Sadly it is extremely rare these days to not have cancer touch you in one way or another (one grandparent & multiple friends in mine). But then again that is why my computer is crunching away here, to hopefully contribute in some small way towards making cancer as rare for my eventual grandkids as polio was for me when I was younger.

Your friend sounds like one of the good ones that you run into all too infrequently. My thoughts & prayers are with him.

Thanks again to all with your kind thoughts here.
It is appreciated more than I can say.
My buddy is going into UCLA Med Center next week for surgery to get all the "bad' stuff removed.
Just a little bit to give you an idea of who this guy really is inside.
We were talking the other night and the one thing that was bothering him with all the concerns he has is that he'll be gone from home for a while during the surgery and recovery and has to shut down his PC's while he's gone.
He's been at this DC work from well before it was fashionable and that comment of his tells you where his heart is at.
Very special person to me and hate to see him hit with this.

Thank you.
I lost my father 12 years ago to a dumb thing, pneumonia.
Lungs filled during the night and by the time they got his lungs cleared he'd been without oxygen for too long and had brain damage and had lost his will to fight.
Spent app 2 months in a convelesant home after leaving the hospital and passed in his sleep at age 73.
Toughest thing I ever had to do was to walk into his room with him laying there dead to collect his things as the home had a policy that they didn't move the body until the family head been there.
That still haunts me at times as without the soul we're just a bag of flesh.
I was luckier than most. I had him for 45 years.

My friend leaves for LA Tuesday(today) and my heart is with him.
We have the kind of friendship where I could send him an email tonight with this in the subject line:"Hey you ugly old fart" and know he'd smile.
Let's pray they do a good job on him.

I'm setting my WU queue to this project for the time being, is not much but I'll try to help as much as I can. Probably I'll be buying a new PC soon, AMD Phenom II X3 2.8Ghz 6MB L3 Cache, 4GB DDR2-1066 Dual Channel (X4 in my City is still at 2.4Ghz and 4MB of L3 Cache only, no DDR3 support on current AMD MoBos, I live outside USA, yeah AMD is not popular here). I'm running WCG in a P4 HT 3.0Ghz 1MB L2 Cache, 2GB DDR-400 Dual Channel, I'll join both PCs to make them work as one as a Cluster PC. I wish I could do more, also wish one day theses diseases are forever CURED, not just treated, but completely DEAD! (Don't worry, we'll always have some disease to crunch for, unfortunately).

Update: I've found a store that can give me an AMD Phenom II X4 3.2Ghz Total 8.5MB Cache (4x128KB L1, 4x512KB L2 and 6MB L3), 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1600 Dual Channel. I have finally found what I wanted . The store has DDR3-2000 but not an AMD MoBo that supports it, too bad, but what I've found is quite alright.

Your friend will receive a little more help soon dude.

Cheers.