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Captain Crunch needs your help
- thebooktocome 16y agoHugged into submission by an overzealous fan? ... Really?
- xpaulbettsx 16y agoAlmost certainly just a coincidence (i.e. the condition was going to occur, this was just what kicked it off)
- chaosmachine 16y agoSomeone I know suffered a stroke from an overzealous hug. Old people are fragile.
- noonespecial 16y agoNo, people are fragile. They can have underlying health problems no matter what their age. Broken bones, recent surgeries etc. If you're going to go up to someone and grab hold of them you have a responsibility to make sure you won't hurt them. It is my opinion that you should just never do this to someone you don't know.
- khafra 16y agoYup. Last Thursday I watched a co-worker grit his teeth in pain when someone came up and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder that had just undergone rotator cuff surgery. I personally give big, hearty hugs; but only to people I massage or spar with.
- jdcrunchman 16y agoYes, I believe that was the particular trigger to the RSD. I was at the party at defcon at the top of the riv. one is grossly overweight apparent fan had grabbed me around the neck, and a friendly gesture I might add, it twisted my neck and pulled me down because the pressure was too great on my back, so to protect my back I dropped down. Smashed both of my hands on a table, even that caused problems in my hands, but it was dark, and the person just fade away into the crowd, so I was not given an opportunity to approach him. Yes it was very unfortunate, but when people around me they need to be respectful of my frailties. I mean, I'm friggin 67 years old, and I still go to these, primarily because younger folks enjoy seeing me there, and hearing some of my stories. But you don't have to wait long, I'm working on a book, and I bet you can't wait to read all about it.
- ericlavigne 16y agoThere's no mention of this on John Draper's personal website or MySpace page. How do we know this message is from John Draper? http://www.webcrunchers.com/ http://www.webcrunchers.com/ http://www.myspace.com/jdcrunchman http://www.myspace.com/jdcrunchman (Found webcrunchers via Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper and found MySpace via webcrunchers.)
- mgkimsal 16y agoI almost donated, but dug around and can't find verification of his situation. Anyone got anything more concrete?
- jdcrunchman 16y agoWhat do you need for verification? Do you want to talk to my surgeon? Usually, they don't like to talk about their patients unless you are next of kin. I did ask him to mention what the condition is, and more details on my condition is outlined in "savingcaptaincrunch.com" I'm fully aware that webcrunchers and wiki have no references, but that should be fixed by tonight. I'm barely able to type (have to use my thumbs). I got stacks of mail I haven't even read, but hope you understand my limitations. Crunch
- mgkimsal 16y agoSomething on the person's main page directly acknowledging the scenario would be more useful - I wasn't the only one who wasn't sure about this. I thought wikipedia might have some update on the situation but there's nothing there. FWIW, just updating the site(s) would have been enough - if it's really that hard to type, that was a lot of typing to do! :/
- StavrosK 16y agoUsually (at least on reddit IAmA, where I'm a mod), verification is done by the poster uploading a picture of himself holding up a sign with the current date and something like "I'm Captain Crunch". If you want to do an IAmA there, I'd be happy to verify it (and, consequently, everything else), and it might get you some more donations...
- weeksie 16y agoThe US healthcare system never fails to shock and horrify me. I am so thankful for my dual citizenship every time I hear a story like this. Pathetic and sad.
- gst 16y agoI just wanted to post _exactly_ the same. I imagine that John Draper has some sort of health insurance. So why are those things even an issue? Healthcare is one of those few areas where I think that a government backed approach provides more benefits than a private approach.
- noarchy 16y agoPrecisely. Even if you have insurance in the US, you may not really have coverage when you need it. And even with insurance, bankruptcy is still a very real possibility in the long run.
- projectileboy 16y agoI wouldn't assume he has health insurance. He's gone through long periods of unemployment.
- jammin33 16y agoAgreed. Intelligence does not equal financial success. Here's a story the WSJ ran on Mr. Draper in 2007: http://on.wsj.com/ckUc6D http://on.wsj.com/ckUc6D
- jdcrunchman 16y agoAgreed, not only have a not too long periods of unemployment, I cannot be employed in my current condition, let alone the fact that I'm a convicted felon in the eyes of the credit companies, and databases. I was quoted at $12,000 to fix my records and get them straight. So head hunters who access this database will see that I am falsely stated as a convicted felon. When in actuality during my initial court hearings on my past crimes, it is stipulated that after successfully completing probation, my felon would be expunged. Unfortunately, the databases like Equifax and others, have me mistakenly put down as a felon.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ayb 16y agoCould they have added any more self promotional links at the bottom?
- crocowhile 16y agoIf you are pledging for money the least you should do is introduce yourself.
- jdcrunchman 16y agothat shouldn't be necessary, if you make a donation I know who you are, which is going to make it very easy for me to return your money if I don't need it.
- eps 16y agoFWIW the 10K number is about right. The average cost of removing spinal hernia in Mayo clinic is 11K as of a year ago, and I expect his case to be similar. That's covering the whole stay, and excluding any follow-up physio. However the site does look fishy... or if CC in fact can't afford a 10k expense, then things are just plain sad :|
- sgt 16y agoUSD 6000 + 2000? I don't want to seem insensitive, but a guy with Crunch's talent should easily be able to make the payments. He could take it across several years if he wanted to. (Or he should have just gotten medical insurance in the first place, although I've heard some nasty things about private health insurance in America.)
