Facebook vanity names

Hang on, this is going to be another one of my long story telling posts.

I’m going to at least assume that everyone has heard of Facebook. Two years ago that wouldn’t have been true and I would have had to explain it but I think it’s gone mainstream enough that everyone in the family should know what it is.

I was an early adopter and got into Facebook through kind of a loophole. Facebook was originally set up by some guys at Harvard who originally created it just for their dorm. Pretty soon, they expanded it to the whole campus. Kids at Harvard adopted it so quickly that the founders thought it might catch on at other campuses so within just a few months they expanded to other schools.

Originally, Facebook was somewhat of a closed system. There was a kind of a club atmosphere about it because you could supposedly only join if you were in college and you only could connect with other people on your campus. The way that Facebook controlled it was they would only allow you on if you had an authrorized email address from your school. That’s the loophole that I exploited.

The Penn State Alumni Association has run an email forwarding service for years. Members can sign up for an alumni email address – mine is larryfall@psualum.com. You can then set up that address to forward your emails to whatever your current real email address is. Years ago this was a handy service for recent alums because their email address would often change as they changed jobs.

Somehow, I found out that Facebook was accepting the psualum.com domain as an authorized Penn State address in addition to the university’s psu.edu domain, so I jumped on it. I signed up using Uncle Larry as my name.

One of the earliest things that I did on Facebook was set up an “I have seen Uncle Larry’s Invisible Deck” as a Facebook group. Whenever I would do my invisible deck routine to some students downtown, I would encourage them to sign up for my group even often handing out business cards with the group’s name on it (consider it a form of “personal branding” even before that became a hot buzzwords). I’d add a few people to the group every weekend and I soon got up to around a 100 members or so. I’m sure part of the novelty of joining the group and friending me was the fact that I was an “old guy” on Facebook (for the longest while, I was easily the oldest Penn State guy on Facebook – there were only a couple of people whose class was even within 30 years of mine).

One of the problems with my “Invisible Deck” group was that only people who were on the Penn State Facebook Network could sign up for it. I would often do the trick for someone who was on Facebook but part of another network and they couldn’t join my group. Eventually Facebook solved that problem by creating Global Groups that were open to everyone. At that point I created another “Invisible Deck” group but made it global and started pointing people to that one as the preferred one to join.

In the meantime, Facebook was experiencing explosive growth and they decided to expand beyond colleges. When they did that, I knew that it would take off among the general population to so I signed up for another Facebook account using a non PSU email address and my real name. I figured I’d use the Larry Fall Facebook account for my friends in the real world while continuing the Uncle Larry persona for students that I ran into doing my downtown magic routine.

That worked well and good for a while until Facebook somehow found out that Uncle Larry and Larry Fall were one and the same person. To this day, I’m not sure how they figured that out (you’d think that they would have better things to do). My best guess is that it was part of their campaign to eliminate a lot of the fake accounts that people were setting up. The basically disabled both accounts and contacted me saying that I was violating their terms of condition by maintaining two accounts.

I tried my best to convince them that “Uncle Larry” was a “stage name” that I used doing my “street magic performing art” and that I ought to be allowed to maintain the two accounts. They weren’t buying it. The only thing that I got them to allow me to do was to say that I could continue using “Uncle Larry” but it would have to be under just one account. At that point I had to make a decision and I went with my real name and gave up the “Uncle Larry” account.

Somewhat interestingly, Facebook eventually somewhat embraced the concept of having alternate identities. While they still want everyone to only have one account, they do now allow you to set up PAGES that are connected to your account. What the pages are typically used for are to promote someone’s business – bars and bands being very big. When FB created the Pages concept, I went out and created two that are attached to me – one called “Uncle Larry” and one called “UncleLar”. I did it as placeholders as much as anything. I’ve never built up either page nor have I ever promoted either (still, I can tell from the stats page with the accounts that almost every day someone lands on one or the other pages – whether they are actually looking for ME or not I can’t tell).

