The Tidal Wave – the best bar shot ever?

Spent the weekend in Dewey Beach DE where the latest rage in bar shots is the “Tidal Wave”.

Here’s a video I shot of a bunch of Santa Clauses (more on that later) doing Tidal Waves (yes I did one too but I couldn’t videotape myself) at the Starboard in Dewey.

The shot can be anything that you’d like, it’s the water in the face that gives it the name. The shot was taking the bar by storm and people were lining up to have water thrown in their faces

OK – now the Santa suits story.

There’s a group in Philly that sponsor’s their version of a Santa Claus bar tour (similar to the one that I run in State College but on a slightly grander scale). Their tour is called the “Running of the Santas”.

“Rudolph’s Revenge” is their July version of the Santa Run. It’s a bus/ferry trip from Sea Isle City NJ to Dewey Beach that departs Friday night and returns on Sunday with the centerpiece of the trip being the Revenge Party at the Starboard.

Here are a couple of photo’s I took at the Starboard during the Rudolph’s Revenge party.

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Next year I might bring my Santa costume, or I might try the Starboard’s Dewey Beach version of Pamplona’s “Running of the Bulls” festival instead – or maybe both.

Following up on my surgery

The adhesive tape fell off today so here are the photos that I promised. It looks kind of gross but everything feels pretty normal (normal but still numb that is).

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Cameras are everywhere these days

Seems you can’t go anywhere without getting your picture taken these days. This just showed up on Facebook last night.

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Over the fourth, I ran into Gary and Katie Gray downtown with a bunch of their family and friends celebrating the 21st birthday of one of their sons. I had just come from a Fourth of July party which had a hat theme (and yes I did win the prize for best hat).

Wrist Surgery

I briefly mentioned in a comment on Steve’s Battle Creek post that I was having wrist surgery. Here’s a follow up with more details.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had numbness in my right ring and pinky fingers for over six months. I first noticed it sometime after my pneumonia bout. I wasn’t sure if the numbness perfectly coincided with the pneumonia or not because there was enough other things bothering me that a little finger problem was easily overlooked by me.

At some point in the process of regaining my health, I noticed the numbness. At first I thought it was from spending too much time on my computer – since that’s about all I could do (I was thinking carpal tunnel syndrome but it turns out carpal tunnel affects the other fingers). I tried a couple of home remedies but they didn’t work. At my two month checkup with my doc, I mentioned the problem. He diagnosed it as probably ulnar tunnel entrapment (he was dead on there).

It turns out that there are three likely spots that the ulnar nerve can get entrapped – the wrist, the elbow and the neck:

My doc said that the rapid weight loss that I had could have caused some things to shift around and caused the nerve to get pinched up by my elbow (turns out he was off on the location). He said to wait until I gained the weight back to see if it would go away. If it didn’t he’d send me to a specialist.

Well it didn’t go away, so he arranged some additional tests. I had an EMG (Electromyography) where they stuck a punch of pins and needles in me to run an electric shock up and down the nerve path to figure out what was getting through to where.

The EMG showed that the problem was in my wrist which was a little unusual in that most times the blockage occurs at the elbow. In a way that was good news because it’s a lot easier to get at the nerve in the wrist than it is anywhere else. The bad news was that physical therapy can’t do much for the wrist problem and surgery is pretty much the only course (waiting it out to just hope it goes away is another).

So I went off to see an orthopedic surgeon who confirmed the diagnosis and scheduled the surgery. BTW – my surgery was done by Paul Suhey, the brother of longtime Chicago Bear running back Matt Suhey. The operation was Tuesday a week ago. Basically, what they do is to partially cut the ligament that’s causing the pressure on the nerve. Scar tissue will eventually fill in the gap in the ligament but it should reduce the tension in the ligament enough that the pressure will no longer be on the nerve and it will regrow.

Unfortunately, the regrowth is a long process. The doc said the nerve will probably regenerate at a pace of about 1mm per day. Since I’ve got about 5-6 inches of affected nerve that means it could take 5 months or so to completely heal (1 inch equals 25.4 mm, so 6 inches would be 152 days).

The surgery was done on an outpatient basis and I was conscious the whole time (although they didn’t let me watch the actually cutting of the wrist). It was kind of weird because I could feel him doing something down there but there was no pain involved.

