This does not come easy to me, but I must say my peace before I pass on.
Here goes it.................

I recently had a near fatal heart attack, and the Lord saved me via the care of some wonderful doctors who cracked my chest open and did a triple bypass heart surgery on me.
The miracle of modern medicine saved my life after I almost died at home. Alone.

That is what it is when you are a loner, have shared your life with nobody other than a few worthy cats, and few others. My cats have all passed on, and I may be joining them in the not too distant future. Only the Lord above will determine if and when.

The point is, I joined the Seti project soon after it's inception because the premise at hand intrigued me. I soon came to spend a lot of money on computers, the electricity to operate them, and the air conditioning to try to keep my home livable.

And then there were the forums. a bevy of knowledge and questions and information about the project. Which I took part in, and shared a lot of what I knew about computers and cats.

Then one day, I ventured into the political forums, where I found anger and vitriol.
I often argued with the mods, and quickly found they always won, much to my disgust.

I must confess. I really am not an intellectual. I may have an adequate IQ, but when it comes to collecting thoughts and debating a subject, I would usually be found crawling off and hiding in a corner. I may know something about a lot of things, but when it comes to arguing my point, I fall very short, even to this day.

I was an alcoholic for 40 years, and it has taken it's toll in health, wealth, and friends I used to know, most of whom are dead now.

I wish to apologize to all who I may have offended over all those years. I am sure there are many.

Life is too short to hold grudges, and while I still have a few souls who's comments I chose to be hidden from me, I still stop by here on the forums and check out who is saying what.

My point is...........
Being near death has changed a few things here, and if some would like to open up old lines of communication, I might be open to it.
Most of you were good friends. Just a few were not.

Please forgive me if I offended you.

Meow,
Mark

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

It's OK, Mark... everyone has their issues and the inspiration and contributions you've provided outshine them. :^) Hopefully you can empathize that we're trying to do our duties here as per the policies, and almost always the recipient of our "services" didn't ask for them so may not be agreeable!

What always reminds me that you're a good and uncommonly generous person regardless of any issues is that even during "vacations" you still contributed to any fundraisers, and this overtop of paying astounding electric bills to do the actual required computation. I'm still displeased that this was all brought to an end arbitrarily without any results, and I (we?) should have reserved generosity for a project with a longer track record (ie the SETI Institute) but such is life.

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