Conversations with Kerry

Transcript thanks to Alicia:

Welcome to the podcast. This episode is entitled ADHD and Me.

Story time:

Now, as a child, I was always reasonably intelligent, and I did reasonably well at school. But I discovered that I really had a problem with procrastination, and getting me to do homework was like pulling teeth. It never seemed to get done. I always found other interesting and more wonderful things to do. And some would say that’s true of any child, but as the years progressed, I discovered that procrastination was a huge problem for me. I would put off important things even if those things were going to pay me lots of money, even if those things were extremely important, even if those things would negatively impact me if left to chance. And I also noticed that I was having trouble focusing on tasks that I wanted to do. I could hyper focus, I could sometimes get into projects and complete them, but I would always jump from project to project and rarely complete anything.

So it was late last year on YouTube I was watching a humorous video about adult ADHD. And they basically have a comic asking you a whole series of questions, and getting you to mark off the behaviors that you experience. And I realized that the actual examples would occur to sighted people more than blind people. But I decided to try this quiz, and see what I actually scored. And I scored quite highly, which got me thinking. And I wondered over the years how many things at my job I had delegated to other people, and how many things in my job that I hadn’t actually done, and how efficient was I at working. And I came to the conclusion, not very. And I got to thinking that there may be a reason for all of this sort of behavior.

So I started to research, and I discovered that a lot of these traits were, in fact, typical of people with ADHD, although ADHD symptoms could occur in other mental conditions, such as bipolar and schizophrenia. So I decided that this required further investigation. And I spoke to some people on the Internet, and got some personal stories, and decided to go to my general practitioner, and get a referral to a psychiatrist. And I got the referral to the psychiatrist, and booked an appointment only to find out that the appointment was going to be 473 dollars. But I was pretty sure that there was stuff going on, so I decided to put the money aside and go to the appointment.

And I went to see the psychiatrist, who was an older fellow. And he asked me lots of questions about my family. Did I live with my family? How closed was I to my parents? Did I experience abuse? Was I depressed, anxious? Had I had psychosis? A whole range of questions. And I discovered through some research that the reason they ask about psychosis is because some people do experience psychosis when they take dexamphetamines or similar stimulant medication. There are a number of non-stimulant medications for ADHD, but the first line of defense is usually stimulant medications because they work for 70 to 80 percent of people that they are prescribed for.

Now when I was seeing the psych, he asked me if I had any of my old school reports, and that if I did, could I please bring them in to the next appointment, and that he would see me in seven weeks’ time. I have to say that was a little demoralizing. So first appointment down, 473 dollars, got some back from Medicare obviously, see me in seven weeks. So, and fill in this questionnaire on adult ADHD. So I got my support workers to fill in the questionnaire on ADHD, and I also got together the school reports, which luckily my mother had saved for me and sent across to me. And we spent a couple days scanning all of the reports, and getting those into the computer and getting them into JPEG files. And I filled in the ADHD questionnaire and scanned all of its pages into PNG files. And I went to try and email in the documentation for the psychiatrist, and discovered that the system would only accept PDF as input. Not only that, that the PDF’s were limited in size as to how big they could be. And I’d initially sent them a Dropbox folder with all the necessary documents in it, but that wasn’t acceptable. So I ended up getting on to a site called PDF Candy, which can convert JPEG’s into a PDF, and I made a PDF of about 13 pages of the school report, only to find out that it was too big to upload. So, I found three pages of the school report, and put them into a PDF and emailed that through, and discovered that that would actually be accepted.

Now as a case of interest, when we went back through my school reports, and looked at the comments that the teachers had left over the years, many of them said, “If Kerry paid better attention,” “If Kerry paid more attention to class,” “If Kerry was more focused.” And I’d seen those reports over the years, but hadn’t really thought anything of them. I thought well, teachers usually say that about kids and their class. But I took all of those reports into the psych in paper form, because I didn’t trust the technology that the medical systems that they were using was using.

So I had a second appointment, and I was prescribed 30 Mg Lisdexamfetamine. And this is a medication that basically has a Lysine molecule which is um, a molecule that’s attached to the dexamphetamine molecule. And it’s an amino acid, and basically when you take this medication, the red blood cells strip off the Lysine, and then release the Dexamphetamine into your system. And so they had to call the script through to clearing place for scripts, (Medicare clearing place), provide my Medicare number, my script number. And I picked up the medicine on Wednesday afternoon, and discovered that you actually had to get it from the same pharmacy. You had to get the repeats from the same pharmacy as the original medication. If you didn’t do that, they actually had to do a transfer of script form to actually send the script to another pharmacy, because this class of medication is Schedule 8, and is very restricted because of its abuse potential, and people selling it on the streets, and doing all sorts of illegal things with it.