The whole procedure only took about 10-15 minutes and I was good to go. They wrapped my wrist up in kind of a brace and sent me off. I had some oxycodone as a pain killer but only took that for a couple of days. I basically had no restrictions in what I could do. The doc basically said that the brace will prevent me from doing anything that could actually damage the wrist. His quote was “If you can do it, it’s ok to do it”.

Here’s a little video of what I’m walking around with at the moment.

I’ve gone over to the Dark Side

Actually broke down and purchased my first Apple product last week – an iPhone.

I must admit that I’m pretty impressed with the technology. One of the more impressive apps is one called AutoStitch which stitches together photos taken with the phone enabling you to produce some pretty good panoramas with the phone. Here are some photos I took at yesterday’s Spike’s baseball game.

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The phone also take some pretty decent video. I decided to try out the video feature for the first time when one of the Spikes came up to bat in the eighth inning. I got pretty lucky as he hit the game winning home run.

And incredibly, I hear you can even make phone calls on this thing (although I haven’t tried that yet)

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.

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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.

Bergquist/Hill Family Updates

It’s been ages since I’ve updated the blog with any family news and we have some fun info to share.  First, Brian and Andrea are expecting a baby in September (the 19th is her due date).  It (as of now they are not finding out the sex) will be affectionately referred to as “Baby Wayne” (just a fun name, not one of the choices).  Andrea is doing very well…no morning sickness, etc.  We saw them Easter Sunday and she is starting to have a slight bump.

Shannon is in Italy visiting her boyfriend. Rook (a nickname given to him in culinary school) moved there over a year ago to start his own restaurant in a village up in the Alps. Yesterday was his birthday so he prepared an 8 course dinner for Shannon and a bunch of his friends. Dessert was an individual chocolate egg filled with ice cream and other sweets. At each person’s plate he poured molten caramel over the top of the egg. This began a melt-down of the egg so that one could get at the sweets inside.  Shannon hit something hard, picked it up and Rook dropped to his knees and proposed. Kind of romantic, huh? She said “yes” and the party began!  He did get on the phone to tell me that he was coming home within a couple of months. He has hired someone to take over the restaurant and is able to get out of his contract with the village.  So fortunately they will be residing back in New Hampshire.

Next week (May 3rd thru the 10th) we’re off to Disney with Dawn, Chris, Blake and Reid. Should be a great time…Blake can’t stop talking about it!

That’s about it…hope all is well with everyone!

Good News – Bad News

First the good news.  Last night Lex & I finished building his 1st skateboard.  We actually laminated 7 layers of wood, sanded, painted 2 colors, cut out a graphic for the grip surface, attached trucks, bearings and wheels.

The maiden voyage came at about 8pm last night and I don’t think the board has left his side since.

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The bad news: I’m having surgery to repair a classic groin hernia tomorrow.

Jack R. Cortner (1929-2009)

Lisman’s father, Jack, passed away last Sunday, March 8th, 2009.  He had been hospitalized in Sewanee, his home, over a month ago  and died there, just days before he would have moved to a nursing home.  Lisman is quite at ease over his passing.  Jack had put up a long, and at times, difficult battle with aging and illness.  Lisman was with him just weeks ago as he entered the hospital for the last time.

Below is the first draft of Jack’s NY Times obituary:

Jack R. Cortner, formerly of New York,  died Sunday Mar. 8th, in Sewanee,
Tennessee  after a long illness.  Father of Lisman Cortner Fall and grandfather
of Charlotte and Lex Fall of Montclair, NJ,  Mr. Cortner was born in 1929 in
Memphis, TN.   A New York City resident from 1962-1996,  he worked on Wall Street
as an investment officer for The Bank of New York,  in assets management for
Dean-Witter, and the Trust Dept., Manufacturers-Hanover Bank.  Services will
be held on April 4th in the Chapel of St. Andrew’s School, Sewanee, where
Jack had long been a trustee.  Memorials may be sent to The Scholarship
Fund, St. Andrew’s School, Sewanee, TN 37375.

Jack with his grandchildren, 2006:

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Jack’s home in Tennessee:

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