Things are ramping up. In less than three months, I'll graduate. In a little more than three months, I'll be starting my new job. Naturally, I've chosen the difficult route of working and self-studying for the bar at the same time. I can't do anything the easy way.
I didn't have any time to post yesterday because of the Symposium. Mainly, I was there to be directed and do any necessary little job since I didn't have as much to do with the planning as most other Board members.
It went very well. Those who had organized it did a very good job and everything went very smoothly, so kudos to them. We had a very good attendance, and I think the participants got some valuable material out of it.
Now it's on to the remaining million things to get done.
This semester is a bit less busy than most, so I actually have some time to do a few fun things. Case in point, I actually had a drink with a few friends and saw Casino Royale. I think I haven't seen a movie in the theatre (even the discount theatre) for about a year. It was nice.
I have a weakness for Bond movies. I acknowlege their women-objectifying nature, but I still have to see them. This one was better than most, though. I liked it. It seemed a lot like In Her Majesty's Secret Service, only this time they did it fairly well. (IHMSS was the absolute worst Bond movie. It starred the only James Bond actor to only do one movie. Bonus points for anyone who knows his name.)
This one had a much more realistic and human slant to it, which I like. Stories are all about people. Even Bond stories, which are really peculiar fantasy flicks, are about people. This one made them seem much more human, which was nice.
And the beginning had the best chase scene ever.
I'm the guy who plays music all the time. It's always going in my house (hence the sidebar), and it's almost always going in my office when I work. Currently, I pipe music from my desktop computer (in another room) through my "shelf-top" stereo system in my living room. For music management, I use a radio-frequency remote control.
For some time now, I've been thinking about what upgrades I'd like in my living room. I'd like to slowly build an extremely nice system, beginning with a good reciever and speakers. Unfortunately, I haven't had the money.
I still think it will be a while before I have the money to go nuts, but one speaker on my shelf-top system is going out. It's sort of intermittent right now, which is quite unfortunate. At this point, I'm just hoping the whole setup can last until I have a real job and can lay out a little cash for a replacement.
And if the speaker fully goes out (or even keeps up its intermittent behavior), I suppose I'll have to try some 'frankenspeaker' experiment with its custom cables, speaker wire, and spare little speakers I have sitting around.
I'm really looking forward to having a real job.
[UPDATE: I switched speaker plugs. The problem is somewhere in the shelf unit, not the speaker. There's no stopgap, I'm afraid.]
Here's another story. This one's only 45 miles away, and where I'll be living in less than six months.
This one is from Jack Balkin, a Yale law professor.
I would just add two things. The first is that after reading a bit about George Washington (nothing terribly 'scholarly' by any means), one trait that really comes through is his conscientiousness of how history would view him. He seemed to calculate everything knowing the eyes of posterity would be on him.
The second comment involves U.S. policy. Regardless of the legal aspects—Constitutional limits on executive power and all that—shouldn't we as a country be a good model of our ideals? Shouldn't we act in a way not just demanded by the law, but in a way that shows the world that we truly believe in the values we spout? I would like to think so, that we can and should lead by example. It would be nice not to appear to be hypocrites in the eyes of the world, and yes, I do care what the rest of the world thinks.
I understand the arguments that it's not that simple. But still.
The Legal Theory Blog has a wonderful post about balancing tests here. I really wish I had started reading this blog earlier--it has some amazing content. The linked-to post, for example, brings up a lot to think about when it comes to balancing tests, most of it new to me.
One of the best, most useful classes I've taken in law school was civil pretrial practice. The instructor—who happened to be a very experienced litigator and Bar Counsel to boot—had us go through two cases from complaint to the edge of trial. We had to draft filings, motions, and conduct discovery, including depositions. It was a great class.
I've heard from students taking it this year that the instructor has a bit of a different idea on how to conduct the class. They've had to draft complaints and motions, but have also had to argue the motions. This illustrates a little difference in the viewpoint between the two instructors, and I think either experience would be valuable.
But why put them in the same class? Given that it's a two-credit skills class, it seems to me that it isn't reasonable to put both motion practice and discovery in the same class.
I'd like to see two classes, Motion Practice and Discovery Practice. Each one would be able to get into each topic in a more in-depth way and students would really get a lot out of it. My school probably doesn't have the financial reserves to do this, at least right now, but it's definitely on my list of ways I think things could improve. (Also on the list are more writing classes—including drafting—and a class on rhetoric and persuasion.)
I love my school and I'm glad I went here. But the closer I get to graduation, the more I want to know about real legal practice and the more I see things I'd like to know. I suppose I'll have to learn them on my own, as most lawyers do.
No cat photos today, I'm afraid. I haven't been around too much and haven't taken any cat photos in quite a while. I did change the quotation of the week though.
I think I'm finally ready to tell my airline story, after getting some inspiration from this USA Today article about travellers up in arms from delays. My experience wasn't quite as bad as some of those in the story, but it was certainly irritating to me.