So I went into the pharmacy on Wednesday afternoon, picked up the script after my psych appointment. And I found out that Lisdexamfetamine, (or Vyvanse as it’s known), has recently been added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as of February this year. So I managed to pick up my script for $6.60, and I took the medication home for the night. Frustratingly enough, this medication, due to the way it works, because the red blood cells actually strip off the Lysine molecules to liberate the Dexamphetamine into the system, the medication has a two-hour onset time. So I couldn’t take any of my capsules on the Wednesday night.

But Thursday morning, as in yesterday, I got up, had some food, took my first Lisdexamfetamine capsule, and waited. Now, any of you who’ve been listening to my previous podcasts will perhaps notice that my vocal tones are different than what they were on the previous podcasts. No, this is not some acting or some voice that I’m putting on just for the podcast. When the Dexamphetamine is in my system, I am significantly calmer, more focused, I have executive function, I can plan tasks, I can figure out what I’m doing with my day. I have a lot more patience, slower to anger, and I’m much happier.

So this is the second day of my medication, so two capsules down, 28 to go, until I go to the pharmacy and pick up the refill. I’m not saying that this is the perfect medication. It does have its drawbacks. The two-hour onset time is inconvenient because if I take the medication at eight o’clock in the morning, it does not take effect until ten o’clock. And interestingly enough, the medication wears off around 6:00 PM, which means I essentially get eight useful hours of calm, focus, peaceful brain, lucidity. So that will be something to talk to him about when I go back to see him. Luckily I have not had too many of the side effects listed on the websites. Just one out of ten nausea, and the sort of crash when the medication comes out of my system. But I will be talking to him about options, and whether there are other options I can take that will allow me to have more useful time in a day. Whether there is either something I can do with the current medication, or other medications that would be more suitable. I know that I was given the Lisdexamfetamine because he thought that taking one capsule per day would be simpler for me. And I didn’t have to dose myself or manage dosing, which I have no problem doing. But I understand his point of view.

So for the next seven weeks or so, I’m seeing how Lisdexamfetamine affects me. I’m finding my life so much more peaceful, so much calmer. I’m actually able to get things done, which is why I’m recording a podcast today. You may see more of them in the feed over the next seven weeks. And then when the next seven weeks are up, we look at our options, and see what is possible as far as any modifications to my medication, and things that I can do to make a fundamental difference to that.

So I’ve shared this podcast in the hopes of sharing a little bit of my journey on the way to finding out that I do in fact suffer from adult ADHD. And I would encourage anyone who feels that they may be in the same predicament as me to consider doing the necessary investigation, providing the necessary information, and going through the necessary steps to get themselves diagnosed, if they feel that would be beneficial to them. For me, the diagnosis has been life-changing. And unfortunately at the moment, I haven’t found ways to get hypnosis to help me with ADHD. I have found the medication helpful, but I am also looking at other modalities and things that may be able to assist me, especially if I don’t have any other options as far as the Lisdexamfetamine is concerned.

So I realize it’s been a bit of a personal update this month. Hope people have found this interesting. If you have any queries, comments, questions, @khoath on Twitter, or [email protected] is the email address. Happy to answer any questions, queries. Thanks for listening, and I hope some of you found this an interesting podcast.

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In this episode I discuss my 486Dx/33 the first computer I owned and my first modem.

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In this episode I discuss how I can fund the podcast, ask for feedback from people on what they want to hear and provide a life update.

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In this episode Derek Lane and myself discuss some of our introduction to audio and a little about the art of choosing a microphone.

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Here is a podcast about TV Dinners, what they are and I cook one live on the podcast.

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Here is the next episode of my podcast.

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This is a discussion and introduction to cryptocurrency and explains why it is becoming more important as time goes on.

Hello everybody, and welcome to this podcast, which is a podcast where I’m sitting at my desk with a cup of coffee, so I’ll edit out most of the coffee noises. However, I’m going to chat about an interesting topic. What topic is that, you are wondering, as I begin this podcast. Let me demystify you.

