So, how many staples do you have in your chest?

I currently have 18 in mine. That's because I just had my first battery replacement surgery for my DBS pulse generator. It has been almost 3 years since the whole shebang was installed and the battery needed to be changed - it was in danger of running out of power. So, I went in on Friday morning at 6AM, was wheeled into the OR around 9AM, and was in the recovery room at 10:30AM. Home by noon. Big difference from the original surgery wouldn't you say?

All in all it was a very well orchestrated procedure and I don't remember much of anything after entering the OR. I recall talking to the doctor about Michael Jackson and Thriller and also remember talking to someone who was restarting the device after it had been sewn up in place. Don't ask me what we talked about though ... I have no idea.

A few pain pills here and there have made the recovery pretty easy so far. Took the bandage off today and a quick shower helped to make me feel somewhat normal again.

Baseball memories

Last night Jonathan Sanchez pitched a no-hitter, the least likely member of the Giants' pitching staff to do so. This was the first no-hitter by a Giant's pitcher since John Montefusco in 1976, the first at home since Ed Halicki in 1975 and the first by a Giant's left-hander since Carl Hubbell in 1929! The 33 years since the last Giants no-hitter was the longest streak going, not counting the New York Mets and (sorry, Tom) the San Diego Padres, neither which has pitched a no-hitter yet. The Padres were no-hit by Tim Lincecum for 6 + innings the night before. Wow, how would you like to be a Padres fan today?

I remember a game Tom and I attended at Candlestick Park back in the 1980s when Scott Garrelts of the Giants threw 8 2/3 no-hit innings only to give up a hit to Paul O'Neill of the Reds in the ninth inning. We were sitting in the upper deck and were out of our seats the minute the ball hit the ground trying to beat the crowd out to the parking lot. Getting out of the 'Stick in those days was very tough to do if you insisted on waiting until the end of the game.

Other interesting baseball moments I recall in person include:

Mark McGwire taking batting practice at Candlestick around the time he was making his run at 70 homers - out of 25 pitches he saw during his session he hit 15 or 16 over the fence in left ...
Will Clark driving a double down the line in right, driving in his 5th, 6th and 7th runs of the game in the bottom of the ninth to beat (ugh, sorry again, TW) the Padres ... the 13 runs scored in one inning in San Diego by SF ... catching a batting practice homer in the left field stands in San Diego ... watching a fan sitting a couple of rows in front of us in Cincinnati completely misjudge a foul ball and see the ball hit him flush in the eye socket ... the tough-looking tattooed biker dude in San Diego, who after spending almost three full innings heckling Willie McGee, began to sob softly (real tears!) after someone sitting around him complained to an usher who told him to knock it off.

One thing I haven't yet experienced at a baseball game is catch a foul ball. I have been to almost 100 games and never even had a foul come close enough to touch. The closest I have come was a game at AT&T a few years back when I was sitting in a lower box behind the first base dugout about half way up the section. A foul ball came back over my head towards the upper deck where it appeared to get ready to bounce off of the scoreboard. I had read the angle and thought this was going to be it - the one! Except the ball stuck in one of the light sockets that make up the old-style scoreboards! The socket was barely big enough to fit a ball into - and yet there it was ... it never came out.

A little history, part 2

Early in the 1980's (pre-internet days) there were sites that existed online known as Bulletin Board System or BBS's. They were run on personal computers that were connected to phone numbers that were usually devoted to accessing the BBS only. You had to dial up to these sites using a modem and once you connected (not always a sure thing in those days since the number of concurrent users wasn't very high) you could navigate a text menu to find software to download or forums to post messages to other users - a sort of public email system at that time.

I would have to run software on my home computer then dial a phone number using a phone, once the dial tone changed I would have to place the phone receiver into a pair of rubber cups that were on top of the actual modem. Then the modems became more useful and faster as the years went on, losing the rubber cups and connecting directly to your home computer and eventually being integrated inside the computer on a card.

AOL came along in the early to mid-90's and we got on board here at our home around 1994-95. There was a time when AOL was our only access to the Internet and you had to use the AOL interface at all times - even when accessing early web pages.

Now most of us have broadband connections to the Internet that allow us to email, surf, blog, share videos and photos, access our medical info, play games, check our bank accounts, pay bills, read the news, buy practically anything for sale and even watch TV shows - all at speeds unheard of only a decade ago.

Who knows what is coming next? I expect more wireless connections available freely to anyone anywhere in the next few years, easier setups to allow Ma and Pa to hook up anything they need to use online regardless of their level of computer skill and all of your key personal information eventually stored on or inside of your body.

