The FURE, The Surgery & The (Hopeful) Recovery

Technorati tags: Vitreous Humor, Eye Surgery, Post Op

You're probably wondering about now - what the heck is FURE? Well, let Walski tell you right off the bat: it's another one of those acronyms he made up.

And it stands for F*cked Up Right Eye. What Walski was seeing out of the FURE is something like this.

Okay, it's not exactly a perfectly accurate rendition, admittedly, but Walski was kind of in a hurry when he created the image above. It does, however, give you an idea of what the right eye saw out of it.

Past tense, because he has since undergone surgery to try to fix it a couple of days ago. Technically, Walski shouldn't even be blogging about this so soon after, being that he's been advised to lay off being on the PC for long periods of time.

But writing has always been a kind of catharsis, and quite frankly, it feels good to be able to talk about it. Plus, Walski reckons that this is not going to be one of his famously long-winded posts.

He simply needed to talk about what he's been going through these past few days, then off he goes to get the eye rested. Again.
(the eye, the procedure, and more, in the full post)

Yes, it's been light duty for him since his surgery on Tuesday, staying home most of the time, spending much of it taking catnaps on the couch. And it will continue to be more of that for the next couple of days or so.

It's also utterly boring, by the way.

In any case, about a week ago, Walski felt that his right eye felt very blurry, with the sudden appearance of 'cobwebs' amidst a very cloudy span of vision. Kind of like what you see in the picture above, only worse.

Apparently what happened was that a blood vessel in his eye, somewhere along the retina area, burst, causing the vitreous humor (the clear gel within the eye) to get mixed with blood, clouding the eye and creating what appears as "cobwebs" swirling within the field of vision. In the process, part of his retina was also dislodged.

The surgical procedure that Walski underwent is called a vitrectomy, which involves removing parts of the vitreous humor contaminated by the hemorrhage.

Sounds painful, but the surgery was pretty much painless. The worst part was probably when the 23 gauge needle was inserted, and that too felt nothing worse than a dust speck getting onto the eye.

A day after the procedure, Walski then went for his check-up, and had the bandages off. So no pirate eye patch for him, as he initially thought he might have to use for a while.

Arrrrr…. 

In any case, it's about three days after the procedure, and Walski does feel that the vision is coming back to normal.

But the doctor did say that some laser therapy may still be needed to seal the retina (if it didn't heal properly), and some other scans and stuff to ensure that the problem doesn't recur.

Speaking of which, enough time in front of the PC, and it's time to get back to rest.

The last thing Walski wants is to aggregate the FURE, or to get it FU again...

 

Click here for the full post......

Retiring the Stop 114A Pop-Up

Technorati tags: Blog Changes, Stop 114A, Popup Removal, Humanity

Walski has made a decision to retire the Stop 114A Pop-up.

For those who have been coming here with some regularity - and not likely the target audience for the pop-up anyway - you're probably have gotten quite tired of it. 

Like most good things in life, the pop-up has served its purpose, and it's now time to put it to rest. The indefinite has been made finite...
(state of online freedom, and more, in the full post)

But has it done any good?

In truth, Walski doesn't really know. Perhaps it has. If nothing else, the outrage over badly written laws has been vocalized/visualized. The reality of it, however, is that this particular bad piece of legislation remains on the books.

He hopes that it will never be used as the sole source of "proof". At least, that's the guarantee that has been given by the authorities. We will certainly hold them to their word.

As has been revealed recently, Malaysia ranks poorly in the promotion of personal freedoms (via The Malaysian Insider), as indicated in Legatum's Prosperity Index.

And no, "personal freedoms" do NOT include stealing the property of others. It also does not include inflicting physical and/or mental harm on others.

Since the tragedy of Walski's PC getting stolen about two weeks ago, he's had some opportunity to reflect on life.

First of all, life is short. Certainly too short to hold on to a grudge, or harp on things  that one has absolutely no control over. Like legislations being kept on the books, for instance. Raising awareness - which the pop-up has helped do - is one thing, keeping the pop-up in place longer than a useful timespan is another thing altogether. It's time to move one...

Second, in life nothing is permanent. Getting his PC stolen is proof of that. Never mind that the motherfucker also stole 20 years of Walski's work, both personal and professional, in the form of articles, reports, resumes, presentations, photographs, etc. None of these are easily replaceable. But they can be rebuilt.

Third, the Malaysia we live in right now is going through precarious times, and along with his PC, Walski's unquestioning faith in humanity has been stolen as well. Gone forever. 

October 19, 2012 will be a date that Walski will never forget. That's the date of the theft, and that's the date when his life changed. He's certainly more careful, and a lot less trusting. If you find Walski to be more bitter and more spiteful from now on, you now know why.

And you can thank the bastard who stole from him for that. This is not holding a grudge, per se, but reassessing one's outlook in life. Suffice it to say Walski's view of humanity has changed forever.

It appears that Walski's gone on a tangent… so let's return to orbit, shall we?

The pop-up's gone, and this blog may be accessed without having to close the Stop 114A window that shows up. 

That's pretty much what Walski wanted to say in this post. The rest is the ramblings of a man embittered by a once-upon-a-time beautiful humanity that's utterly failed him, and shown its true ugly colors...

Click here for the full post......

The Long Absence

Technorati tags: Update, Walski, Life

Yes, it's been another very long absence from blogging for Walski. There are many reasons for this, and he figured that it was high time something got posted to partially explain why.

If for no other reason, to let you folks know that Walski is still very much alive.

Not like anyone would really care if he disappeared from the face of the Earth. Probably most would feel that it's one less annoying person on the Internet.

In fact, life has been quite interesting in the past few months. Occasionally traumatic, too. But we'll get to that in due time.

As has been the case in the past, work has dominated most of Walski's time awake. Some of you may know that he is no longer full time in the process automation & controls world, but instead co-runs an art gallery in the KL area. He still does a bit of freelance work from time to time, but that's another story we won't get into.

And if you think running an art gallery (or any business) is easy-peasy, you're quite wrong. It is as challenging, if not more, only in different ways. 
(with interesting comes trauma, and more, in the full post)

So for the most part, life has been hectic, getting the gallery up and running from scratch, doing the online promotional work, the website operational, etc. So yes, Walski's been online a lot, just not blogging here (although myAsylum's Facebook page has been somewhat active).

Oh, and the tragedy part? Walski's PC, hard disks, iPad, and camera got stolen from his car a couple of weeks back. Yup - approximately 20 years worth of data gone. Some motherfucker broke into Walski's car and stole the lot. 

He won't delve into more details than this - too much pain - but suffice it to say that steps are being taken to try recover at least the PC, if not the whole lot of electronics.

In the meantime, this is being posted via a MacBook Pro, the machine on which he tries to rebuild all the data and images (particularly the gallery related ones) that have been STOLEN from him. To the thief: you've not only stolen physical hardware, but stolen someone's life and memories.

While Walski, on principle, doesn't like to wish bad on anyone, he does hope in this case the perpetrator's conscience gnaws at its host physical container and causes it to suffer the anguish and trauma that Walski has for the past couple of weeks... 

And there you have it - a short post to let you all know Walski is still alive. Maybe one day this blog may be as active as it once was, maybe it won't. It all depends on what happens the next few months.

In the meantime, our Facebook page is fairly active, so visit us there if you can...

Click here for the full post......