Kerry to Alexa: How much is a Bitcoin worth?

What is a Bitcoin? What is an Ethereum? What is cryptocurrency? If there is interest, I will do a series of podcasts on all of these topics, but I’m going to start off today with an introduction on cryptocurrency.

What is cryptocurrency? Back in the late 90’s (I believe it was 1998-1999) a programmer by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto began posting on a mailing list that I was a member of, by the name of Cipher Punks. And he was proposing the design for an electronic cash system: An electronic currency that would hold and store value, and allow anyone in the world with the correct equipment to mine, (which I’ll get to in a moment), store, spend, and transact in an electronic cryptocurrency. And he designed this system over a number of years, and I’m not going to be specific about when it was designed, because that’s what Wikipedia is for. Before I go on, I would like to disclaim that no information in this podcast should be considered investment advice, and you are expected to do due diligence when investigating any claims that may or may not be made in this podcast. And past performance isn’t a reliable indicator of future performance. More about that in a moment.

So Bitcoin was invented. There were some people who did some transactions with it. I believe Hal Finney ordered a pizza, which cost quite a number of Bitcoins. Now one of the problems with Bitcoin is that it’s volatility of value is extreme. That is to say that the price of Bitcoin fluctuates wildly with supply and demand, and we’ll get to that a little later as well.

But what is a cryptocurrency?

Now, when you hear about cryptocurrency, you’ll hear the term Blockchain mentioned. What is a blockchain? A blockchain is a special form of database designed for cryptographically storing various data that is applicable to financial transactions. And the reason I’m so general about this is because there are a number of blockchains. Bitcoin’s blockchain is probably the biggest and most well-known. Ethereum’s blockchain is the second biggest.

Now, once Bitcoin came out and once the proof of concept was run, and over the years as things have been ironed out of the network, people realized that Bitcoin was going to be successful, and it was going to hold value to a point. Now when I looked at Bitcoin in 2009, the coins were about $4.16 US a coin. In 2012, they were worth about 33 dollars a coin. In fact, I’ll get to mining in a moment. The value of Bitcoin has fluctuated wildly. Now with Bitcoin up around the 29,000 dollar US mark, possibly headed for 30,000 dollars, people are wondering where is the actual ceiling in the value of Bitcoin. In fact, there are some investors that are saying that if Bitcoin’s value continues to increase, it stands a chance of replacing the world’s wealth store, and will become more valuable than gold.

Now, basically the way cryptocurrencies work is that you solve a whole lot of series of mathematical problems. And in most cryptocurrencies (not all), you solve some complicated problems with a difficulty factor, (some very difficult cryptographic problems), and you mine a new block for the blockchain. And as a reward for mining that block, you are given a reward of currency. So the initial rewards for mining a block of Bitcoins used to be 55 Bitcoins. It then dropped down to 24 and a half Bitcoins. It is now down to 12 and a half Bitcoins. There is an artificial ceiling on the maximum number of Bitcoins that can be mined. You can only mine 21 million Bitcoins, and that should be mined by about 2023, 2024.

The difficulty algorithm is responsible for controlling how fast blocks are mined. And the network is actually configured so that blocks are mined in such a way that they are mined at a specific rate. And the difficulty rate is adjusted over time periods to take into consideration the developments and improvements in computer hardware and software.

When I mined Bitcoins in 2012, much to the initial annoyance of my wife at the time, (with an NVIDIA graphics card), I was able to mine 36 Bitcoins. Because the difficulty was quite low, and you didn’t require a lot of computing power to actually mine coins. Well, the idea that people could get free money by mining Bitcoins was quite popular, and Bitcoins popularity surged. Merchants started accepting Bitcoin. Shops started accepting Bitcoin. There were actual Bitcoin ATM’s for a while. They may come back, given its popularity. And as Bitcoin has gone through various hype cycles and various investment cycles, it’s interesting to note that the actual value of the coin has fluctuated quite spectacularly. When I sold off my 36 Bitcoins at 33 dollars a coin, and made approximately 1,060 dollars on Bitcoin I made. My wife ate humble pie, and apologized, and said that my 140-dollar investment in a video card that paid back 1,060 dollars in Bitcoin was in fact a worthwhile investment, and hats off to me for doing something that made us some money when things were a bit tight at the time.