I originally planned to leave Denver on December 20, the day of the big blizzard. When my ride and I left Laramie, the weather was a bit snowy, but not too bad. We had driven through worse.
But it did start to get worse. The snow was blowing, lowering visibility. It was also beginning to stick to the interstate. Finally, about 2/3 of the way to Cheyenne, I got an automatic message that my flight had been cancelled.
When we got to Cheyenne, I immediately started calling to find a replacement flight. I'm convinced my early response is the only reason I managed to get out before Christmas. I managed to secure a replacement seat on American Airllines, who all my flights were through, on December 23. I'd like to make clear that this was an existing flight. It was not one originally scheduled for the time when the airport was closed—those were all cancelled rather than rescheduled.
On the 23rd, a Saturday, I got to the airport well ahead of when I needed to be there. I was happy to learn that my replacement seats were first class. This made it possible for me to speed through security quite nicely. At this point, I was happy to be flying American Airlines—it had treated me well.
Then, the plane was late. By about an hour.
While the delay was unfortunate, it wasn't a deal-breaker at the time. I understand that planes are late from time to time. I'm not the most seasoned traveller, but it does happen. The problem was that when my plane got to Houston, there were no more flights to New Orleans. (There actually was one, but there were many, many people on the standby list—I was 27th.)
Here's where the problem comes up. The Airline, in its infinite wisdom, decided that it would not pay for the hotel cost. It did get me a "distressed traveller" rate, but I suspect that didn't cost the airline anything. It probably had a deal with the hotel to send people its way. It cost me $50 for a night in a hotel, which doesn't seem like that much of a deal.
Here's my problem: American Airlines should have paid for my hotel. First, remember that this flight was a regularly scheduled flight, not one that was pushed back because of the blizzard. While security may have been a nightmare at the Denver airport and the flights were more full, I don't believe American Airlines added more flights to compensate. Second, I don't care much why I didn't get to New Orleans on time. The deal is that I give money and they get me there on schedule. Things happen to delay flights, and I understand that. But there's no reason I should have to bear the harm. This brings me to my third point, that the airline is better able to spread the cost than I am. To me, $50 is a pretty high amount. To an airline, a thirty-four-cent increase on each ticket on a packed Boeing 737-700 flight would have been enough to recoup the hotel cost. There were other passengers in my position, but it doesn't add to the cost that drastically.
Finally, there's the biggest reason American Airlines should have paid for my hotel: it's just good business practice. I had a very negative experience, and I now will avoid American Airlines. The company has made a business decision that it will refuse to pay costs like my hotel room. I'm sure whoever developed that policy believes it will make money in the long run. I disagree. At this point, the company has lost someone who could have been a good customer. If I had been treated well, I might prefer to give it my business over other companies. How many tickets did it lose from me? And how much profit does that amount to? I suspect it wouldn't take much to recoup the $50 expense I was asking for. The company has the right to make that business decision, but as a consumer, I have the right to vote with my wallet. I don't personally dislike the company, but I'd rather throw my business toward someone who might treat me better.
By way of an epilogue, American Airlines' customer service eventually called me. The agent refused to give me any concessions, as company policy required, I'm sure. I was firm in explaining my position and told her several times that I wasn't mad at her, personally, but that the company had made a poor choice that was going to lose a customer. I don't think she was satisfied with this position, but it really didn't leave much to discuss. We agreed to disagree.
So that's my little holiday drama. And that's why I will avoid flying American Airlines from this point on. It may be that other airlines have similar policies around payment. I hope I never find out.
For my take, see here and here. (Incidentally, the latter was the last time I saw a movie in the theater.)
For other perspectives, see here and here.
And no, being in a relationship doesn't mute my dislike of the holiday. The two are not related.
Last semester I took Conflict of Laws (highly recommended). This semester I'm in International Law and Federal Courts.
The overlap in these topics is fascinating to me, and the more I learn in each class, the more I understand that there's only so many of the heavily theoretical classes I can take. There's a significant overlap with a lot of common themes, including federalism, state power to reach beyond borders, and a few others.
I just started casually reading the fed. courts section of the book focusing on the Erie doctrine. It would be more engaging, I think, except that we covered it (and the following line of cases) in considerable depth in Conflict of Laws. So it's really pretty much a snoozer for me, and I'm only skimming it.
My point is that there has been a lot of overlap in several classes. And it seems to be common in those that are sort of high-brow philosophical and theoretical classes rather than those focusing on more practical areas of the law (like Secured Transactions). This makes me wonder what the limits are. The only 'theory' class I haven't taken--and I regret not taking it, but it conflicted with a required class--is Jurisprudence. It just seems like at a certain point they all seem to blend together into only a couple different general areas.
