a kid again.

Oxide Computer Company

Oxide Computer Company is a new computer company. Like hardware-hardware computer company! They're building servers for folks who don't want to (or can't) just use AWS, GCP, Azure, Digital Ocean, blah blah... the cloud.

So, what does Oxide know about computer history?

More than me! Just listen to their epic podcast On the Metal to hear for yourself. They even went through a fun design project of redesigning their logo to look like definitive computer companies of days past..

But most importantly I think that Oxide harkens back to the `90s era of owning your compute infra end-to-end. We do not have to accept that everything will be in the cloud. Maybe your closet is a better choice. Tradeoffs, amiright? There are going to be even more cases in the future where local compute is needed (e.g. how about the Moon or Mars?!)

Computer historian

In conclusion:

By trade, I'm a software engineer. By spirit, I'm a computer historian. By George, I'm trying to combine the two (just like these three companies).

Footnotes

1. I'm kinda showing off something neat with this link -- linkable searching using query-params for my Library book list. I'm proud of this lil' quality of life feature for my site. If you're one of those people who like to strip query params from links, by all means do so, but if you want to share a list of the books I've read about Ancient Rome (why would you want to do this if you're not me?), keep 'em in the link.

2. Watch this show. If you love computers, watch this show. If you love great characters making terrible decisions, watch this show. And then watch it again using this college-course level syllabus by Ashley Blewer.

Nobody likes an addendum.

Appendices are great (ask any Tolkien fan). P.S.'s are the best (especially if they're from a penpal).

But addendums. Nope. They change the rules, after you've started playing. After the game's over, even.

I recently got dropped with this whopper of an addendum:

Orcein stains performed on blocks A3 and A5 highlight elastic fibers
wrapping around nests of tumor cells, consistent with vascular invasion

A lil' background

Previously, on "Halt and Catch Cancer", I thought I was in the clear. Sure, I'd been diagnosed with Stage II colon cancer at age 34. But the neato robotic surgery to remove my sigmoid colon (and my grisly barnacle of a tumor) was successful, with no signs of the cancer spreading to the nearby lymph nodes (which are essentially the Information Superhighway of your body's immune system).

Officially, we're talking a PT3N0 pathology, where N means the number of lymph nodes with tumor cells (zero, in my case, of the 21 that were removed and inspected) and T means the levels of colon wall that the tumor "broke through." N0 is awesome and T3 is not-so-awesome. My tumor was pretty darn close to breaking through the colon wall. But the fact that I had no lymph nodes affected was a good sign -- a good enough sign that no chemotheraphy was being recommended by my USCF doctor crew.

Now, after my blog post on this whole "cancer sitch," I'd been in touch with friends and other wood-workers who were, unfortunately, familiar with this process. One, in particular, has been highly tuned into the research and literature around colon cancer, and he pushed me to make sure I fully understood my pathology. He also mentioned that he's seen folks with my PT3N0 pathology do chemotherapy on a preventative basis. Given that my big missive in my last post was about "becoming your own health advocate," his advice hit hard, because I was already lapsing in my attentiveness. Frankly, I was exhausted from the surgery, relieved by the results, ready to move on, and the pathology report itself was confusing af.

Actually, you know what? I'm just going to paste it here:

FINAL PATHOLOGIC DIAGNOSIS
Sigmoid colon, sigmoid colectomy:
1. Adenocarcinoma, moderately-differentiated, invasive through
muscularis propria into pericolic adipose tissue, negative margins; see
comment.
2. No tumor in twenty-one lymph nodes (0/21).
COMMENT:
COLON CARCINOMA SYNOPTIC COMMENT
- Procedure: Sigmoid colectomy.
Result Information
All Reviewers List
Pathology PDF Report
Narrative & Impression
Harrington, Charles
- Location of tumor: Sigmoid colon.
- Tumor size: 3.3 x 2.5 x 1 cm.
- Macroscopic tumor perforation: Not identified.
- Histologic Type: Adenocarcinoma.
- Histologic Grade: Moderately-differentiated (low grade).
- Microscopic depth of invasion: Tumor invades through the muscularis
propria into pericolic soft tissue (pT3).
- Margins: Negative.
 - Proximal margin: Negative (tumor is > 4 cm from margin).
 - Distal margin: Negative (tumor is > 4 cm from margin).
 - Circumferential (radial) margin: Negative (tumor is > 3 cm from
margin).
- Treatment effect (modified Ryan score, scale 0-3): No known
presurgical therapy.
- Lymphovascular invasion: Not identified on H&E (orcein stains will
be performed on blocks A3 and A5, and the results will be reported as an
addendum).
- Perineural invasion: None.
- Tumor Deposits: Not identified.
- Lymph node status: Negative (number of lymph nodes examined: 21).
- Other pathologic findings: None identified.
- AJCC Pathologic Stage: pT3N0.
- Ancillary studies: Immunohistochemistry for DNA mismatch repair
proteins will be reported in an addendum.