This is all background for what I really wanted to talk about. Around a month ago, Facebook announced that they were going to allow members to claim vanity or user names. Previously, if I wanted to direct someone to my Facebook account, I’d have to sent them to a url of something like www.Facebook.com/48535683, something that’s not very user friendly nor easily remembered. With my own defined username, I could tell someone to go to www.Facebook.com/LarryFall or www.Facebook.com/UncleLarry.

One problem though. Again, you could only have ONE username. That meant that I’d have to make a choice between LarryFall, UncleLarry, UncleLar, or whatever else I might come up with. I’d also have to be the first to claim it too. The gold rush for names was scheduled for midnight last night.

I did have one potential out to my dilemma. In addition to allowing vanity names for users, Facebook wisely announced vanity names for the aforementioned PAGES. That meant that I could claim LarryFall for my user name, while also nabbing UncleLarry and UncleLar for my page names.

One catch. however. There was a temporary restriction placed on the Pages. In order to claim a name for your page during the first two weeks of availability, your page would have had to have been created before May 9th (that’s the day that they announced the vanity names function and FB didn’t want people creating a bunch of pages just to grab up vanity names) – no problem for me I was on the Page thing at least a year or so ago, AND the page must have at least 1000 fans – oops, maybe I should have promoted those pages after all. I still had an out though. After two weeks, FB was opening up Pages to all so as long as UncleLarry and UncleLar didn’t get grabbed up early I could still claim them.

So at the witching hour last night, I sat down to claim my vanity name. Not surprisingly, LarryFall was available – and, just to check, so were UncleLar and UncleLarry. Last chance to change my mind (FB says there’s no going back on your decision – what you pick stays with you – they’ll have to figure out what to do about divorcees later).

I actually went with larry.fall as my username. Somewhat interestingly, I discovered this morning that larryfall and larry.fall both redirect to me (as does Larry.Fall etc – evidently capitalization doesn’t matter).

But now comes the bad news. Some jamoke picked UncleLar so I’m not going to be able to grab it in two weeks. Bah hiss. UncleLarry is still available so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. On a face-to-face basis, more people know me as Uncle Larry than UncleLar. On an internet basis, the reverse is true. People on the web know me as UncleLar not Uncle Larry. Oh well, life can’t always be perfect (at least I own UncleLar.com – which btw, I’m finally getting around to doing something with in my spare time).

I am putting up this long winded post for a reason. Facebook is around to stay at least for a while (and probably an eternity in Internet years). I would encourage everyone in the family to go out and join even if they don’t think they will ever use it. You just might change your mind down the road when it will be too late to grab your own name.

As I write this – MarilynBergquist, SteveFall, KenFall, GaryFall, and RonFall are all still available (some of the second generation Falls are already gone – ChrisFall and Shannon Hill for example – although our Chris is friends with the other Chris).

Go get your names!

BTW – it’s a good way to connect with old friends like from high school. There are 25 people from my HS graduating class on Facebook. Marilyn – there are 44 from your class some of whom’s names l recognize like Lindy, Steve Breffit, Marilyn Shriver, etc. Steve and Ken – there are 57 from each of your classes. Ron and Gary – I don’t remember your graduation years so you’re on your own.

A momentous techno-geek moment

I have broken the terabyte barrier.

I had a little technical problem last week which led to this momentous occasion.

I’ve been somewhat in the market for a new computer for quite a while. My computer went down almost a year ago and I had to fall back to an older slower one so I’ve been semi-looking around but never got around to pulling the trigger on a purchase. The inevitable happened last weekend when my backup machine seized up (I still had my IBM ThinkPad so I wasn’t completely cut off from the world) so I suddenly got more serious about getting a new one.

I happened to find a pretty good deal online from Best Buy. A two day Memorial Day Special on an HP machine (IBM sold off their PC business to Lenovo a couple of years ago, so I don’t have the IBM brand loyalty as much anymore – still get an employee discount at Lenovo though so I am a little predisposed to buying from them).

