Back in the days before cellphones were less ubiquitous in our everyday lives and a smartwatch meant one of those sweet Casio calculator watches (side note: in elementary school, my friend Jerry got a Pac-Man watch for his birthday, one that you could actually play Pac-Man on, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever invented. How could you ever be bored again with a Pac-Man game right on your wrist??), I dropped an old school pedometer in my active 8-year-old’s pants pocket to see how many steps he would record in a normal school day. When he came home, I took it out to see how he did.

30,000. He took 30,000 steps between leaving for school in the morning and returning home around 3:30 pm. He might have broken the pedometer if I had left it in his pocket for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, child labor laws demand that 8-year-olds attend school rather than seek employment with any CME/CE companies, thus rendering them ineligible for the CMEpalooza STEPtacular Challenge and giving the rest of us a chance to win.

What is the CMEpalooza STEPtacular Challenge you ask? Allow me to elaborate.

• The challenge begins today (April 3) and will go until the end of the day on Sunday (April 9)
• The challenge is to record at least 10,000 steps a one day. For each day during the challenge period that you record 10,000 steps, please send in a screenshot of your step-counting device with the number of recorded steps, either by email (thecmeguy@gmail.com) or text (267-666-0CME [0263]). Please include the following information:
  • Screenshot of number of steps
  • Name
  • Email
  • Physical mailing address
  • T-shirt size (please remember to include this!)
• Each screenshot submitted is an entry into a random drawing for a $50 Amazon gift card (there are five gift cards; you cannot win more than one.) Winners will be drawn during the week of CMEpalooza Spring.
• The person who records and submits the most steps in one day wins a $250 Amazon gift card
• Everyone who enters will receive a CMEpalooza STEPtacular Challenge performance T-shirt from Talem Health. They’re pretty great, see?
  
• In lieu of an entrance fee, we are asking everyone to please consider joining CMEpalooza and Talem Health in making a donation to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The recommended amount is $25, or whatever you are comfortable giving. Please follow this link to make a donation.

Thanks everyone and good luck!

CMEpalooza STEPtacular Challenge sponsored by:

My 16-year-old daughter sent me this Never Have I Ever: Retro Edition that’s been circulating around the various social networks recently.

I scored zero points. Scott scored 1 point — he wasn’t cool enough for a MySpace account.

(Quick side note: my daughter was completely baffled by my description of a floppy disk, especially when I started expounding on the differences between a 5.25″ floppy and a 3.5″ diskette.)

Not wanting to be left out of the fun, I put together my own Never Have I Ever list. I thought you might enjoy it, too.

Never Have I Ever: Video Conference Edition
Give yourself 1 point if on a video conference you have never…

• Started talking at the same time as another person and then both said “Go ahead” at the same time
• Started talking while muted
• Told someone they were talking while muted
• Yelled at a cat/dog/kid/spouse/partner/etc. while you thought you were muted, but you were not muted
• Had a cat/dog/kid/spouse/partner/etc. accidentally pop on screen
• Turned off your camera and folded laundry/emptied dishwasher/some other household chore
• Turned off your camera and reclined on a couch/bed/floor
• Turned off your camera and gone into the bathroom
• Been the only person with their camera on
• Been the only person with their camera off
• Been the only person in a meeting and then realized you got the time wrong
• Apologized for leaving early because you had another meeting, but you didn’t actually have another meeting
• Realized your shirt was inside out when you saw yourself on camera
• Given a presentation and asked “Can you see my slides?”
• Watched a presentation where the presenter kept their slides in “normal” mode rather than “slide show” mode
• Heard someone arrive late and interrupt the person speaking by loudly saying something like “HELLO? THIS IS [PERSON’S NAME]. SORRY I’M LATE. I HAD TROUBLE GETTING ON THE ZOOM/WEBEX/TEAMS/ETC.”

Once again, my score is zero. Hopefully, our collective score for CMEpalooza Spring will be much higher (except for cats and dogs on screen. The more cats and dogs on screen, the better. Kids, too, I suppose. Not spouses and partners, though. They’re annoying.)

 

And just like that…we’re back! Yes, it seems like just yesterday I was saying to Scott upon the conclusion of another successful CMEpalooza, “Thank god that’s over! That was our best CMEpalooza, yet!” Where does the time go?

Despite the quick passage of time, a surprising number of major events have occurred in our lives during the four months since CMEpalooza Fall. A brief summary:

• The Philadelphia Phillies played in the World Series! And lost.
• The Philadelphia Union played in the MLS Cup! And lost.
• The Philadelphia Eagles played in the Super Bowl! And lost.
• Derek went to his first Alliance conference since 2020
• Scott made fun of Derek for wearing a tattered baseball hat that looked like it was stained with tobacco juice to a “fancy hat” party at the Alliance conference
• Cocaine Bear was released in theaters

It’s been a wild couple of months, but we’re happy to get back to what we do best: putting together the best CMEpalooza yet!

Click here for the preliminary agenda for CMEpalooza Spring 2023. We will be updating final details for some of the sessions over the next few weeks, but this should at least give you a general overview for most of the sessions.

The response to our call for abstracts was amazing (double our previous record number of submissions!) and we want to give a big thank you to everyone who submitted. We easily could have put together a three-day CMEpalooza with the quality of the abstracts we received. The worst part about asking for abstracts is then telling people we didn’t accept their abstract (I wimped out and asked Scott to send out the rejection emails. He has a heart of stone [OK, that part is not true. I just didn’t want to do it.]) (note from Scott: Derek isn’t totally wrong. I like to tell people I have a heart of gypsum. It’s stone, but a very soft stone. Hey, I took two semesters of geology as an undergrad. I had to do something with that knowledge)

Our goal was to put together an agenda you will find interesting, informative, and entertaining. We think we’ve done that. Hopefully you will, too.

See you all on April 12!