07.10.07
Posted in Personal at 10:47 pm by Mark Lilback
Kayla wasn’t just a pet to me. She was a comfort to me when everything else seemed wrong. She knew my feelings and emotions. If I was stressed, she was, too. If I was down, she would come sit by me and if I leaned close, she’d wash me, too.
I first decided to get my own pet in 2002 after I had back surgery for a herniated disc. I was going to be bed-ridden for a while, and working from home for a long while afterwards. I didn’t want to be alone, so almost as soon as I left the hospital Audrey and Steph took me to the Petco at Union Square (NYC) to adopt a cat.
The adoption people showed me a lot of cats, one of which even puked on me. But I didn’t really feel a connection with any of them. I walked to the cages and saw a black cat they hadn’t shown me. I was told she wasn’t very friendly and they didn’t take her out of the cage much. I stuck my finder in her cage, and she walked up and started licking it. Everyone was very surprised, and even more so as they opened the cage and she calmly sat in my arms and purred.
I knew right then that Kayla was the cat for me. She had been abused in the past (she barely had any teeth) and ran at the sight of most people, and especially crowds. There were only a couple of other people she immediately warmed up to and most of the time they were people who are very close to me (like my father).
Unfortunately, she had serious health problems (gee, just like me). In New York she had a stroke and had to be put in an oxygen cage and take a couple days to recover. It turns out half her heart was enlarged, and she also had a hole in her heart that was supposed to have sealed up when she was born but didn’t.
She never liked to travel, except when riding in the U-Hual truck when I moved back to Texas. She always freaked out when in her carrier unless I kept my hand on her.
She had been sick recently, with some kind of infection in her throat making it hard for her to breath and eat. I was taking her to the vet today, but she really freaked out when I tried to take her to the car without her carrier (I had loaned it to someone else). Then all of a sudden she froze, urinated very quickly, and stopped breathing.
I tried mouth-to-mouth. I tried beating her heart. I stuck my finger in her throat hoping to clear something out, but it came out covered in blood. I buried her this afternoon underneath my bedroom air conditioner that she so liked to lay on.
Kalya would have been 6 next month.
I’ll forever hold a place in my heart for her.
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04.12.07
Posted in Personal at 4:55 pm by Mark Lilback
[slug]health[/slug]
Once again, I’ve been hit by health problems again. This time it was a abscess on my lower back right below the waist. It became incredibly painful, and boy did it hurt when the doctor lanced it. I stayed in the hospital for four days, and probably close to another four days before it in pain and recovering afterwards. I’m still on antibiotics and it is still there, just not as nasty.
This goes on top of being bipolar and diabetes. A normal A1c rating (the measure of blood sugar levels in blood over the last 120 days) is 4 to 6. The American Diabetic Association says a value of 7 is acceptable for a diabetic. That’s what mine was in the fall. Down from a 9 the year before. Last month, I was a 10.4.
Obviously, I really need to reduce my sugar levels. I’m starting back at kickboxing next week, which will help. But I’m not sure what to do about my diet. Anyone who knew me 10+ years ago would be amazed at it. Back then I lived on pizza, burgers, and multiple pitchers of kool aid a day. Now I eat vegetables (really! that’s a huge change), only drink water and sugar-free drinks, and live off foods made with Splenda.
A few years ago, when moving apartments after 9/11 (I lived two blocks away), I herniated my L2/L3 disc which pinched every nerve to my lower body. That was some serious pain. Even with years of physical therapy, my back still really hurts. According to my surgeon at the time, I have the back of a 65 year-old, and will have multiple disc problems throughout my life.
Add to that multiple kidney stones and serious digestive problems leading to my gall bladder being removed, and I haven’t been a healthy boy. Throw the depression I frequently get even though I’m on multiple drugs for my bipolar disorder, and things don’t look too good. Plus, I had a few other problems last year that left me incapacitated for months.
Not that I’m feeling down, at least not right now. Today I feel really good and finally decided to get some thoughts off my chest. Expect more posts soon.
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12.06.06
Posted in Personal at 12:17 am by Mark Lilback
I’ve been an avid game player my whole life. I helped started a gaming club in college, which I donated most of my games too. Since then, I’ve bought a lot of them. But as I’ve gotten older, I get to play them a lot less.
The biggest reason is now that I’ve moved back to rural, playing games isn’t the biggest past time. Maybe after football and hunting season are over. But then I’d still have to compete with poker (three casinos within a 30 minute drive) and other sports.
Even if I could find people, many of my favorite games are very complex and beyond what most people are willing to for fun. I mean, most people in this area got married young and never went to college. Hell, most people look pretty freaked out when I suggest playing Jeopardy on my playstation 2 instead of a shooter game.
I’ve never really understood online games. I’d much rather sit at a table with a group of people instead of at a computer. The biggest point of games, to me, is the social interaction. And as great as the Internet is, it is not a replacement for social interaction.
So, I’m going to list all the games I own in the off chance that someone from the area might do a google search for one of them and find this list. Besides the board games, I love to play Hearts and Spades. I’m open to learning any new games, as long as they aren’t purely random (ala Risk). Superior strategy should have a pretty good chance of winning.
Monopoly
Clue
Life
Scrabble
Rummikub
Trivial Pursuit original Genus edition
Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture/dvd
Trivial Pursuit 80’s edition
Mille Bornes
Apples to Apples
Scruples
Lunch Money
Settlers of Catan
Thunder Road
Kremlin
Cold War
Republic of Rome
Advanced Civilization
Illuminati
Munchkin
Elixir
Grass
Game of Thrones: the Boardgame
Diplomacy
History of the World
Politika
Sid Meier’s Civilization: the Boardgame
Scattegories
Trump (late 80’s version)
Axis & Allies (both editions)
Axis & Allies: D-Day
Ghettopoly
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11.07.06
Posted in Personal at 5:09 pm by Mark Lilback
[slug]sysadmin-nightmare-2[/slug]Well, we got a bit of a stay on having to move the servers, but I’m still working on it as fast as I can. I’ve got everything except perl modules installed on the new server.
I’ve already moved: the rtlabs subversion repository, www.rtlabs.com, and all our WebObjects applications. Our databases have been moved, too, but I’ve got a final import of the data from the Oracle server running right now.
I’m also in the process of setting up mail and mailing lists. Then I just need to move blogs.rtlabs.com and www.lilback.com. After that, a switch of dns and all should be good.
An interesting thing I never realized: network solutions’ domain registration also includes dns hosting. If you consider what a lot of places want to charge for dns hosting, that makes their registration fees pretty reasonable.
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10.13.06
Posted in Miscellaneous, Personal at 8:35 pm by Mark Lilback
Ok, I’ve tried blogging a few times before on third-party sites (livejournal, myspace) and I even set up Moveable Type once but never really used it. I’ve wanted to blog for a long time, but I just never made myself do it. My degree is in friggin Journalism but aside from user manuals, I don’t think I’ve written anything, aside from the user manuals for software I’ve written, in at least 5 years.
But now that reading blogs has become a daily routine for me, and I’m blogging for my business, I figure I’ll give a personal blog another shot.
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