Moritz Trek

For Those About To Rock...

2009-02-17T18:14:00.001-08:00

OK so I let the blog thing go. Oh well. Will not make promises to blog when I don't know if I will, as most of my friends call me up when they want to see what's going on. Nevertheless, I have split my blog into a bunch of different blogs...each with a new style and each organized by what kind of entry. After all, mixing american idols with world of warcraft is like mixing pajama pants with a suit jacket. It just is all kinds of wrong. So here's my link to the new overarching blog...and the new separate blogs:

Fitz Trek (fitztrek.blogspot.com) - The new main site
Healer Trek (healertrek.blogspot.com) - My blogging and emails about World of Warcraft
Idol Trek (idoltrek.blogspot.com) - Specialty blog showing my expertise in bad television
Poker Trek (pokertrekk.blogspot.com) - Online poker journal, pretty much discontinued
SCS Trek (scstrekk.blogspot.com) - My sports articles republished for all eternity.

Vacation, or I SURVIVED!

2008-08-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

Well after telling everyone I was going to the boondocks of North Carolina and being out of touch with society and the internet for over a week, here I sit in our rented house which has internet. Nice. Anyways, the trip down was quite long because of a short night beforehand, but we made it by around 5 PM and unloaded the four vehicles. There are 11 of us total: Angela, Stephanie and her twin boys, Aunt Hope, Kathy and Bruce, Zach and A.J. his friend, and Kelley and I. Yes, all but A.J. are in-laws. It's funny because Angela was asking Kelley if I could go take a surfing lesson with her and Kelley, knowing this vacation was right after the bar, said "sure if you can get him sober enough to go." Well Angela told her mom Hope and Hope asked Kathy (mother-in-law) about being worried that I have an alcohol problem. Heh. Thankfully not yet, and hopefully never. These vicious rumors...

Speaking of vicious rumors, apparently everybody at Moritz thought I was working all up through the bar exam and just studying in the evenings. Apparently that was the rumor because most of my friends I had not seen all summer asked me about it. Ummm, no. I've been off since June, and it SUCKED for the 3 weeks of overlap. But we are insured now and they are covering the birth in case something happens while we are away from Cincinnati. So that's awesome.

So the doomsday...the bar exam. As it turns out, not so much.

Tuesday morning I roll out of bed and go grab a very light breakfast at the hotel and show up at the Vet around 8:30. I knew being number 1224 would likely be towards the back of the room, but I did not anticipate being the next to last table in the back corner of the entire building. 1207 people took the exam total (numbers went to 1307), and I could see them all because I was on the side of the table facing them. Also right next to proctors so my papers were picked up basically out of my hands every time. Still feeling a bit nervous, we go through tons of instructions and finally it's time to go.

The Ohio essays were first, and the first one was on Criminal Law, specifically defenses and the burden of proof. I sat there kind of stunned for a bit because I could not come up with a defense to 2 of the 3 crims committed. But I remembered necessity in torts and since those subject overlap I just made it up, and turns out that was correct. Beyond that oh crap moment, the morning went very well. The second question was all about privileges in Evidence which are very broad in Ohio and easy to talk about. The next set of two were what I had nightmares about, a Constitutional Law question all on First Amendment and mostly speech and the hardest question of the bar exam coming from Civil Procedure. Still, the speech regulation was all content-based and so that was easy. Nobody knew what the heck to talk about in Civil Procedure, but I feel like I had a better handle than most on the question. The highlight of infamy was whether a Motion to Dismiss for failure to state a claim could be treated as a Rule 56 motion for summary judgment. Eh, didn't study that this past semester. The final two questions were home runs though, a Corporations question limited to duty of care and loyalty and a Real Property question on estates. The last hypo of the session in the Real Property question brought up the Doctrine of Worthier Title, and I came up with the name of the rule out of the darkest reaches of my brain. Thanks Morgan! Anyways, I felt like there were no questions I would score worse than a 3 on, and most likely all were 4's or higher. I took my hand off the pen to rest during the sixth question and my fingers started throbbing so bad and probably swelling, so I immediately put the pressure back on the pen and kept going. Silly bar exam.