- eli 16y agoHe almost certainly does have insurance. A "Co-pay" is the small amount of the medical procedure cost that the insurance company bills to you.
- faboo 16y agoThe co-pay is the portion the insured pays. It isn't always small. It isn't even always a small percentage. A procedure my wife recently had, the co-pay was about half the total cost. Co-pays depend the insurance company, the plan, the health care provider, and the procedure.
- jdcrunchman 16y agothe co-pay I wind up paying is 20% of the total cost in medical care including hospitalization. The cost of my surgery last December was more than $175,000 if I had to pay it myself. The operation like an open surgery operation, in my neck, is going to run around $100,000. Co-pay pays 80% of that, which leads me to pay $2000. However, there are other charges that I'm responsible for paying for, I do want to go into those, but there are many.
- Mark_B 16y agoAgreed. I mean, according to his Wikipedia article, he was the CTO of En2go a company "that delivers music, video and other digital content to desktops." Most definitely shenanigans of some kind are going on here...
- frou_dh 16y agoThe last few times he came up on HN I'm sure there were several accounts of him being accomplished but not a particularly nice person. I have no idea. Can that be balanced out?
- adrianbye 16y agojohn draper excelled in an area which doesn't make much money. bill gates, larry ellison, etc might not be too nice people, but they don't need your help financially. i've had a couple of interactions with him and he was nice to me. he's a little odd but i think it comes with the territory.
- wyclif 16y agoOne friend of mine (very reliable source) told me that he met Crunch once and he was an annoying d-bag. Apparently what happened was my friend, who is a smoker, stepped out discreetly for a cig far away outdoors but Draper saw him anyway and raised a whiny fuss, so much so that my friend wanted to slap him into next month despite the respect he had for his past exploits.
- jdcrunchman 16y agoexcuse me! I'm highly allergic to that of smoke. It is a medical condition I have no control over. When people smoke near me, I get extreme nausea, headaches, and I find it very annoying and repulsive, not to mention it being a very filthy habit. I have every right to complain just like anybody else. You're all entitled to your own opinions about me, that's fine, just don't lie about it.
- bl4k 16y agoIn the scene ~10 years ago a lot of people talked about crunch being a creepy old guy who hung out at raves hitting on young guys who were high. He would offer backrubs, massages and 'energy transfers'. I only ever saw him at a single conference, but the general word was that he was a very creepy guy.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- sandofsky 16y agoThere are barely visible links at the bottom of the page for "Shop the Best Verizon Wireless Deals" and "Thanks to Top CD Rates, Bank Rates and Bad Credit". Nobody can verify the affiliation with John Draper. I suspect this is a both a scam and black hat SEO.
- scrrr 16y agoyes, i think you may be right. if yes, then this is an insidious tactic to get seo-juice, but sadly probably very effective..
- Indyan 16y agoShe is using wordpress, and many wordpress themes have these sponsored links out of the box. These themes are called sponsored themes and have generated quite a bit of controversy in the past.
- aroon 16y agoBeing such a skilled programmer, one would think he could get a loan for a measly 10k and be able to easily pay it back with the kind of salaries we're paid these days...
- wmf 16y agoThe demand for 6502 assembly programming isn't what it was.
- jdcrunchman 16y agoThat's a bit of a problem my friend. I have RSD in my hands, it's going to be 4 - 6 months before I can even begin to think about typing normally again. And probably a good three months after that to get my skill levels back up. Has any of you know, if you've been away from programming for a long time, like over a year, and go back to it, it could take you quite a while to get your skills back up. And the older you are, the longer it takes. Just the other day I needed to write a Python program that would go through my PayPal mail, and sum up the total amount of donations I got. It took me more than a day to write it. I cannot believe how rusty I am. I'm having to friggin look up everything. But I really like programming. I miss it so much. But right now, they also need to focus on writing the book. Thank goodness for such capability programs as MacSpeech dictate. I'm impressed by its accuracy, but sometimes very annoyed when I have to use words that are not in its dictionary, and have to type them out, with my thumbs. When I pressed a finger to keyboard right now, it's excruciating pain. Not so much today, because I had the stellar shots Today. everyone in my postings was done using MacSpeech Dictate, it may have screwed up in places, but I'm too lazy to fix them. Enough said! I'm going to crash, I spent three hours on this forum, answering questions, and hopefully making some clarifications.
- jdcrunchman 16y agoI have been inundated with an amazing response, I know I need to update "webcrunchers.com", My "wiki", and my Facebook page. But due to my lack of being able to type at normal speed, I'm forced to use Mac Speech Dictate, which breaks when I get a skype call, or type with my thumbs. I can use a few more volunteers... "
- jdcrunchman 16y agoWebcrunchers has been updated.
- bluesnowmonkey 16y agoWho are the engineers that built the systems he broke into? How is their health these days?
- exhilaration 16y agoSent you a few bucks, best of luck with the surgery.