Can anyone shed light on this? I'm still a neophyte when it comes to the law, particularly when looking at the Big Picture questions and philosophies. I'd enjoy hearing from those more knowledgeable. So, pretty much everyone.
I had an awesome weekend, marred only by a small death in the family. The Vet (relatively new girlfriend, for anyone who doesn't know) came up for the weekend, and we had a really great time. There was a lot of just hanging out, and we had a lovely holiday dinner and saw a play (Spinning into Butter) last night. The play, and our bistro dinner, was quite good. All this was on top of some great home cooking, on both our parts.
The downside to the weekend was that my clown loach got sick. He's a fish, so there's not much to do. I euthanized him today.
We've never been close, but I liked him. He had some personality, not something you can say about all fish. But this morning he was clearly sick and probably wouldn't last too long. I hated to see him suffer, so it was time to end that.
(Incidentally, you should never simply flush or toss a dying fish. They can live a while when they've been flushed, and it seems like it would be a most unpleasant death.)
So, the tank is empty. I'm not getting any more fish. Actually, I've thrown out all the fish equipment--tank and all. I'm just not ready for any more fish, largely because of all the tank upkeep one must do.
So, goodbye to the loach. We had about four good years, and he was a good fish.
This post is a little outside my usual ones about my life. Basically, I want to tell everyone how I got my Remote Wonder working with Vista. It was easy.
First, go to this site. The process I used parallels the advice given for the Remote Wonder II. I'll describe how my process differed.
First, if you go to ATI's website, you'll see that there are no first-gen Remote Wonder drivers for Windows Media Center. Instead, you should download the latest XP drivers (3.04 as of this writing). After plugging in the reciever and allowing Vista to find the basic drivers, run the downloaded drivers. Reboot when directed. You'll get the same errors noted in the article.
After downloading the X10 drivers, as the article directs, there's another problem. Every time I tried to start the Remote Wonder control program, I got a notice that I was missing the MFC71.dll file and the program would close. After a bit of light googling, I found this site, which offers the .dll file for free download.
After unzipping the .dll file and putting it in my '\Windows\system' and '\Windows\system32' directories, everything worked just fine.
Quite frankly, it was far easier than getting the thing to work under XP. Any problems or successes? Let me know in the comments (until they're closed, that is).
I spent the morning configuring my brand new Windows Vista installation. I've had some exposure to the Beta and Release Candidate, so it's not a total shock. Nevertheless, there were some surprises, mostly pleasant.
For one thing, it turned out to be easier to install my remote control. This was a really nice surprise. I'd never gotten it to work on RC1, so I was pretty nervous. As it turned out, it was easier than getting it working in XP (which was really a major chore). Soon I'll post a guide for anyone else in my situation.
Another nice bonus came when I was looking for an updated plugin for Now Playing, the little program that posts my music to the website. I've never found iTunes to have particularly good sound and have been pining after a Winamp version for some time. Well, here it is! I'll probably be moving to Winamp now that it is available (I'll still use iTunes for some videos). It'll take a while, but it'll sound better.
The downside is a problem with another little program I enjoy: Audigen. I use this to access my entire music collection over the internet. I can stream everything to my laptop and listen no matter where I am (as long as I have internet access). Unfortunately, it is not playing well with Vista. I sent an email to the company, so we'll see what happens there. I hope I can get it to work.
Everybody is going nuts over this story, that of the Astronaut love triangle. They shouldn't.
The real novelty seems to be that this story is coming from an upper-middle class person's actions, and we aren't accustomed to hearing about this type of law-breaking behavior from these people.
But it can happen anywhere. I suggest this story is evidence that controlling behavior—shown here in a stalking context—can happen to or from anyone, regardless of socioeconomic status.
The real sad thing is that this story is sensational. We should be more aware of the problem's prevalence rather than marvel at the unusual(ly reported) context.
I just finished an interesting article in the Feb. 5 New Yorker (I'll post a link when I find one—it seems to be off the site right now) that deals with energy development and the impact in Wyoming. The article focuses on Sublette County, particularly Pinedale. It was interesting to see someone else's take on what many of us living here see frequently. Obviously, opinions will differ about the picture it paints, but I personally think it's a pretty fair depiction.
Anyone interested in these issues, particularly in Wyoming—or how Wyoming has handled them—should consider attending the Wyoming Law Review Energy Symposium. It will be quite interesting, it's free, and provides Wyoming and Colorado CLE credits.
I just found out that Penn Jillette has a radio show, and I think I can download it as a podcast. I'm so there! He's a funny guy.
No catblogging this week, I'm afraid, I haven't been home enough. Between oral arguments, writing a pattern for the 1Ls to use in their Appellate Advocacy class, working on my appeal, writing a grant, and getting ready for oral arguments in another couple weeks, I've been pretty swamped.
Anyway, I'll post more next week, maybe this weekend. I'm going to Fort Collins again, so there's that, too.