After lunch I found out OSU was offering free food at a tent for breakfast and lunch each day and free massages, so I guess I can stop complaining about how lazy they are to not mail diplomas in June. On the power of lunchables for the first time in over a decade (yeah those Lunchables), I go back in there for the Tuesday afternoon session. This session was the MPT, which is a "practical skills" test. Basically you have a 15 page case file and library where all the law you need to know is located and facts from your client, then you have to write a memorandum or a will or jury instructions, etc. What's funny is that this is not practical at all...you are never going to have to pick up a case file and write a damn memo by hand in 90 minutes. But anyways...the first MPT was all about a child custody case and civil procedure jurisdiction laws determining which state can host the case when the parents are in neighboring states. The problem with that one was the second half of the objective memo to write was a SIX PART BALANCING TEST! Let's just say the last two factors got about one sentence and there was no real conclusion, just half a sentence. That's kind of diappointing, but oh well. The second MPT was a fraud case where you had to evaluate a few statements made in the course of an auto repair shop bending a guy over and screwing him for about $2000. That one I got through although it was close. I don't think I did perfectly and I know this was thre part of the test where I was at a big disadvantage compared to faster writers and all the laptop users. It's only worth 13% though.

Tuesday night I grabbed AK and Daniel and we escaped to Quaker Steak and Lube for cheap wing night. I tried the Buckeye BBQ and they are not all that hot. The Cajun wings were good and we talked the bar exam to death before relaxing and talking about lots of other stuff for two hours. It was a blast and we got back to our hotels/houses and hit the sack.

Wednesday morning I was up earlier and went to the OSU tent for breakfast. It was nice to chat with the friends before tackling Day 2. The MBE is all day Wednesday and every state and territory (except Louisiana and Washington) take this 200 multiple choice test on Contracts, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law and Procedure, Torts, Real Property, and Evidence. 100 questions per 3 hours, so you have about 1.8 minutes a question. Unfortunately the first 3-4 questions of my test form in the morning were killer, probably some of the toughest all day. Bad way to start and I had trouble staying on pace for thre first half. The back 50 went better and so the morning was probably average or a little below. The afternoon questions were much easier and I finished with over a half hour left to sit there and nap or do whatever. I certainly was not going back and changing answers, a sure way to failure. The guy who finished with 30 minutes left in the morning finished a little after me in the afternoon and glared at me for the remaining 30 minutes. Dude, sorry I finished before you, don't let it get to your manhood. Anyway, I think I did not improve on my BarBri practice test but I should be good to go. It's hard to really say, and if I were to fail it would probably be the MBE that would be the culprit.

Wednesday afternoon I met Tom on the Park of Roses tennis courts and sweat through my first two sets of the summer. He's usually a little better than me, but he's been in practice and beat me 6-2, 6-1. I was doing respectable but could not win a service game to save my behind. Eventually Kathy and Kelley showed up and we all drove to meet Heather at Applebee's for dinner. That was nice, and it was again time to get another restless night of sleep. This time with Kelley.

Thursday morning I was confident after rocking the first six essays and having my two strongest subjects lefts in Ethics and Wills. Questions 7-8 were an Ethics question where there were 8-9 issues and you could really excel, and then Commercial Transactions which was a mostly Commercial Paper question with some Secured Transactions details thrown in. I'm sure I did OK despite only having about 27 minutes after really espousing on Ethics. The second set included a pretty tough narrow Torts question on wrongful death standards and NIED, and an Agency question that I think I punted a little bit. The final two questions were Wills which I absolutely rocked and Contracts which was only about consideration and exceptions (not even promissory estoppel). So another pretty successful session and I think I've done more than well enough on the 53% alloted to the essays to carry any deficiencies on the MBE and MPT.

So that's it. I survived the bar exam, and I expect good news on October 31 at 7 AM (Trick or Treat bar examinees). We all went out for drinks at Eddie George's after picking up diplomas and that was good fun. Got sloshed there and some more at the in-laws Thursday night. Had a minor headache for not drinking enough water before bed, but not much else. Back to vacation now, but wanted to get that off my chest.

Doomsday Cometh...

2008-07-28T19:28:00.000-07:00

Here I sit, 10 PM on July 28, 2008. The next three days will determine if one of the worst summers of my life was effective. OK, so it was not that bad. I never had a chance to burn out because the way I study, I could only do 6-8 hours a day before quitting. I worked most of the days and took some reasonable time off, especially early in the 3 months. My breaks were:

Origins Weekend - spent all weekend in Columbus, 2.5 days at Origins (Sunday with Kelley and oh my did we buy a lot of new board games...come play with us!), 1 day and night at Villa's with Tom and Shep. It was really good to reconnect with Shep and see the guys, but it was time to get serious as the lectures were almost over for BarBri.
Fourth of July Weekend - My Mom finally came over to see the new house in Cinci and we went to Newport Aquarium (the season passes will be great to walk Paige around when we need to get out of the house), IKEA, and a Reds Game. Finally saw Griffey hit a home run, so that was awesome. And the Reds won, which sometimes is hard to catch.
July 19 Weekend - Lisa and Thomas came down from Cleveland to see the house and visit her grandparents. They stayed all weekend and while we did not do anything amazing, it was good times. I did work on one of the weekend days, taking the Simulated MBE.

