Mackenzie's Weblog

Neighbor Renovations

It looks like my neighbor-house is getting some work done, and that’s a good thing.

Coincidentally, it was the very first house I looked at during my search. I was not impressed. The top floor, though apparently well kept, had awful carpet, wood-paneled walls, and lots of those mirrors with gold gilt. These weren’t just in the bathroom, either—we’re talking living room. In the basement, there were these odd display cases lining a lot of the walls, and the other finishing was equally outdated. I remember seeing it and thinking that I’d have to gut the entire building and rebuild the interior.

I must not have been the only person to think that—it’s been on the market since at least June. While some hard-to-sell homes end up sporting a “Price Reduced” sign, this one only ended up with a “Special Financing” sign. (What does that mean, anyway? Financing courtesy of the mob? They’ll accept credit cards?) I don’t actually remember what the original price was, and I haven’t bothered to look it up recently.

In any case, it looks like it may be getting a bit more marketable in the near future. There’s been somebody spending a fair amount of time there, and construction sounds have been emanating. It’s a good sign—I’d prefer that the house not remain empty, though I have to say that it has stayed fairly well-maintained considering there’s nobody living there.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens.

Doom

One of the things I love about PC upgrades is the chance to go back and play older games with maxed-out settings. Over the last couple weekends, I played through Doom 3. This is a game that came out in 2004, and was a killer at the time. Now, the requirements are pretty tame. (It actually ran fairly well on my old system, but now it’s fantastic.)

What’s great is how well it holds up. Graphically, it is still excellent, with some great lighting effects and still-realistic character modeling. (Well, as realistic as zombies and demons can get, I suppose.) Of course, the game’s strength is not the graphics, but the design. It’s a horror game, and the designers did an excellent job creating an immersive, suspenseful environment. From the poor lighting (in a good way) in many levels to the excellent sound design, the game really keeps you on your toes.

It reminds me of another game that was as good or better at creating the tense horror experience: Clive Barker’s Undying. That was an excellent game that I’d highly recommend. It’s unfortunate, then, that the latest Clive Barker-branded game offering was such a disappointment. Aside from the generally lukewarm reviews of Jericho, I played through the demo and wasn’t impressed.

It’s very satisfying to play a truly well-crafted game. Considering their cost these days, it’s worth being picky.

Friday Catblogging!

This week, the Slightly Blurry Cat-Face Edition.

Jupiter:

Sebastian:

I'm Currently Reading:

The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution

Have a great weekend!

Back In the Game

Well, I'm back to knitting.  I haven't really worked hard since I lost my knitting bag/supplies/socks I'd just finished in my move, but I have been slowly plugging away at a new pair of socks.  I finally finished them:

Note the odd coloration on one of the toes.  That's because I used only one ball to do both socks, and I ran out just at the toe.  I'd normally fill in with more yarn, but that was in my old knitting bag.  [Expression of frustration.]

Anyway, I had some yarn that was a little close, but it had some red mixed in, so it wasn't quite a match.  The pictures, however, bring out far more of the red than seems to be there in real life:

Next up: a baby sweater for a friend of mine.  Or more accurately, it's for her baby.  It'll be black and will have my first attempt at a pattern: a skull and crossbones.  Trust me, it's perfect for this gift.

We Are the Champions

Last night I judged a competition at the law school, which was pretty fun.  It was the client counseling competition, which essentially means that the two-person teams get a fake client and have to role-play through an initial interview.  The goal is to judge the contestants on how much they connected with clients, were able to get relevant information, and advise the client.

I found it to be somewhat frustrating in law school because the judging is very subjective, perhaps moreso than any other competition.  I remember getting one piece of advice on Monday, then changing something, only to get feedback to the effect that I should have done it my original way.

On reflection (and a dash of time in practice), I think that's something that needs to happen in law school.  How frustrating is it to be in front of a judge who makes (you believe) a completely wrong evidentiary decision?  Very frustrating.  There are other things, too, so I think lawyers need to get used to it.

This isn't to say that you should not assert your position, make your case, or take an appeal.  I just mean that it's important to not let it get to you emotionally.  As hard as it is, keeping it separate is a useful sanity-preservation strategy.  So, for that if nothing else, I'm glad for the competitions.