So I did some mining in 2012, and then I put the whole thing on the back burner because my graphics card wasn’t that powerful, and it was beginning to be a little bit slow as the difficulty increased, and I decided to leave mining for a while. But in 2016-2017, I noticed that the Bitcoin price was climbing quite high. It was 4,000 dollars, 5,000 dollars, 8,000 dollars, 10,000 dollars, topping out, I believe at about 17,000 US dollars at the Bitcoin boom at the end of, I think it was 2018, 2017, 2017. I invested money in a whole pile of graphics cards. I bought about three or four of them, some quite powerful ones, some 4-Gig graphics cards, some 2-Gig graphics cards. I set up with some mining pools, and I mined Bitcoin. And when I was mining Bitcoin, with all of the rigs running, and all of the power being chewed, (and Bitcoin mining uses a lot of power), so they say that Bitcoin mining uses as much energy as the country of Ireland. I was making .001 Bitcoins a day, approximately, and that was equating to about 22 dollars Australian.

So I was making 22 dollars Australian per day, for every day that I mined. I was not the only one that considered the profit in coin mining. And as more people learned that there was money in mining cryptocurrency, more people mined, more people bought specific hardware, more people built mining rigs. There were even custom designed chips called ASIX, specifically designed to mine various cryptocurrencies.

And the top two cryptocurrencies, as previously mentioned, are Bitcoin and Ethereum. And the interesting thing about Ethereum is that it has not only financial transactions on its blockchain, but it has executable code, which is called Smart Contracts. And you can write conditions into this executable code to make it behave in a certain way. And the reason this has been done is to support various financial systems, such as mortgages, loans, interest, borrowing, and lending.

And in fact there are two tokens that seem to be reasonably popular at the moment. (The cryptocurrency field changes all the time.) Compound, and maker/DAI, which are used for lending cryptocurrency, and earning interest. Now, the goal of cryptocurrency is to be able to move currency across borders, to be able to allow anyone in the world to hold on to wealth and value. And this is especially important in places like Nigeria, where inflation runs rampant. And also to allow people to transact in these currencies.

Now, the acceptance of Bitcoin has been reasonably slow. But when the price spiked to 17,000 dollars US at the end of 2017, (which we call a Bitcoin bubble), a lot of financial institutes and software companies started taking cryptocurrency seriously. This led to the mistaken belief that you could put anything on a blockchain. A blockchain is a specific type of database that we don’t need to get into here. But sufficed to say that a blockchain has blocks of data that are cryptographically related to the blocks that proceed them, and you have to solve problems to actually put another block into the blockchain.

There are a few hundred cryptocurrencies. Some of them like Bitcoin are worth, you know, 30,000 dollars a coin. Or in Ethereum’s case about 740 US dollars, 741 US dollars a coin. Other coins like Stellar Lumens are worth about 13 US cents. And you can go to various sites to look up prices of these coins: gecko.com, various sites, there’s even a Discord telegraph bot called tip.cc, that will allow you to look at the prices of these various cryptocurrencies. And the trick is to find the exchange that supports the cryptocurrency you’ve got, or to go to a site like changelly.org, and change your cryptocurrency from one type to another.

Now, when you transact in cryptocurrency, there are fees. And depending on the volume of transactions on the blockchain networks, the fees fluctuate to regulate the amount of transactions that are being sent. So in fact when Bitcoin’s chain was very very active a number of years ago, the fees were actually quite high. And Ethereum has a fee called Gas, that is the amount it takes to put transactions on the blockchain. And in fact the higher the fee per transaction, the more likely your transaction will be mined into the next block on the blockchain.

And the interesting thing is that, as well as the cryptocurrency rewards on most blockchains, (not all of them, because not all blockchains use mining in the same way.) You can also get the mining fees on top of the reward for a particular block. So all of the fees in a block add up, and they go to the person that mines a block. Now because mining a block has become incredibly difficult, there are now what is known as mining pools. And that’s where a whole lot of people get together with their computers, their graphics cards, their custom ASIX chips, they mine these cryptocurrency. The mining pool mines the block, and then splits the reward from that block, using various systems between all of the miners. And that is how the miners make money to theoretically pay for their equipment, or at least pay for the electricity that is being used.

Now with Bitcoin so high, mining is big bickies. There are whole farms of computer equipment that are dedicated to purely mining Bitcoin. And there are mining setups with solar panels, to collect sunlight and to harness energy to generate power because this mining is so intense.