So what was my study plan? No flashcards, no outlines, no listening to tapes over and over. Just my usual. Read, and then read again, and then read again. I could not handle the "big outlines," so I just memorized most of the Conviser Mini Review. And I did TONS of practice essays and a good number of practice MBE problems. At the end of my MBE prep, I was hitting 75-80% correct and my simulated MBE which is supposed to be hard ended up with 151/200. Anything close to that on Wednesday and I'll have lots of extra points to blow on essays if necessary. This last week was mostly essays and reading things over 2 more times. I was hitting 95+% of the issues presented and had a pretty good handle on presenting the law. Maybe not every exception to every rule or perfect legalese, but more than enough to pass. So I feel pretty good heading into it and hope that out of the 12 essays, we don't hit more than 2-3 I feel uncomfortable about. We will certainly see, as "doomsday" arrives. If nothing else, vacation is coming up and I'll be sipping some liquor on the beach all next week before having to go to work officially full-time. And then it will be over except for the waiting, until late October presumably.

As for the baby stuff (the only other major thing going on in life right now!), we got a scare today. Kelley has been measuring right around where she should based on our due date from her last period all this time, and even the ultrasounds were within a half a week. Well today we go in and she's at 33 or so weeks and she measures at 37. That means Paige in 3 weeks or so. Well they shcedule us in for an emergency ultrasound and it turns out while the growth spurt did happen, it's more of a 2 week jump. So maybe end of August instead of mid-September. In any event, doesn't look like we have a ton to worry about on vacation but Paige is measuring so that she will be "full term" and could be delivered normally this weekend. As it is Kelley's first, I highly doubt it. We will see. Everything else is OK with the baby.

So that's life, and after watching some Star Trek and the Mole, it's time to get as much shut-eye as I can manage in 8 hours. Hope I can funnel my good Magic-playing days at the Veterans Memorial and have another success this week.

To all my friends who will not read this until after the bar exam, best of luck! We'll see in October!

Guitar Hero - The Correct Moves

2008-06-03T21:46:00.000-07:00

Lots of good vibes today. First was the official 88th credit hour added to my law school career, officially graduating me (late last night, entry below).

Then I get to work and call Bexley Woods again. Got a manager finally and talked her through the situation. She finally admitted fault and dropped the June/security deposit charges. Yay!

Then I go get Disturbed's new album after work. Almost listened to it once through and more opinion later, but it seems much better than the last albums by my two other favorite bands Metallica and Linkin Park. Maybe not as good as Ten Thousand Fists, but close.

And the best news of all - when Guitar Hero: Aerosmith was announced, I immediately said "What the hell...why pick them when Metallica fits so much better?" But Activision said they would likely bring out at least 1-2 more artist-specific releases before or just after the next big Guitar Hero game (was GH IV, now called GH: World Tour). Well today it was announced that the next "expansion" game after GH: World Tour in November 2008 will be GH: Metallica in Q1 2009. Ever since experiencing the joy of playing One on GH:III, I've longed for this announcement. This could be my favorite video game of all time. Also GH:IV will have a pack-in drum set and will be pretty much a full competitor to Rock Band. No real surprise there, but I'm happy to see we'll be able to add the very fun drums to GH in the future. Plus, by waiting to bring out GH:Metallica until now...it will definitely benefit from developers learning from mistakes and feedback in making the original spinoff GH:Aerosmith, and it will almost certainly include all 4 instruments. Simply awesome.

So a great day. But now today is over, and we move onto hump day!