Inherit the Wind

When I first began subscribing to Netflix, one of the things I decided to do was use the service to see classics that I'd somehow escaped while growing up.  So scattered throughout my queue are films such as Breakfast at Tiffany's (No. 6), All About Eve, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? (for my money, one of the most disturbing films ever made--I haven't seen a live performance).  Last night, I saw Inherit the Wind, the film based on the play based on the Scopes Monkey Trial.

According to the Wikipedia page, the play and film were intended to generally warn against religious fanaticism in the abstract, and McCarthyism (i.e., all the discussion about the case being about allowing a man to think).  Yet it seems particularly relevant in a literal sense today given the recent attempts to get creationism taught in the schools via so-called "intelligent design."

This is pure speculation, but I can't help but think that the playwrights and filmmakers simply figured that it was a settled issue, and that its only relevance was metaphorical.

Perhaps it should be both.

The film and my thoughts about it have led me to think about Galileo, and his treatment at the hands of the Catholic Church for his beliefs in heliocentrism.  I'll save that discussion, though, for another post.

Resquiat In Pacem: Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer died yesterday.

Fischer was one of those people who is not easy to categorize.  I think it's pretty clear that he was profoundly disturbed, an interesting complement to his genius.  I find it particularly appropriate that he died in Reykjavik, the site of his greatest, or most public, triumph.

I suppose the big question is this: did he have a positive impact on the world?  There's no clear answer.  Early in life, he popularized chess, something that I can't consider a bad thing.  Many, many thousands of people got into the game when Fischer's star was rising.  The United States Chess Federation membership rolls absolutely exploded during the late 1960s through Fischer's 1972 match with Boris Spassky.  This is a very good thing.

There's a lot of talk about him being the best that ever lived.  I'm a little skeptical of that, but what I wouldn't give to see the 1972 Fischer in a match with the c. 1998 Kasparov!  No matter who won, it would be brilliant.

I'm also not sure of the claim that he has had more impact on the game than anyone else in history.  I tend to think that honor goes to Paul Morphy, an American widely acknowledged as the best in the world before there was any world championship (hence Fischer's title as the only American to officially be the world champion).  Morphy pioneered the style of play that is now universal and changed the face of chess forever.  For all his contributions, I don't know that Fischer had quite the same impact.

In any case, to all things come an end.

Friday Catblogging!

I know, it's been quite the long time since I had the catblogging.  There was a camera issue for a while, and then (the last month) my desktop has been on the fritz.

But that's done now, with the exception of a small problem with my monitor, which has the card reader as part of it.  But I can work around that problem for now, at least until I get a hold of Dell to take advantage of their warranty service.

In the meantime, enjoy the feline cuddling.

I'm Currently Reading:

The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution

Have a great weekend!

Bonus Long Weekend

I discovered yesterday that we have Monday off.  This is not the first time I've not known about a holiday until shortly before (sometimes the Friday before a 3-day weekend).

Some might see it as a sort of cluelessness, and that's possible.  But I really like not knowing about it.  It's not that I love my job so much that I don't want to take a day off.  As much as I love it, I'll take that day off.

The great thing is how much better it is to have a day off when I had no idea it was coming.  It's a great little bonus, almost a gift.

I'll be doing a lot of reading, watching movies, and probably a bit of PC gaming.  And cooking--my usual routine of cooking.

Mo' Bar Blues

My mention of the February bar got me thinking about something else that I hadn’t considered in a while: Do I want to get licensed in a different state?  If so, I should decide now whether I’ll be taking a July bar exam somewhere.

There are some benefits, the biggest one being flexibility.  My career plan so far has been dictated by two things: quality of life, and keeping doors open.  This has worked out well so far.  I have a job I love, and I think I have good prospects of having another job I love when I eventually move on.

But there’s the whole studying thing.  Aside from the time, which is not really a big deal, it’s hugely expensive, at least on a government salary.  It’ll cost about $800-900 just to take the exam, not including any study materials.  Plus, there’s the travel expenses.  All in all, $2,500 would be a conservative estimate.

This requires additional thought.

