
Mike Crawford Is Dead, Contributed to Mac System 7.5.X and Activist - orionblastar
Some of you might know him on the west coast. He worked for Apple fixing&#x2F;debugging System 7.5.X and attended Cal Tech. He was an activist for the mentally ill and homeless. He was openly bisexual and open about his schizoaffective disorder. His Facebook page: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;repeatiblehairstyle?sk=wall&amp;fref=gs&amp;dti=2315152128&amp;hc_location=group_dialog<p>I had helped him with his project Soggy Jobs: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;soggy.jobs&#x2F; which is unfinished. It was his project he needed a business model for.<p>He was on CNN about the taking away of tax credit from software engineers:
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;VhLV7jydPJ8<p>His website is here:
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.warplife.com&#x2F;<p>He was a member here at Hacker News.<p>He had serious physical illnesses that made him suffer and he took his own life.<p>I was an online friend of his, and I too suffer from schizoaffective disorder. 
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.warplife.com&#x2F;mdc&#x2F;books&#x2F;schizoaffective-disorder&#x2F;<p>His wish was not to be forgotten to be remembered through his works. To at least have a Wikipedia article written on him or some other Wiki. Wikipedia named him non-notable about ten years ago. But if you met him, he&#x27;d always show you respect and even if he disagreed with you he was nice about it.
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rman666
We are sorry for your/our loss. Thank you for sharing a bit of Mike’s story
(and your story, too).

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tropo
Him on SoylentNews:
[https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford/journal/](https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford/journal/)

Him on HackerNews, shadowbanned it seems:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=MichaelCrawford](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=MichaelCrawford)

How and where did he kill himself? (please copy from facebook if you can get
at it there)

He seems to have been a rather nice guy. Not even counting the suicide, he had
a strong tendency to make hazardous life choices. He was really into music
performance, preferring to earn money busking instead of programming. He
didn't have a lot of self-control with money, to put it mildly.

~~~
orionblastar
He was MikeCrawford here. I don't know how to search users

This is his last Youtube Video and only one I know of:
[https://youtu.be/3dGTmjUXH0Q](https://youtu.be/3dGTmjUXH0Q)

Weeks before his death.

He did Busk to earn money because he couldn't find contracts and he rejected
Google and Amazon because he considered companies like them evil. He had an
Interview with Google but turned them down. He had a contract to build drivers
for OSX aka MacOS but wasted his money on a Litecoin miner that didn't even
pay for electricity.

He claimed to live like a hermit but would often go to strip clubs and do
hazardous things.

His weakness was accounting even with GNUCash he just couldn't do it. He was
supposed to report it to social security but missed the deadline and lost his
Medicare insurance and his 'happy pills' that keep him from being suicidal. I
myself am on disability and Medicare and looking to get off it as well.

I got the details on his death from his Facebook user wall, there are people
writing on it.

~~~
former_k5er
Huge bummer. Mike's golden years on K5 where everyone trolled him 24/7 about
Haiku OS and he loved every second of it makes me smile. RIP in peace, Mikey.

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RickSanchez2600
Here is his obituary:

[https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/spokane-
wa/michae...](https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/spokane-wa/michael-
crawford-8232299)

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ncmncm
The world was a better place with Michael in it, and is a worse place without
him.

It is tragic that he could not continue living in it.

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soytakyon
Thanks for letting us know. The story goes live in 18 minutes:
[https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/26/0356205](https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/03/26/0356205)

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taxicabjesus
I met Michael David Crawford (MDC) for the first time when he was mickeyed up
in the San Louis Obispo (SLO) County Jail. One of the other kuro5hin.org users
had figured out that MDC hadn't been posting because he was in jail. He'd
headed south from the Portland area, wrecked his car in SLO, and was arrested
for being a nuisance at McDonald's -- probably for helping himself to free
ketchup.

They dropped the charges and released him the day after my jail visit. He'd
been locked up for several months, also spending time at the Atascadero mental
hospital [1].

The criminal justice and mental health systems certainly did NOT do anything
to help Michael with his actual problems.

[1] Atascadero State Hospital -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atascadero_State_Hospital#Popu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atascadero_State_Hospital#Popular_culture)

I told about my efforts to reach out to MDC on kuro5hin.org (k5 diaries
reposted on my site):

 _I sent some paper and envelopes to Mr. Crawford_ \-
[https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/09/i-sent-some-paper-and-
envel...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/09/i-sent-some-paper-and-envelopes-to-
mr.html)

 _Immigration anxiety at the county jail_ \-
[https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/immigration-anxiety-at-
coun...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/immigration-anxiety-at-county-
jail.html)

 _More about visiting SLO_ \- [https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/more-about-
visiting-slo.htm...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2012/11/more-about-visiting-
slo.html) / etc.

 _harvesting life 's gardens_ \- [https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/08/harvesting-
lifes-gardens.ht...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/08/harvesting-lifes-
gardens.html) (a picture of the card I sent him - it had seeds embedded in
it).

 _Selective Electromagnetic Interference_ \-
[https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/02/selective-
electromagnetic-i...](https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/02/selective-
electromagnetic-interference.html) \- This one had a portion of the letter
he'd sent me from jail: "... It really helps to know that I'm not forgotten in
here."

Some months later I went to Oregon, and swung through SLO on my way back to
Arizona. He'd been living at a shelter, I bought him breakfast and gave him a
crossover cable for his laptops (any old network cable probably would have
worked).

somewhere... pictures. They're on... .. . imgur. Picture of MDC pre-/post-
haircut:

[https://imgur.com/aQO4kyE](https://imgur.com/aQO4kyE) /
[https://imgur.com/IYPS7To](https://imgur.com/IYPS7To)

Sometimes what a person really needs isn't much: someone who believes in you
can make a huge difference. He got a job after my second visit... Made some
progress at debugging their problem, but then he fell apart again, I don't
remember the specifics.

OH YEAH - Michael Crawford cycled through his Kuro5hin.org usernames regularly
(he was good at getting himself banned). one of these was "Zombie Jesus
Christ", which inspired me to name my kuro5hin.org account 'TaxiCabJesus':

 _origin of the 'tcj' moniker_ \- [https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/04/origin-of-
tcj-moniker.html](https://www.taxiwars.org/2013/04/origin-of-tcj-moniker.html)

So long, and thanks for the 'nick.

