The boring life of Jerod Poore, Crazymeds' Chief Citizen Medical Expert.

It just never ends

Now the domain registration is locked up.

It usually just updated automagically. For some reason the nimrods at 1&1 dot com decided not to renew it.

Fuck if I know why.

So I have a bunch of support tickets open all over the place.

I thought billing issues were resolved, e-mail addresses were updated, that domain registrars may have even been transfered.

Of course none of that happened. I'll bet 1&1 dot com sent the warning of domain expiration to the long-unused and now invalid e-mail address I used when I created the domain. The one I changed on the control panel years ago. The one they wrote to me in an e-mail that they changed a couple years back when there was a bandwidth problem. The one that I was told they would no longer use and use yet another one when I had the aforementioned billing problem.

Lied to again by 1&1 dot com.

I'm cursed. That's all there is to it.

I own a bunch of other domains just because I was pissed off at the original domain squatter of crazymeds dot com. The one who swooped down and grabbed that after a problem when I tried to register that domain at 1 & 1 dot com back in 2003. But who the fuck is going to look up stuff at the .us, .biz or .info domains?

So crazymeds.org was picked up by yet another squatter.

I guess that's it. Life goes on. I'll find something else to do. I should have expected it. Every job I liked has lasted four to five years and then due to outside forces the job was gone.

Pacific Molasses: The data center moved to Cedar Rapids, IA.

Transcisco Rail Services: Bought out by Trinity Industries, corporate HQ moved to Dallas and pretty much disassembled.

DFS (Duty Free Shoppers), a division of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesy): I was hired by DFS prior to their being bought by LVMH. As the responsibility for the nifty software that
I helped develop that got products from warehouses and vendors to the stores, and helped to predict how much would be required based on trends and holiday travel (there's a name for that, but I can't remember it) was being transfered to a few guys in Bangalore, 9/11 hit. Air travel tanked. One third of the IT staff was let go.

After that things went really south mentally. I pretty much forgot how to program. It was really weird.

Lately I've had all sorts of additional symptoms, so it was harder and harder to do any work on the site anyway.

Corrections, Content & Features

09/19/2007 -

  • I can't believe I forgot the drug-drug interactions link on the BuSpar and Invega pages. D'oh! That glaring omission has been corrected.
  • I've been adding boards. If you've been on the Crazy Meds Talk forum, you've noticed. If you haven't, you wouldn't know better anyway.
  • I've activated the Blog feature on the forum. Blogs are a great way to keep track of your progress on meds and stuff. That's also the place where everyone can get down with the tea and sympathy and other support-group like activities. As if enough sites weren't offering blogs, you can get one here as well. Whoopee!
  • There have been a couple more mentions of Crazy Meds in the legitimate media.
  • I'm trying to get some new content up. Really. It's just one damn thing or another.

Sorry About the Frequent Timeouts

I guess we've been acting out or something, hence the need for a bunch of timeouts. It's not like I meant to throw those cookies through those windows, it's just those frames just bugged the crap out of me and some voice told me over and over and over and over....

No, the site doesn't have a behavior problem. We do have some server overload issues. I'm working with the domain host. We'll see what we can do.

The price of popularity.

More New Boards, Minor Corrections on Drug Info Pages

I thought I had a board for each of the popular atypical antipsychotic. I don't know how I could have left out Zyprexa, the most popular (in terms of sales) antipsychotic of all time. Other than being an idjit on neurological medication, of course. So the Zyprexa board now exists.

Due to popular demand, we have an entire category devoted to the technical details regarding one's brain:

My. Brain. Hurts! This. Is. Why!

Boards include:

Know Your Neurotransmitters
Grey Matter's Anatomy
Blame Your Parents!
Antagonist? I sorta remember that from lit class...


Also, on the main site I fixed the problems with the Cyrillic, Japanese and Hebrew fonts on the Zyprexa and Risperdal pages. There was also a dead link to the Japanese PI sheet on the Risperdal page, and that has been replaced with a link to a consumer-oriented PMI shiori page.

New Boards, New PI Sheets

Only after I created all the boards yesterday did I notice there were several Abilify topics in the board for Other Antipsychotics.

So I created a board for Abilify.

As it would make no sense to leave Geodon out of the party, I created one for Geodon as well.

Thus we have a board for each of the popular atypical antipsychotics on the US market. Clozaril (the first of the bunch) doesn't see much prescribing these days, so it is lumped in with the others. As Invega is nothing more than Risperdal without your liver having to do any work first, those two will share one board.

While adding boards for Abilify and Geodon (don't bother, the stubs of the pages suck), I noticed that the PI sheets were way out of date. I.e. there was nothing about their approvals to treat bipolar mania. Don't make me laugh! How much do you want to bet the participants in those studies were a bit on the depressed side and were all freaking happy to be taking those meds? Jeez Louise, Geodon is practically a combination antipsychotic and antidepressant along the lines of Cymbalta , and Abilify makes your D2 dopamine and 5HT1A serotonin receptors more sensitive to those neurotransmitters, so it's like a combination antipsychotic and variant on Remeron. Is it a wonder that a bunch of people who tend to be on the manic side of things get, what's the technical term, batshit crazy when prescribed either of these two meds? Especially when they are stupid enough to just whine about the depression they feel at the time they go into to see those doctors and those doctors don't ask about mania and give them Abilify or Geodon in combination with an antidepressant. In any event, here's Abilify's PI sheet and Geodon's PI sheet.