It's Bliss

I finally got my replacement stick of RAM today, and my PC is at last up to full strength.  Ever since I diagnosed it and got it to limp along with half the memory, I’ve been troubled by its speed.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have it back, even crippled.  But still, it had been bottlenecking at the memory, and it’s very, very nice to have it back.  Having a nice quad-core processor and one of the best video cards on the market doesn’t help when the low memory slows everything to a crawl.

I've been loving it tonight.  I haven't even played too many games, just a little Call of Duty (I'm considering getting CoD 4 relatively soon, and by that I mean in 3-6 months, if not longer).  No, the best part is the vastly-improved response time.  Programs open and close right away, I can switch windows quickly, and all my little system tray programs don't slow me down a bit.  It's bliss.

I’m now considering a third stick of memory.  Vista 32-bit allows up to 4GB of memory address space, but some of that space is taken with things like PCI add-in cards and video memory.  Because of that, my maximum amount of RAM is actually quite a bit less than 4GB.  But my best guess is that it’ll be somewhere between 2.5 and 3 GB, so it might be worth it to get a third stick of RAM and use as much as I can out of it.

I fervently hope that driver and compatibility issues are worked out in Vista 64-bit by the time I need to upgrade because I need more RAM.  I also hope there’s a relatively easy way to upgrade without losing a ton of data and having to spend a week doing it.  I love working on computers, but something like that really ought to be streamlined at this point.

Book Club?

The book club is tonight.  I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been meaning to go, though I didn’t make the last two sessions for various reasons.  I did, however, read the books (which in the case of Fannie Flagg’s A Redbird Christmas was a complete waste of time—it was truly awful).

Tonight, though, I plan on going and discussing Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen.  I really enjoyed that book—I read it in two days.  Warning: Spoilers Ahead.

There’s a lot to discuss there, but I’ll focus here on one particular thing: the presence of the body, or the physical.  The story is set in a 1930s circus, but is framed by the main character’s circa 2000’s recollection of those events.  Naturally, he’s quite old, and his narration of that time centers greatly on his body.  It essence, it doesn’t do what he tells it to do, there’s a sort of betrayal there.

The 1930s story also focuses on physicality in a lot of ways, from the description of the characters to the characters themselves.  Many of them are defined by their physical nature, either by the narrator or by the society of the novel.  For example, the main character befriends a clown who happens to be a little person.  Naturally for the 1930s, his life had been largely defined by his physical nature.  In a way, I think his death was, too.

The animals may be the purest example of this.  Anthropomorphizing aside, they are characters who really only have physicality.  The one exception to this is the elephant, though she is still based in physicality than any of the human characters.

Was it intentional?  Am I even seeing anything legitimately part of the novel?  Who knows.  None of the “discussion questions” at the end touched on this topic.  Still, it is said that writing is a collaborative process between author and reader, so that’s my contribution to the book.

[Edit: I lost all motivation to leave my house on the way home.  It was freezing and windy.  Not that I'd be walking to B&N where the meeting is, but I'm just not into leaving.  Besides, my new stick of computer RAM arrived today.  More on that later.]

No Studying For Me

I just lent my Wyoming-specific bar study books to another clerk whose relative (cousin, maybe?  I forget—I know he’s moving here from a different state) is taking the February bar.

It’s times like these that I’m so very, very happy that I passed the first time.  Aside from the stigma, which is real, whether it should be or not, I’m just so happy that I don’t have to study right now that you cannot imagine.

And now, I offer some recognition for those who do have to study, whether or not they’re first-timers.  I sympathize, it’s not a fun process.  I wish you all the best.

Dexter

One of the greatest things about not having cable is that I don't watch something unless I actively seek it out.  The thing is, I love television as a medium.  It's a way to tell stories that span far longer than film, and can have some great character development.  A movie is like a short story, but each TV episode is a chapter, and a season can end up being a novel.  (I've long maintained that the type of story I saw Star Wars Episode III being would have been better told through a TV series.)  When done right, it can be fantastic.

Sad, then, that it is so rarely done right.

But Dexter, that's a show that's done right.  I recently watched the first two seasons.  I could talk about a lot that I like about it, but what really stands out to me is the character development.  It's really fantastic.  A lot of that, surprisingly, comes from the title character's voiceovers.  I say "surprisingly" because voiceovers so rarely work well, but they do here. 