Now other cryptocurrencies are working on a lower environmental footprint, so that they can have less of an impact on the environment. But it appears that Bitcoin is here to stay, and Ethereum is here to stay, and perhaps compound, and Maker/DAI, and other coins are also here to stay. There have been cryptocurrencies that have failed, and their chains have been abandoned because they weren’t popular. But other cryptocurrencies stick around, and are still considered valuable, and can still be exchanged.

Should you invest in cryptocurrency?

Now one of the questions you often get from people is “Well I don’t have 50,000 dollars. How could I even think about investing in Bitcoin?” Or, “I don’t have 700 dollars. How could I invest in Ethereum?” Two answers to the question. You could invest in a cheaper cryptocurrency, such as Litecoin, or stellar lumens, or any of the other cheaper currencies. Or you can actually buy fractions of a coin. The smallest currency unit of Bitcoin is a Satoshi, which I believe is .000000001 (point eight zeros and a one) of a Bitcoin. And you can trade in values like milliBitcoins, and things like that to get smaller amounts, and invest as much as you see fit. In fact if you play with a site such as Coinbase, you can decide whether you’re going to regularly buy Bitcoin to get around the fluctuation of the prices. So maybe you’ll buy, you know, 20 dollars’ worth of Bitcoin every week, and build your portfolio that way.

Should you store all of your Bitcoins on an exchange?

Now, if I was storing Bitcoin, (and this is just my personal advice), I would look at using something like a Warp Wallet, and storing the coin in a brain wallet, where you have some way of storing away your pass phrase so that you can retrieve those coins at a later date. It’s always best to store your coins safely offline. In fact, be your own bank registered, according to blockchain.info, as you are trusting somebody else’s JavaScript, and somebody else’s coding if you are using web wallets. If you’re using a wallet on your mobile device, you need to make sure you back up the seed phrase if your wallet has one, and put it somewhere safe that nobody’s going to find it. Otherwise they have your Bitcoins. If you’re running a wallet on your PC, you need to safely back up and safely store your wallet.

Has this introduction been useful? Has it been a bit all over the place? What are your comments? Click on the feedback link and tell me what you think, or get a hold of me. Khoath on Twitter, or [email protected] via email. Tell me what you thought of the podcast. What else would you like me to talk about? What else would you like to know about cryptocurrency, if anything?

I’ve been messing with cryptocurrency now for, I’d say around eight years, and I do not know it all. I’ll be the first one to say so. I have had a fair bit of experience, and I’ve done a fair bit of research on how cryptocurrency works, what it does, and how it’s likely to behave. If you’re getting started on cryptocurrency, do so at your own risk. But you may want to look at sites such as www.coinbase.com

And in fact the Australian tax office would like you to declare your Bitcoin earnings on your tax return. Spoiler ATO: I think a lot of people aren’t going to tell you. Now the problem with Bitcoin though is that the ATO can actually go through the blockchain because it is a public record, and extract a whole lot of transaction information, and potentially (if they want to spend the money) figure out how much Bitcoin you’ve got, and how much it’s worth. So be aware of your local currency laws. Only use computing power and electricity and resources that are yours. And consider whether dabbling in/investing in cryptocurrency is a sensible decision for you.

Everybody loves free money, but in my experience, money is never free. You either have to invest effort or time, or a combination of both, and this is absolutely true for cryptocurrency as well. These will be hours of research that I will never get back. So seriously consider if Bitcoin is for you, or if Ethereum is for you, or any of the other cryptocurrencies are for you. Consider whether this is an effective investment, as opposed to shares or bank bonds or whatever. Figure out how you’re going to store this wealth, (if you’re going to store it), and consider whether this is a sensible investment move for you.

I hope this has served as a good introduction to cryptocurrency. Please comment, send me feedback, tell me what you think. Is there anything else you’d specifically like me to talk about on future podcasts if I do more on cryptocurrency?

No, I do not have the secret to the Bitcoin or the Ethereum mining algorithms to be able to allow you to mint thousands of coins. Otherwise I would be living on some amazing tropical island with some nubile women to handle all of my needs and desires in a perfect world. But I do hope this has been informational, and thanks for listening, and I hope you’ll tune in for future episodes.

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This is a little chat on what Christmas in Australia 2020 looks like compared to the rest of the world.

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