New Boards on Crazy Meds Talk

New boards.

Basic Information About All Antipsychotics

An entire category for Epilepsy & Seizure disorders - Shake it up Baby!, including the boards:

Medications for Epilepsy - the Fat, the Stupid, and the Itchy

Other Epilepsy Treatments: The Brain Electric and the Brain Dissected

Questions About Epilepsy


Under the Intermission category we now have:

The Written Word: Books and other lit.

Crazy News: Meds, Mental Health

News of the Weird, er, World


and the ever-popular

Site Suggestions: This Site Sucks Donkey Dong!


Kittens! or: Just what the world needs, more cats.


Photo taken a few hours after they were born, 21 August 2007.

From left to right the provisional names are:

Anorexia. Second born. Came out some 20 minutes after the first one and couldn't latch onto a nipple for almost an hour after birth. At the time Anorexia would eat, but wasn't as enthusiastic about it as the other two. Now Anorexia has a normal appetite.

Bingey. First born. Won't let go of a nipple no matter what. In spite of there being nipples to spare will fight over the nearest one. Was almost as large as the other two combined. Will suckle anything. Looks enough like a platypus that sucking on a dewclaw almost makes sense.

Stimpy. Third born, popped out just a couple minutes after kitten number 2. At first MAO wouldn't have anything thing to do with this one. MAO had it under her mouth but wouldn't lick it clean after eating the placenta. I had to put it under MAO's face after MAO pretty much rolled away with the other two. Has what looks like a rat's foot. I wouldn't be surprised if Stimpy has issues. As the day progresses Stimpy is looking more and more like MAO, other than that whole rat foot thing. Since then Stimpy's rat foot is a normal looking foot. MAO is now taking care of Stimpy just as well as the others. Stimpy will crawl and roll away from the group now and then, but manage to crawl and roll back when hungry.

MAO being MAO insisted that I be around for the birth and hang around until things settled down. I was working on the forum with my laptop when the labor was getting under way. It's a good thing she decided on a closet in my bedroom. At least I can be close by all the time.

MAO has sinced moved all of the kittens to the closet in my office, ensconcing them under a box of yet-to-be used magazine holders (for all the neurological journals I get) between the wall and a file cabinet. She moved some stuff I had lying around to block the near end and has them all under this defensible space. As their eyes are due to open this is nice and dim. Plus she's now around me most of the day, and still close by when I'm sleeping.

Bengal's are very loyal, so MAO just likes to be around me 20 hours out of the day.

So far I've noticed that Stimpy is the most sensory defensive. I'd get near him and he'd make that "I hate the new smell" sound. Anorexia would make it only if I had been handling something recently that had a scent I could notice. Bingey made it all of one time, when I leaned over to say goodbye just after brushing my teeth and gargling.

They are all purring loud enough for me to hear them when I check up on them. Something MAO wants me to do often enough.

I'm thinking of new names. I'm not going to be calling them what I'm calling them now.

It's obvious that MAO is an F3 and somehow got away from a breeder. All three of the kittens are showing the markings of normal Bengals. Plus there's the whole thing about F3's being super friendly, and that's MAO.

Latest Updates to Crazy Meds


We have a bunch of new boards up on the Crazy Meds Talk forum
More will be added as demand warrants.

As for the main part of the site:

08/30/2007 -

  • Added a picture of what Lamictal-induced Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS) actually looks like to the Lamictal page. I know it still won't keep people from asking, "Is this The Rash?" but it's worth a shot.

08/24/2007 -

  • I just had to update the Thorazine page because I was so pissed off after hearing a report on NPR yesterday. Aside from being two months out of date (Check the Risperdal page and see the approval dates for pediatric bipolar disorder and schizophrenia), American Psychiatric Association President Carolyn Robinowitz, M.D. said on Morning Edition that Risperdal was the first antipsychotic approved to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in children and adolescents. Ahem. Thorazine was approved to treat both in both decades before Risperdal even existed. Compazine was approved to treat pediatric schizophrenia since I was a kid, but only as a last resort. How sad is it when a Citizen Medical Expert such as myself has to correct the freaking president of the APA. Oh, wait, that's why all y'all read this site, isn't it?


Crazy Meds Talk ver 9.0 is Open for Business

http://www.crazymeds.us/CrazyTalk/index.php?

Or stop by the Crazy Meds site and click on the usual link to the forum.

There are just a few boards up for antidepressants, anticonvulsants / mood stabilizers and antipsychotics. Plus some generic forum crap. I'll keep adding boards until I'm satisfied. I figured everyone will need some time to adjust to the new software and play around with all the bells'n'whistles.