Between that and everything else, the viewer ends up really caring about a serial killer, often being torn between letting him get away with what he's doing and the price that would impose on those around him.  We can sympathize with him, while recognizing his hypocrisy and self-delusion.  In a way, I think he's sort of all of us to the extreme: we all do things that aren't entirely on the up and up, though they fall far short of murder most of the time.  But we convince ourselves that we're still good people in spite of the bad things we do.  In a way, that's what Dexter does (though he doesn't claim to be a good person).  In that way, we see ourselves in him.  And that builds the connection.

I highly recommend the series, but it's not for those who are unable to view fake blood and gore.  It's a serial killer show--what do you expect?

Pearls

I've long been a fan of Pearls Before Swine, the irreverent, satirical comic written by Stephen Pastis.  It has the right combination of absurdity, commentary, and cynicism that makes it hilarious.

But he truly topped himself with this great satire of the kid's strip, Slylock Fox.  It made me laugh out loud, which is pretty rare.  Check it out.  Also, check out the rest of his strips.

(Note, the link is only good for a month, so see it while you can!)

Computer Back!

Well, I've finally managed to fix my computer, more or less.  It turns out there was a stick of RAM that went bad.  Unfortunately, it's past my warranty date (if I'd figured it out when it actually went bad, it would have been within my warranty date), so I ordered another stick.  It wasn't too bad, only $60.

In the meantime, everything works, albeit a little slowly.  Also, my iTunes library file was somehow corrupted, so I lost all that data (ratings, playlists, etc.).  This is a huge inconvenience, but no more than an inconvenience.  No other data was lost, that I'm aware of.  If nothing else, I suppose I'll get the chance to go through my music collection and listen to things I haven't in a long time.  I'm sure I'll rediscover some old friends.

I have well over 10,000 tracks, so it'll probably take a while.

Movietime

I just realized that I have gone to about four movies in the theater last year, two of them in just the last month or so.  I've heard about most releases, of course--I listen to Fresh Air constantly, but I haven't actually seen a lot of what's out there--at least not until it hits DVD and it ends up on my Netflix queue.

The other day I saw Charlie Wilson's War.  It was thoroughly enjoyable.  Recently, Fresh Air's "critic at large" commented about what a flop movies about the Iraq war have been, attributing it to the fact that the movies are behind the curve and not telling us anything we don't already know.  Charlie Wilson's War has the benefit of not really being about the Iraq war, but it serves as a kind of metaphor, or even "prequel."  And everything is presented in a "warts and all" sort of way.  I recommend it, though I wouldn't rate it as one of those films that makes a big screen essential.

I think I might see Sweeney Todd tomorrow.

Yay, 2008!

Resolutions, as I've mentioned before (but am too lazy to link to), are not really my thing.  I sort of think that self-improvement is something that we should all constantly strive for.  Shouldn't we always have goals?  Instead, I prefer to reflect a bit on what the last year was like for me.

In the last post I did, reviewing 2005 (OK, I'm not that lazy after all) I noted that 2005 was hellish for quite a lot of people I know.  I note that hurricane Katrina was that year.  This year, I'm happy to say, things seemed to be different for my friends and family.  While it wasn't all roses all the time, things were better.

My life, however, was absolutely crazy.  Not necessarily bad, but extraordinarily filled.  A brief recap:

• Tail end of 2006: Started a new romantic relationship.
• February 2007: Ended new romantic relationship (not my choice, but what can you do?)
• May 2007: Graduated law school
• June 2007: Started new job clerking for state Supreme Court
• June -- July 2007: Worked full-time, studied for the bar exam, looked for a house to buy
• July 25-26, 2007: Sat for the bar exam
• July 30, 2007: Closed on my new house
• September 4, 2007: Discovered I passed the bar exam
• November 2, 2007: Admitted to practice law in Wyoming

I'd say that'll do.

This year, I'm looking forward to exploring my job and continually learning about the law.  I may be looking for a job, to begin when I finish my current clerkship, unless the justice and I agree that I stay on longer.  That's uncertain at this point.  I'd also like to blog a bit more frequently, and preferably about more interesting things than I currently do.  That's a bit harder considering I'm not an anonymous blogger, but I'll see what I can do.

But first, I think I'll start to run again.  I miss it.