Addendum Comment
Immunohistochemistry was performed to evaluate the status of DNA
mismatch repair protein expression on block A3. The results in the tumor
cell nuclei are:
MLH1 expression: Present.
PMS2 expression: Present.
MSH2 expression: Present.
MSH6 expression: Present.
Expression for all four markers, in most cases, indicates that the DNA
mismatch repair proteins are intact. This result should be correlated
with the clinical presentation and family history to determine the need
for further work up for Lynch syndrome

Probably TMI, but this will actually be easier for me to find later, instead of spelunking through the oh-so-painful EPIC MyChart software. Am I allowed to share this? I DON'T KNOW AND I DON'T CARE.

As you can see, this plaintext nightmare is full of strange and wonderous medical terms. Yes, the doctors walk you through it but still... it's a lot. I did push them to explain the terms, like what negative margins mean and why they're a good thing, although I kind of forget already so I won't try to explain.

After this walk-through with the docs, I felt good about my plan. No chemo needed. Just ongoing tests and CT scans and blood work and colonoscopies over the next five years to make sure that the cancer wasn't back, led by the UCSF Cancer Survivorship Clinic. Sure, that wasn't nothing, but it also isn't that bad, considering how lucky I am to have caught this thing and gotten it removed ASAP. The idea was, after five years, I'd be back in the general population for risk of colon cancer. Cured.

But then, during my first Survivorship Clinic convo in November, I recalled that one line from the pathology... the one mentioning the addendum that I hadn't yet seen. I ask about it. We dig in, and we find this:

Addendum Comment
Orcein stains performed on blocks A3 and A5 highlight elastic fibers
wrapping around nests of tumor cells, consistent with vascular invasion

Consistent with vascular invasion. Welp, that can't be good.

At this point, I'm immediately whisked off the UCSF Oncology Department.

New faces and new tests and new plans

A hospital is a series of interconnected rings, all slightly Venn Diagramming each other, kind of like the Olympics logo. As a patient, you tend to orbit one of the rings. But sometimes you'll Three Body Problem your way over to another ring.

In my entire diagnosis and surgery process, I'd never made it over to the Oncology (aka cancer) ring -- I was stuck in Surgery World. But, after this addendum, I'm now squarely in their circle.

So, what's our goal now? Well, now that we've noticed that my cancer has slightly spread into the vascular system, we need to figure out what to do about it. First, let's remember the good stuff - the rest of the pathology is relatively awesome. Next, let's get some more data!

We do these tests:

• Signatera - looks in your blood for tumor cells
• Oncotype - looks at your tumor and rates the likelihood of recurrence

Let me reiterate that my explanations of these tests (and anything medical-related) is entirely my random-dudeman-laymen's explanation. I hope to provide one person's context and interpretation of these confusing and scary things. I'm open to feedback and information on what I can do better.

Insurance aside

Insurance didn't want to cover the Oncotype test, because, of course. Insurance doesn't want to cover a lot of things, especially brand new "cutting edge" stuff, like the Oncotype test.

Instead, insurance wants to make sure that you really-super-duper-need whatever it is they're going to give you, to the point where there's basically no way they can say no. My doctors have been amazing advocates for me, helping make sure that insurance knows how important these tests and treatments are for my health. THANK YOU, UCSF.

Insurance is frustrating and scary. I do not understand it. I do not want to understand it. I wish it was simpler. I wish I didn't have to make sure that I was "covered" for things related to my health and my family's health. I also know that I'm incredibly lucky to have good insurance. I took a screenshot from my insurance app back in December:

WTF. That's an insane amount of money. But my life was saved, sooo...? The insurance company even assigned me a nurse to "check in on me" as a resource back in November and December, which sadly was more of a nuisance than anything else. And, then, when my company switched insurance providers at the beginning of 2021, this nurse service stopped abruptly. The whole thing's odd. But I can say again that I am extremely grateful to have had good insurance during my cancer treatment.

Make a new plan

The Signatera is clear, which is great. No circulating tumor cells in my blood. I ask the question, "Doesn't this mean I'm, like, good for life now?" And apparently no. They can't say that. They can only say, "We don't see anything right now." It's the balance sheet of cancer. Just cause things look good right now doesn't mean that next year or next quarter's gonna be the same. Past performance is no indication of future something-something.

Oncotype's pretty good, too. From what the doc explains, this test suggests that my tumor has a 12% recurrence rate. This is a low number and I should be happy about it. And I am. But I want it to be zero, obviously. Also, recurrence isn't talking about new polyps growing in my butt and starting cancers -- that can still happen. Recurrence is about whether cells from my now-removed cancer tumor are going rear their awful heads again, somewhere else in my body.

It's at this point that we get into the discussion around chemo. There's evidence that chemo can help reduce the recurrence rate even further. My oncology team brings my data to this cool-sounding UCSF "Tumor Board" meeting, and they advise a chemo treatment. The evidence suggests that we can bring down my recurrance rate from 12% to 6%.

But they also reiterate that it's my choice. I can say no. As my aforementioned friend said, "You don't do chemo recreationally." In fact, the doctors explain that if I were an old man, they might not advise treatment. But since I'm young and restless, it makes more sense for me to do whatever I can to improve my chances.