The HP machine came 2.5 GHz Pentium Dual-Core processor, 640 GB hard drive, and a 19 inch widescreen monitor. Best Buy’s Memorial Day special was $180 off which brought its price down to $499. I did my homework on the processor and while it wasn’t the latest Quad-Core, the reviews that I read called the processor a good deal (according to the reviews the processor lacks a couple of video instructions that mean that it wouldn’t be a good choice if you do much video editing but that’s something I haven’t gotten into yet). The $180 off deal got the machine into the price range that I was looking for and it was available at my local store so I jumped at it.

The machine did have a couple of shortcomings (only has one DVD drive and only supports one monitor, for example) but with the parts I have laying around the house, I figured I could address those. And it’s all those parts that led to my terabyte barrier breakthrough. With the purchase of the new computer, I decided it was probably time to do something with all these computers/parts that I have laying around. Some of the stuff works, some doesn’t – but just tossing electronics in the trash isn’t a good idea (and probably against the law to boot).

One thing that I was particularly concerned about was my hard drives. While I’m not normally a paranoid individual there’s undoubtedly information on them that could be put to use by nefarious souls. There’s also possibly stuff on them that I might want to keep (while I do back things up, like most people I don’t do it often nor thoroughly enough). Both of those considerations led me to get an external hard drive enclosure where I could install a drive from one of my other computers, dig through it looking for anything that I might need, then thoroughly erase it.

For a couple of years, I’ve had an 250GB external hard drive that I’ve attached to my computers that I primarily use for backup. It’s USB attached so I can easily move it from machine to machine (or hook it up to my ThinkPad). It was the first thing (after the internet connection) that I hooked up to my new computer. Now with my new enclosure, I just bumped my storage up even higher, It occurred to me that with my largest extra internal drive (120GB) installed, I’d be over the terabyte barrier (640GB + 250GM + 120GB = 1.01TB).

Here’s what makes that number really hit home with me.

Most of my time in IBM was spent marketing mainframe computers. Back in “my day”, a terabyte of storage meant a lot. This photo is of the IBM 3390 Direct Access Storage Device which was a breakthrough drive when we announced it.

3390 DASD

The 3390 is the device in the front next to the man. He’s standing by a string of 3390s (three of them) which are attached to the controller just to the left of the string. Behind the 3390s is a string of 3380s which the 90s replaced. The 3390 was introduced in November of 1989 so it’s just about 20 years ago (it was one of the products that I had responsibility for marketing when I lived in Chicago back then).

Here’s where things start to get mind boggling. The string of 3390 DASD that the guy in the photo is standing next to would typically sell for about $750,000. The string would hold a max of 68.1GB. To store a terabyte of data, you would need a string of 15 of these devices at a cost of well over $10,000,000. You’d also need a large well air conditioned room to hold them (they usually sat in a darkened room just off of the main computer room typically called the DASD farm). If I remember correctly, Sears/Allstate and State Farm were the first customers in the area to break through the terabyte barrier.

Today, you can buy a terabyte of storage that will sit on your desk for under $100.

In my wildest dreams I never would have imagined that I’d have a home computer with a terabyte of data storage.

C. Tod Jeffers (1941-2009)

tod-jeffersMy long time friend Tod Jeffers passed away after suffering a sudden heart attack in his sleep Saturday night.  Tod had a previous attack about ten years ago but had hoped that was all in his past.

The radio station in Wheeling WV that Tod has been working for the last few years ran several tributes to him yesterday.  Here’s the local TV news announcement of Tod’s passing.

Tod Jeffers in memorium

Here’s his obituary as it appears this morning in several papers in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Charles Tod Jeffers

April 22, 1941 – March 1, 2009 Charles Tod Jeffers, 67, of Wheeling, W.V., died suddenly at home, on Sunday, March 1, 2009. He was born on April 22, 1941, in Glen Dale, W.V., the son of the late Charles W. and Hazel Baker Jeffers.