I know there are people that aren't sure that last item is a good thing but think about how much key information you have to carry around either in a wallet, purse or even your memory? How nice would it be to have all of your account numbers, medical info/history, usernames/passwords, phone numbers, appointments and dates available in a chip that is attached to you somehow that isn't easily lost or stolen?

A little history

As I watched Modern Marvels on the History Channel this morning I was reminded of some of the incredible advances in technology that I take for granted every day that have just appeared in the past couple of decades.

For instance, in the very early 80's I recall going down to Macy's at Valley Fair with Ralph to purchase Atari 800 home computers for each of us. I had to type in lines of BASIC code to run programs and connect a tape drive to it (just exactly like an audio tape recorder) in order to save these programs to use again. The 5.25 inch floppy disc drive cost almost as much as the computer so that had to come much later. Then came the second floppy, the thermal printer, more memory, upgrade to the Atari 800XL, the Atari ST, 10MB external hard drive, a Packard Bell 286 PC, followed by 386, 486, Pentium I, Pentium II, Pentium III desktops, Dell laptops, HP laptops... all the way up to the system I sit at today which has essentially four processors running 3GB of RAM along with 640GB of hard disk space (compare that to the 10MB hard drive I bought back in the mid - 80's for almost as much as my entire system cost last year).

How about any of these everyday devices? CD player, laser disc player, Palm Pilot, DVD player, VCR, CD recorder, DVD recorder, digital camera, camcorder, cell phone, desktop printer, LCD televsion, IPOD, - all of these have been created in my lifetime and I have at various times at least one of each. The first digital camera I remember using was a Kodak SLR with a hard drive back that had to be connected to a SCSI card installed in a computer - the camera and card ran around $10,000 when it first appeared and we had one at Applied. We also had one of the first CD recorders on the market. I still have the very first CD I created back more than 18 years ago from that system. It has held up much better than any tape I have!

The main tasks that I always wanted to be able to do at home on any system I had was to create and edit video. This always seemed to be one generation of equipment away from what I could afford - until the turn of the century. Around the year 2000 I finally obtained the proper combination of software tools and hardware that allowed for full screen video input and output. This included the camcorder I still use today. I was one of the first students in my video class at West Valley to be able to edit my assignments on a computer. Now desktop video is commonplace - Windows these days even comes with software installed to make and output video.

Next time: getting online in the early days, dial tones, acoustic cups and AOL ...

Mini - movie review of UP

Lauri, Mallory and I went to the movies on Sunday to see the newest Pixar film, "Up". It was a good story and as usual a visual treat. It was interesting to see the design choices that they made - especially with the people. In the beginning of the computer graphic animation era there were many problems with trying to depict people on screen using CGI - the "uncanny valley" principal appears. As with most new tools it took the artists using them a while to figure out the best ways to get around this problem. More often in the early days animators simply avoided people as much as possible using animals or machinery to tell stories. "Up" went with the exaggerated design angle which worked well, for me anyway.

As usual there was a new short from Pixar before the feature and it was a hoot! Those folk know how to create a story - no matter how long or short it is. Made a tear come to my eye ...

Elvis is meowing to me right now - I think it is his daily round of "Marco Polo". Yep, there he is now. After noon - ish every day he wanders through the house looking for me and after he finds me he goes back to bed. What a life.

I almost forgot to post one of my favorite new web sites to browse: Awkward Family Photos. This is a site devoted to just what the title says it is - awkward family photos. Take a peek and see!

Some updates

Chelsea and Raquel are in Uganda right now and we were discussing them last night at our bible study - specifically how amazing it is that they can be thousands of miles away and we can follow their progress through their blogs. If you haven't peeked at Chelsea's blog yet I encourage you to do so in the column on the right.

Made a library run on Tuesday... picked up more books about baseball including Hank Greenwald's and Jose Canseco's bios.

I have an appointment in July to have the battery changed in my brain stimulator and apparently it is more involved than I was led to believe. I will be completely asleep when they do the surgery (that is actually better in my opinion) but I will still be able to go home straight from the recovery room when I awake - no overnight stay planned as of now.

The final version of the music video we made at the Witticks last month can be viewed at this link.

Weekend of fun

We went up to visit my sister and her family over the Memorial Day weekend and while we were there we shot some footage for a music video I had planned on making. It was interesting to see what happens to different people when a camera is suddenly thrust into their faces - you never really know what you will get.

I had put some thought and pre-work into planning for the shoot but still ended up short of footage. I seem to remember that real directors have to shoot more than 10 times the amount of footage than they will actually use.

Overall I had fun and hope that everyone I roped into being behind or in front of the camera did too. It made me laugh to hear my niece telling her grandmother all about what we had done.