Duh, let's do this thing.

So, what's chemotherapy like?

Well, first of all, there's all different kinds of chemo. I didn't know that. I'm on a combo colloquially called CAPEOX (which I thought sounded a bit like a rival Star Fox gang). It stands for capecitabine (brand name is Xeloda) and oxaliplatin. Cape comes in pills and ox is an IV drip.

But wait -- more decisions. Do we do six months or three months of treatment? We review the data from a Japanese study, and we conclude that there's no measurable difference, so we go with 3 months, due to risk of chemo side effects.

Chemo is not a pure function

Chemo has side effects. Here are the things that I've encountered so far:

• super cold fingers and toes
• lockjaw when I start eating
• clenching claw hands
• it hurts to cry (and I just finished the last season of Halt and Catch Fire, so yeah..)
• no appetite, not even for pizza or beer
• nausea
• kinda a sad feeling
• dead sperm(!)

Shockingly, there's no hair loss expected. I'm already in a thinning situation "up there," but it's not supposed to get any worse. A small, dumb part of me thinks that once treatment's over that it might even get better! But this small part is very dumb.

Let's talk about the sperm stuff. As a result of doing chemo, there's a good chance that my swimmers are gonna be dead for good. There's also a chance that they can come back. But, if I want to ensure that Carly and I can have the family we want, I need to do sperm banking, quickly! Apparently, there's a ticking clock on starting chemo post-surgery (something like within 8 weeks). So, I've got a week to do as much sperm banking as I can! Fun!

The sperm banking process is hilarious. You go to a building, then into a waiting room, then you are led to a tiny little room with a metal door in the wall. When you are done collecting your sample in a cup, you open the door in the wall and put the cup in there, and then press a button, and someone on the other side grabs it. In between that, there's literally a Roku porn subscription and a big TV. I went four times in a week. We got some good stuff collected.

Another note on the 3 months vs 6 months decision - there are other potential side effects to chemo that factor into the timing decision. The big one in my case is something called neuropathy. Essentially, chemo can potentially cause long-term, life-altering nerve damage. The signs of it often begin with numb feet and hands, which I will admit seem rather easy to confuse with the expected, but not serious symptoms of cold hands and feet. The docs explain that any signs of neuropathy need to be reported immediately and we will halt chemo immediately, because the long-term negative effect of neuropathy far outweighs the gains in any reduction of recurrence rates in my case.

Now, given of all that prep and preamble, it's finally time to start chemo!

Charlie the Cyborg

Wait. We need a way to get the chemo into your body. There's two options: a PICC line or a port. In either case, we need a tube that's threaded through your veins directly above your heart. If you go PICC, we gotta thread that in for every single treatment. If you go port, you only do that once, but you get this Tony Stark metal disk thing in your chest. You can guess which one I chose.

Now I have an ID card that explains why metal detectors don't like me anymore.

Gross and weird, but also cool and weird. With this port, it's a simple little pin prick to get me all connected to the IV stuff. Here I am plugged in.

My three week cycle consists of this:

• Day One: Ox drip and start taking pills
• Next 2 weeks: pills 2x a day
• Third week: Nothing

Then, start over, for 4 times total.

The point of the third week is to help your white blood cells recover. The chemo fries them, too. It basically kills anything fast growing in your body (my interpretation!), so your useful blood cells (and sperm and hair etc etc) are impacted. Not a super great thing to happen during a global pandemic, weakening your immune system and all.

The drip takes like 2 hours. I usually bring some books and a chicken parm sub and my Nintendo Switch. Here's me after a pee-break:

I buy this pill box on Amazon, cause why not:

This sucker lives in our kitchen counter in plain sight so that I never forget to take my 2x a day sets, and so far, I haven't ever forgotten.

What next?

This has been a long, strange trip of a six-month period. I'm currently in the second week of the third cycle. My third cycle had to be pushed back a week because my white blood cells were too low. I came back the next week, and they were still low, but we decided to proceed, and just dropped my cape dosage from 2000mg to 1500mg (3 pills 2x a day instead of 4 pills 2x a day). In another week, I get to have the glorious "week off" (when I again crave the taste of beer), and then we're back for the fourth and final round.

I can't wait for this to be over. I can't wait for this port to be out of my chest. I'm happy that I'm doing everything I can to ensure that I have a long and healthy life. I'm eager to get back on the UCSF Survivorship Clinic plan, and start improving my diet to reduce inflammation (and all this other stuff that's supposed to help prevent cancer).

I have learned a lot about cancer and health. My heart breaks when I think about children who've suffered from cancer. My infusion center is the adult center. I'm not sure I could stomach seeing children and babies getting chemo. I'm crying right now even thinking about it (which hurts, if you remember my side effects). Cancer is terrible and it can affect anyone. This is where I re-impart my advice about being your own health advocate.

Thanks to Carly and my family and friends and work peeps for your love and support.

Fuck cancer. Create wonderful things, be good, and have fun.