Tod was a 1959 graduate of Moundsville High School and attended WLSC and Penn State University. He was U.S. Army Veteran serving in Greece, where he learned to speak the language fluently. Tod lived for the radio, broadcasting for over 45 years. He began his radio career while serving in Athens, Greece. After returning to the states, he continued that career at WMOD in Moundsville, WHLL-1600 in Wheeling (currently WKKX-1600), WWVA in Wheeling, WMAJ in State College, Pa., KLNK in Oklahoma City, Okla., WBNS in Columbus, Ohio, KOOL-94FM, then Z107FM in Harrisburg, Pa. He then made his final journey back to his roots in the Ohio Valley at AM1600-WKKX, where he hosted “Jeffers and Company”.

Throughout his career, he has interviewed many celebrities. Tod loved the people in the Ohio Valley. He was a pilot, an avid golfer, and quite a storyteller. He was a big West Virginia Mountaineer Fan; but Penn State held a large part of his heart. He was a season ticket holder at Beaver Stadium since 1965. He was “the voice” of the Penn State Men’s Basketball and Wrestling Programs.

Tod is survived by his daughter, Vicki Hoak (Russ Allen), of Chippewa Township, Pa.; a son, Andy Jeffers, of State College, Pa.; his grandchildren, Matt Hoak, of Vienna, Va., Danielle Hoak, of Chippewa Township, and Jasa Jeffers, of State College; his brothers, Toby (Kathy) Jeffers, of Beaver, Pa., and Jay (Kathy) Jeffers, of Moundsville; a sister, Marla (Ed) Rogerson, of Lake Arrowhead, Calif.; and his beloved pet and companion, Mikey, who will be lost without his faithful friend.

Tod will be deeply missed by all his family, friends, co-workers, and his many devoted listeners. Family will receive friends on Wednesday from 2-4 and 6-8 p.m. at Grisell Funeral Home & Crematory, 400 Jefferson Avenue, Moundsville, where Memorial Services will be held on Thursday at 4 p.m., with Mike Eskridge officiating. Private interment will be held at the convenience of the family. Sympathy expressions at grisellfuneralhomes.com.

Tod will be sorely missed. He had an incredible ability to be at home in just about any environment. Wherever he went, he would quickly become the center of attention as he would hold court with his tales. As tall as they seemed to many, having been an integral part of more than just a few, I must admit that he stuck pretty much to the truth yet still managed to make them seem wildly entertaining.

Listeners to his radio show, in response to a poll asking how Tod would be remembered, overwhelming described answered as a “storyteller”. Nothing could be more accurate.

My condolences go out to his brothers and sister, his children, and his grandchildren. His oldest grandson, Matt, graduated from Penn State two years ago. Tod and I used to joke about how he was apt to soon become a great grandfather. Sadly he won’t see that day.

Happy Birthday Sweet Sixty

MARILYN, THE UTAH FALLS HOPE YOU HAVE A FANTASTIC SIXTIETH.

Nice, I can just see the curl in my bangs.
"Nice, I can just see the curl in my bangs."

IT’S NOT ALWAYS EASY BEING THE SECOND SIBLING.

Larry's going to be such a great Dad.
"Larry's going to be such a great Dad."

THE SECOND CHILD FOLLOWING SOMEONE AS CONFIDENT AS LARRY.

If you take my picture again I'll slug you with a broom.
"If you take my picture again I'll slug you with a broom."

THE SECOND PRETTIEST CHILD (FOLLOWING GARY).

Why am I wearing this miner's lamp on my head.
"Why am I wearing this lamp on my head."

THE SECOND SMARTEST (FOLLOWING KENNY).

What's Gary packin'?
"What's Gary packin'?"

AND THE SECOND CLASSIEST (STEVE & RONNIE TIED FOR FIRST).

BUT MARILYN, YOU ARE SECOND TO NONE WHEN IT COMES TO LOVE AND DEVOTION TO THE FAMILY.