Change is bad.

Crazy Meds Talk ver 9.0 is Under Construction

The new software is happy.

As there was little notice from the previous domain host and they suddenly got all tight-assed with the bandwidth, we were unable to download all of the previous forum. Make that we were only able to download a little bit of the previous forum.

So I'm pretty much having to rebuild from scratch.

Everyone gets to register again. Yay!

All those messages - lost to bit heaven.


Life is hard, then you die.

Once I get enough of the various boards created I'll open the forum up to the general public.

At Last the DNS Record Has Been Updated!


Expect the medications section of Crazy Meds to be up within 24 hours.

Why this took so freaking long:

  1. The registrar told me I owed them money. Unfortunately they kept sending the notices to an e-mail address I kept telling them for two fucking years I no longer used.
  2. I had to pay a collections company first. There's nothing more fun than giving a credit card number to someone in prison. Then I get to inform said registrar that the collection account is paid up.
  3. Once the billing depart is satisfied they hand my problem off to their transfer department in the U.K. Now there is a nice seven-hour time difference. So factor in a two-hour turn around time with responses and that's about one e-mail exchange a day.
  4. I would get some vague e-mails from said person at the transfer office.
  5. It's summer, Maddy is visiting, so that means I get nice and ill for a couple of days.
  6. Now I'm supposed to remember the password I used two years ago on that account. Good thing I did.
  7. After all that, the DNS record gets changed today. Two fucking weeks to straighten this out.


Now we can get back to work on the forum. We couldn't do that with the IP address only. The software expected crazymeds.org


And Now We're Back Up


The drug information pages are back up. Front Page and ftp are working. I'm not to sure about e-mail just yet.

We'll see how it goes from here.

And We're Back Down Again.

I've opened a ticket.

Hey, we deal with bipolar disorder a lot. One should expect yo-yo-ness. I see the site via the non-propagated address, so I'm guessing it's just some DNS stuff or something. I don't know, but I'm not too worried about it.

Crazy Meds Main Site is Back Up

The main part of Crazy Meds is back on the air. I.e. all the drug information pages are once again available. Maddy and I are working to get the forum back up. My e-mail at Crazy Meds is working again as well. Keep checking here and at the what's new page for further details.

Site Updates 13 July - 20 July 2007

07/20/2007 -

07/14/2007 -

  • Geez, I have been sleeping through Effexor XR's approvals or what? So the page is updated a bit, and is pretty much all about the XR version. The latest PI sheet is available for Effexor XR as well.

07/13/2007 -

  • Updated Wellbutrin's approvals to include Wellbutrin XL's approval to prevent seasonal major depression for people with seasonal affective disorder. That includes getting the latest PI sheet for Wellbutrin XL.

Updates to Crazy Meds 5 July - 12 July 2007

07/12/2007 -

  • Updated Risperdal's approvals to include pediatric schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Not that we deal with kids here, but an approval is an approval. I also fixed the screwed up katakana on the Risperdal pages and added links to Russian and Arabic PI sheets. I think all of my non-Latin fonts got hosed during a Front Page hiccough followed by a mass update. The errors are now being fixed as I come across them, as I originally thought it was just a browser error on my end.
  • Corrected some grammatical wackiness that was an artifact from a previous version of the benzodiazepines page.
  • As mentioned in the update of 5 July, I needed a hall of shame. Presenting Crazy Meds' Copyright Violators' and Plagiarizers' Halls of Shame. As Copyscape and I find them, the better examples of both types of intellectual property theft will be presented as I deal with them. Not-so-egregious cases that are quickly resolved will never show up here.

07/06/2007 -

  • Updated the Lexapro page with a whole bunch of international PI sheets.
  • Also found some Topamax, Prozac and Paxil.
  • Fixed and/or added the names of medications in non-Western fonts. Now a bunch of question marks shouldn't appear. At least they look fine now.

07/05/2007 -

  • Updated the Zoloft page a bit, as the discussion about its effect on dopamine reuptake inhibition came up yet again.
  • The intellectual property theft is getting out of hand. Not just with the couple of annoying thieves I've had to deal with of late. I've had people on various fora copy an entire page here and there, often with credit, sometimes not. People on boards do that to everyone, big and small, so I would shrug it off. But I'm now seeing all sorts of wholesale copying done of entire pages that goes beyond the lack of credit. Oh no, the pages with all of my content are presented as if written by people involved with various sites without a forum or on a non-forum part of the site. So I'm protecting the site via Copyscape. Thus banners of diverse sizes like this:

Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

I may have to set up an intellectual property theft hall of shame, in addition to the legal notices that will be sent out.

Crazy Meds Site Updates for 3 July 2007


  • Finally, new content! Jessica sent in some information on BuSpar and once the stress of having to micromanage the overly-complicated life of an utterly ungrateful person was lifted, I could put the new data into our spiffy new format. So here they are, BuSpar pages! Yay! Coming soon, Invega.
  • The bibliography has a new look. At this point it's become easier just to show you the source material than to list it all.