the art and is intended to encompass the same shall be discussed in terms of both conventional and endoscopic procedures and apparatus however the use herein of terms such as u201c endoscopic u201d u201c endoscopically u201d and u201c endoscopic portion u201d among others should not be construed to limit the present disclosure to an apparatus for use only in conjunction with an endoscopic tube the apparatus of present disclosure may find use in procedures in these and other uses including but not limited to where access is limited to a small incision such as in arthroscopic and laparoscopic procedures or other conventional medical procedures i e open procedures now referring to fig1 and 2 a surgical instrument e g a surgical stapler in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure is referred to as reference numeral 100 surgical instrument 100 includes a handle assembly 10 an endoscopic portion 12 and an end effector 16 defining a longitudinal axis a a extending therethrough further details of surgical instrument 100 are included in u s patent application ser no 11 544 061 filed on oct 6 2006 the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein while the features of the embodiments illustrated in fig1 is shown in connection with a particular type of surgical instrument 100 it is envisioned that the features described with respect to fig1 are operable with other surgical instruments with continued.