I'm into younger men.
"I'm into younger men."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY,

KENNY, LISA, ELLIOT AND NATALIE

ESPN.com Story on Classic CB West game

I was at the game. One of the best football games I’ve ever seen (also one of the coldest). The CB West kids really gutted out the victory. The guy that wrote the story did his homework. Most accounts of the game that talk about Piccotti being out don’t mention that CBW was actually down to their fourth string running back (the kid had just gotten moved up from JV a couple of weeks earlier) but the guy that wrote this piece got it.

Click on the image to read the whole article.

Christmas Card Hype

Just wanted to post a little retrospective of past NJ Falls’ Xmas cards.  I’ve got a new one coming, and really think y’all will like it, so I wanted to create a little “buzz” for the debut.

I figure I’ll post the new one Xmas Eve, unless the public outcry for a preview becomes overwhelming, in which case I might release the digital version early.

xmas2001.jpg

xmas2002.jpg

xmas2004.jpg

xmas2005.jpg

xmas2006.jpg

Good news Ron…

Your story isn’t gone forever.

I was afraid that your Phi Psi 500 moment in the sun might have been lost forever but the Penn State Daily Collegian has just finished digitizing all of their back issues (there was a gap from 1977-87 that was incomplete for the longest while). Guess what made the archives?

From the April 14th, 1986 issue, on page two…

Craziness was the norm at this year’s Phi Psi

For some of the runners the event was a true family affair. Larry Fall, class of 1972, has run in the race approximately 15 times, and has won the masters division in the past (UL note to Collegian writer: I won the hole damn thing too). This year, however, his brother Ron, 14 years younger, ran against him in Saturday’s race.

“I’ve heard about this race for years, now I’m going to challenge him in my first time running it” Ron Fall said.

But experience paid off in the long run as Larry Fall best his brother by about two minutes.

“It’s a pain for about 1o minutes, but from then on it’s great. I’ve met some of my best friends here at the Phi Psi 500” Larry Fall added.

I feel much better now that I know the results of the race are preserved for posterity sake.

BTW – Some added notes culled from the results piece at the end of the article:

My buddy Randy Woolridge (mistakenly spelled Woolrich in the article) won the masters in a pedestrian 8:10 time (when in shape I usually finished around 7:00 with my best time 6:35 recorded as a master).

The third place masters finisher in the race was Dave Barsda, who was a former employee of mine from Harrisburg. Dave came up from Harrisburg to see me (I had moved to CT a couple of years earlier) and run in the race.

The remark about meeting some of my best friends at the rate was quite true and reads even more eerily when I realized that I’m still in touch with three of the students who ran on the team that placed second in the race. Eric Brugel, along with his brother and sister, worked at the Tavern. He comes back to State College for an annual golf tournament that I play in. Tim Flynn, is the wrestling coach at Edinboro University.

The most successful of the bunch though is Chris Bevilacqua, who went on to make millions in the sports and TV business. Chris went to work for Nike out of college – he’s the one that started the first Nike shoe and apparel contracts with college programs. He left Nike to work for Major League Baseball for a while, then started his most successful venture College Sports Television, aka CSTV. CSTV was eventually bought out by CBS which put considerable coin in Chris’s pocket. He worked for CBS for a while as the head of the regional sports programming but then left to go out on his own. He’s currently working on some soccer/TV startup deal but I’m not privy to the details. However, on that spring Saturday, some 21+ years ago, Chris was just another beer jugging, pavement pounding College student out to have some fun.

Ron and the Phi Psi 500

by request (since it appears that he isn’t about to tell the story).

Sometime in the mid 80s, Ron called me up and said that he wanted to challenge me in the Phi Psi. I wasn’t in the greatest shape but figure my experience would count for something so I gladly accepted the challenge. Ron flew into New York from Chicago and we headed up to State College for the weekend (I’m pretty sure that Gary came along too).

I used some of my influence with the Phi Psi’s to make sure that Ron and I would be teamed together at the start – racers go off five at a time in 30 second intervals in order to space out the hordes. That way we’d be able to go head-to-head.

