Can You Hear Me Now?

Read this story about a surgery performed by the light of a cell phone.

The most dramatic highlight of the mission occurred on the second day, May 27, around 2 p.m. when the lights went out during surgeries.

In one operating room where Dr. San Gabriel and Dr. Vicente Castillo, were in the process of extracting a grapefruit- sized lymphoma, there was no light since there were no windows.

Dr. Castillo, a long-time Globe postpaid subscriber grabbed his Nokia 1130 unit from his chest, turned on the built-in flashlight and let Maia Lardizabal, the attending volunteer-nurse, illuminate the field. Two other nurses used their cellphones for the procedure.

Paging Dr. MacGyver.

A Fundraising Idea

I say we sell chances to slug this guy. I'm in.

PITTSBURGH — A youth baseball coach paid one of his players to hurt an 8-year-old mentally disabled teammate so the boy wouldn't be able to play in a game, state police said Friday.

Mark R. Downs Jr., 27, of Dunbar, offered one of his players $25 to hit the boy in the head with a baseball, police said. Witnesses told police Downs didn't want the boy to play in the T-ball game because of his disability.

Jerk.

Broadband Crazy

I seem to have put the blog into a hiatus, not on purpose I assure you. But you see, I have this brand new DSL connection.

I'm Night S. and I'm a broadbandaholic.

There. I've said it. They say that's the first step. I'd look up what the second step is but I've got to get back to downloading lots and lots of stuff.

I'll be back soon, I hope.

Life in the Fast Lane

Wahoo!

I got the DSL connection up and running today and it's great. I should have done it a long time ago. Speed is really good considering my location, around 1.4Mbps download and about 3.6Mbps upload. That's over 30 times as fast as my dial-up.

Quite satisfactory, as Nero Wolfe would say.

Ramping Up

I have decided to enter the 21st century. Hopefully sometime on Friday I should be connected to the internet via an ASDL connection. I have existed nicely on dial-up lo these many years, but the proliferation of rather large media files such as podcasts and the aggravation of trying to stream video feeds has forced my hand.

Really, though, for not much more than I had been paying for dial-up I'll have a much larger pipeline and I'll also be able to do away with my second phone line. Deo volente.

I probably won't be posting until after the DSL is up and running. See you then.

Great Music and Handwriting

I've been listening to and enjoying an album called Sweet Sentimental Dream by Ginny Mac. Ginny is a musician from Texas who sings and plays the accordion. Her CD is a self-described mix of Western Swing, Country and Western music and includes nine songs that she wrote. One of the songs that she didn't write is "Cheek to Cheek" by Irving Berlin, sung in a duet with Leon Rausch.

Looking around her website, it seems that Ginny loves to perform live and jam with other musicians. You get a feel of that from the CD but I'm sure it's much more exciting in person. Maybe one day I'll be able to attend a performance. It's hard to believe that's she's only nineteen years old.

I ordered Sweet Sentimental Dream from her directly, the only place I could find it for sale. I figured that it was self-produced and that she probably handled the orders herself. So I printed out a letter ordering the album and including a few words about how I came across her website and how I was looking forward to listening to the CD.

When I received the package a couple of weeks later, she had included a very nice handwritten letter on personalized stationery thanking me for my note and acknowledging what I had written. I don't remember the last handwritten letter on personalized stationery that I received. Maybe never. I can't tell you how nice it is in this email and cell phone age to receive an actual letter.

Anyway, she has really nice handwriting and the geek in me thought, "Gee, I wonder what kind of pen she used. That's a remarkably good ink line." Yes, that is my life. A beautiful and talented young lady sends me a handwritten letter and I think about what kind of pen she used.

My dorky-ness aside, please go and listen to some of her music samples and order an album. You won't be disappointed. She might even write you a letter.

Let Freedom Ring!

Happy Fourth, everybody. Happy Birthday to us.