Hey gang, just a quick note to let you all know that today is not the last day to register for CMEpalooza, because, well, we don’t have registration at CMEpalooza. You can just drop by whenever you want on Wednesday, April 17, click on the live video stream, and start watching. It’s wild.

Of course, if something truly awful happens that prevents you from watching CMEpalooza live – like if you have a burst appendix or perhaps accidentally eat a piece of white chocolate and have to go to the ER – you can always watch the archive of all the presentations later that day (or any other day). Again, no registration and no charge. The advantages of a virtual conference.

Scott and I briefly toyed with the idea of trying an actual in-person, live meeting CMEpalooza. Rather, I toyed with the idea. Scott thought it was a dumb idea from the very beginning, which is probably right. Anyway, I checked out a potential venue last week. Here’s my picture from inside the Wells Fargo Center, home of the Arena Football League’s Philadelphia Soul. Also, apparently a couple teams named the Flyers and 76ers play there. News to me.

Frankly, I’m not sure if this space is big enough to accommodate us. Is the Astrodome still around?

Speaking of the 76ers, Sixers legend Bobby Jones was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame this past Saturday. While Bobby Jones looked like a high school AP calculus teacher even in his prime playing days, he was surprisingly athletic and a nasty dunker. Whenever he passes on from this world to the next, I imagine his conversation with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates will go something like this:

St. Peter: “Name?”

Bobby Jones: “Bobby Jones.”

St. Peter: “Reason you should be let into heaven?”

Bobby Jones: “I dunked on Larry Bird.”

St. Peter: “Uh…didn’t you start a sports ministry for at-risk youth??”

Bobby Jones: “Yes, but…” [whips out cellphone and plays this video]

St. Peter [with a small smile]: “OK, you’re in. Next!”

Did I just write this entire blog post for the sole purpose of showing a video of Bobby Jones dunking on Larry Bird and knocking him on his butt?

Only St. Peter knows for sure…

About 2 weeks ago, I got one of those pesky automated emails in my Inbox:

Your mailbox is at 99% capacity. Please delete unwanted messages to free up space for future emails.

So of course I stopped everything immediately to make sure I didn’t miss that email from the producers of Wheel of Fortune inviting me to be a contestant on that show (I’d dominate for reals, yo).

I went back a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 1 month, to see what I could delete. And wouldn’t you know it, but it seems like at least 50% of the “unneeded” emails came from our adoring tolerating public asking rabidly, “When is the next iteration of CMEpalooza Pursuit coming?” I guess people really, really enjoy it. Or maybe they are just greedy. Whatever.

Anyway, we’re happy today to announce the launch of CMEpalooza Pursuit 2019, our annual Sponsor event.

Here is how CMEpalooza Pursuit works:

1. Click here to download the list of questions
2. Click here to download the entry form
3. Use the Sponsor tab of the CMEpalooza website to get links to all of the companies involved in this event. You’ll need to visit the Sponsor sites to get the answers to all of our questions. We promise there is nothing that can’t be found within a click or two.
4. Complete the entry form by coming up with a correct response to one question in each category. That’s six questions/answers in all. Now, we have had some brown nosers who have tried in the past to answer more than the required amount of questions, which is fine. It just won’t help you win.
5. Send your completed entry form to me via email at scott@medcasewriter.com by 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday, April 12.
6. Cross your fingers.

We’ll be giving away $500 in Amazon gift cards this Spring – there will be 5 winners of $100 each.

Here’s a little secret that may convince you to play – there aren’t thousands of people expected to complete CMEpalooza Pursuit. If you play, your chances are reasonably good of winning a prize. Better than my odds of one day calling out vowels and consonants to Pat and Vanna, for instance.

And…go.

 

My son is a freshman in high school and is on the rowing team, which is a new sport for all of us. I think he likes the fact that this is one of the few sports I know nothing about — other than what I read in The Boys in the Boat — and therefore I can’t give him any helpful advice. This may come as a shock to some of you, but he seems not to particularly care for my undoubtedly extremely helpful tips and pointers as to how he can better himself in any number of areas in his life. His loss.

An email recently went around to all parents of the rowers on my son’s team asking for volunteers to “drive a launch” at the upcoming spring regattas. Now, I had no idea what “a launch” is. I thought it was a truck with a trailer that hauls around the boats. So I volunteered. Why not?

It wasn’t until a few days later that I discovered that a launch is actually a mini-catamaran that coaches use during practice and referees/marshals use during the regattas. They use volunteers to zip the referees around on the water during the races. Once I realized that, I was totally in. I had one training session on how to drive the launch (I still have no idea why it’s called that) and then went live last Sunday. I had no idea what I was doing.

Fortunately, despite the frigid temps, the marshal I was responsible for motoring around was very nice, and we had a fun morning out on the lovely Schuylkill (pronounce it with me: “SKOO-kill”) River, yelling at rowers and getting them lined up correctly at the starting area. Here’s a picture of me hard at work along the famous Boathouse Row.

(Here comes the segue.)

Today we, ahem, launch something new at CMEpalooza (did you see what I did there?)

(note from Scott: Unfortunately, I did. We have, ahem, sunk to a new low. Did you see what I did there?)

The people have spoken and you are requesting, nay demanding, a CMEpalooza podcast. And we have heard you and responded. Kind of. There is a CMEpalooza podcast now, but it is basically just an archive of the audio from previous sessions. And for right now, it’s just the audio from the very first CMEpalooza back in 2014 as part of our 5-year anniversary celebration. It’s a work in progress, and we’ll be gradually adding the rest of the sessions over the next few weeks. Like driving the launch on Sunday, I really don’t know what I’m doing, but you’re all nice people and hopefully this will turn out fine, too.

Will we ever turn it into an actual podcast with original content updated on a regular basis? I don’t know. We’ll see. For now, this is what we have. Here are the links if you want to subscribe. Or you can just search for “CMEpalooza” in either Apple or Google podcasts.

Apple podcast (I can’t get the stupid Apple podcast badge to work, so here’s the link)