At some point shortly before the start of the race, a local newspaper reporter got wind that Ron had flown all the way in from Chicago to challenge me in the race so she interviewd him. I wasn’t privy to the actual interview but someone told me that Ron was brimming with confidence in the interview. He evidently said something to the effect of “I’ve been listening to these Phi Psi stories for years and, even though my brother is supposed to be pretty good, I think I can out run his butt handily.”

The way that the Phi Psi course is laid out, you have to run about a third of a mile to the first bar. The six bars are then strung closely together for about the next third of a mile. Then you finish by running the third of the mile back to the starting line. When you get to the first bar, you’ve run a decent distance and you can be quite winded but you can’t wait to catch your breath, you need to quickly slam that beer down and move on.

I knew that Ron was in better shape than I was so my plan wasn’t to try and out run him. It was to make up time IN the bars drinking the beers. I knew from experience that the Phi Psi isn’t like any other run that you have ever done and the first time you do it, it can be quite difficult.

I had no idea what Ron’s strategy for the race was going to be but having caught him mentioning several times about how he thought he could outrun me, I didn’t expect him to just run along with me. I figured he’d take off on his own and that’s exactly what he did. That was just what I had hoped. All I had to do was maintain contact with him and just look for the right moment to make my move.

Ron went off at a nice pace and I settled in a few yards behind him. I’d estiimate he probably had about 20 yards on me as he ran into the first bar, aptly named The Phyrst. The Phyrst is a basement bar so you have to run down a dozen or so steps to get into it. The beers are all lined up waiting for you on the bar right smack at the bottom. You just slam your 50 cents on the bar to pay for the beers (archaic PA laws meant that each runner had to actually pay for his beer when they came in), chug the beer, then turn to the right and go out the back door which was only about 15 feet away. There wasn’t a whole lot of room in the bar and you didn’t stay in it very long.

The 20 yard lead that Ron had meant that he probably got to the bar maybe 4-5 seconds ahead of me (however even thought he was in front of me he had no idea how big a lead he had while I knew exactly how far behind I was). As I came down the stairs, he was staring at his beer which was maybe a third empty. This was my moment. As many people have said the first time they run the race “you think you are going to be thirsty when you get to the bars but when you look at that first beer, it’s not the least bit appetizing”. I quickly chugged the beer, turned and ran out the back door and that’s the last I saw of Ron until the end of the rest.

I continued on my way and forced myself to finish the race. I wasn’t in particularly good shape, so a victory over me was really there for the taking. I don’t remember what my time was but it was one of my worst ever. I struggled but finished and then waited for Ron.

He came in a minute or two after me. He was in considerable discomfort and bent over trying to keep from getting sick. Just about that point, the reporter saw him. She came over and asked “how did you do?” Reportedly, Ron’s response was “It was a LOT harder than I thought it would be – but at least I think I beat my brother”. At that point the reporter pointed in my direction and said “I don’t think so. He’s been back here for a while.” Ron looked like this 😯 .

After he regained his composure, Ron explained what had happened. He said that he felt relatively good going off and that he thought he was running well under control. He said that when he got to the bottom of the stairs at the Phyrst and tried to drink the beer he had a little trouble getting it down. He said he took a couple of gulps and then tried to catch his breath (this was the moment that I saw him staring at his beer). He then took another couple of gulps but had trouble with them too (while he was forcing those gulps down, I had finished my beer and was headed to the back door). Ron said that at this point he decided to change his strategy. He decided he would just make sure he stayed ahead of me so he kept an eye on the front stairs waiting for me to come down as he finished the beer (unfortunately for him, at this point I was already headed UP the back stairs).

At each succeeding bar, Ron invoked the same strategy – drink the beer as fast as he could without forcing it but while also keeping one eye on the door so he could stay in front of me. Of course, while he was doing that, I was just stretching my lead.

So, although my time was one of my worst ever, my head-to-head victory made it one of my more satisfying races.

Ron – feel free to correct anything that I might have wrong (or add anything that you would like) 😆