It's Official Now - I Really Graduated

2008-06-02T20:58:00.000-07:00

The final grades of law school are in, and I'm very happy with the results. The most important part is that I officially now have 88 credit hours to my name with grades, and that is enough to officially warrant a diploma to be picked up after the bar exam. When I stepped into the fine halls of Moritz College of Law, I had the same goals/expectations as I had when making similar transitions from Frontier district grade schools to Marietta High School, and again when starting at OSU for undergrad. That was, to do my best and hopefully stay within reach of the top of the class. In law school, that meant I wanted to avoid any C's. I feel like sometimes I could have given more effort, but that extra effort would not have provided much more than diminishing returns I think. I sort of struggled with the system first year and split about evenly between A's and B's (high point being Property and low point being Contracts), but after that I managed through a lot of work and a good bit of luck to run through second and third year with nothing lower than a 91 A-. I finished up with a 91 in Professional Responsibility, a 98 in Civil Procedure II, and a 99 in Wills, Trusts, and Estates. This puts me (apparently) at 3.75 GPA and a 94.7 average. Definitely in the Top 10%, might crack the very bottom of Top 5% if someone above me got 3L senioritis. That determination will come later, but it's finally over. No more grades, one more standardized test...and it's finally done!

Now back to that little standardized test prep...

Moving and Switching Gears

2008-06-01T06:46:00.000-07:00

So where did we leave off? I believe it was driving down with a truckload of stuff on Sunday and putting a bed together. We also put the big screen TV and the entertainment center/stand back together as well as they needed to be put together for the Dish guy. So Monday morning comes and the Dish Network guy shows up, looks around and determines that the previous tenants or cable guy were amateurs. There's cables just sort of hanging from the basement ceiling and nothing is securely tied down or hidden, the highlight being a 13:1 cable splitter hanging in the path of a door in our basement. These guys seriously had cable running to each room! He gets to working on that, which takes quite a while longer than I thought. Kelley and I were going to Moe's for lunch, but he stayed so long that she ended up just having to hit the road without Moe's. The packers from the moving company were coming into the apartment around 1 PM to pack the breakables. I end up just sitting in my camping chair (the only chair in the house) and making some more calls to cancel utilities in Columbus and change addresses on accounts, etc. Apparently Dish Network's front-line sales crew and their install crew are having some communication problems, as it takes multiple calls to their home office to set up the dish to receive...and they tried to install a regular box when we bought a DVR box with DVR service. Thankfully the guy had a spare DVR box in the truck, or it would have been more waiting. I finally got to take off for work in the afternoon, and spent over 3 hours doing administrative things like getting my stuff from the law clerk station moved down to my office, after finding out just where my office was. Turns out I'm moving down to our bottom floor, floor 22. The office is HUGE for an associate though, and the rumor was Adam got moved out of it because it was too big for an associate. Maybe they recanted on that idea, especially considering the seemingly more important consideration is getting associates and legal assistants together and that's the only office on 22 where my new legal assistant (and the other associate she works for) is located. We're the party floor, let me tell you. But the first day at work was a wash.

It was an interesting first week, as Monday and Tuesday nights I went to Home Depot after work. It's funny that once you have a house (albeit rented), you start going to Home Depot more than you ever have before in your lifetime. I bought lots of stuff including those expensive new mercury lightbulbs (I'm sick of those burning out so often and there are a ton of fixtures in the new house so they would burn out probably at least once a week), a lawnmower and weedwacker which would eventually go back thanks to more gifts from the in-laws, and tons and tons of curtain rods. On Monday evening I put the sound system together for the TV and did the small stuff like shovel out the back steps so our drain back there does not block. On Tuesday I put up countless curtain rods after purchasing a new cheap power drill to put them up and fighting with the old walls of the house. Meanwhile in Columbus Tuesday and Wednesday were spent finishing the packing and loading the semi-trailer. I guess Ms. Sweet Marcy from the rental office showed her other side when she came to tell the moving company they couldn't have the semi truck in the apartment complex. I hear she was a complete bitch, which just shows that some people are very two-faced depending on what you are doing. The moving company worked that out and got everything loaded up, then Kelley came down on Wednesday evening.

Although I hate being locked into a contract, the Dish setup is pretty nice. It also has the NFL Network and the Big Ten Network, so Time Warner can chalk up another lost customer to that. I'll still buy their Road Runner (and phone service so we can get an alarm system in a little while), but adios to cable. It all costs the same whether you get Dish or TWC, so it's really a wash. Subtle changes at work too evidence how big a change it is to go from "law clerk" or "summer associate" to "associate." You actually get quicker service from the staff or at least it seems that way. Partners definitely start expecting more of you, like the first week I get asked to call a client to check on them sending us more information. As I've rarely even been in the room for client conversations let alone doing one myself, that was kind of exciting. Even though I'm still learning the art of patent applications, partners seem more trusting and let me complete a full draft after prepping claims instead of doing each piece step by step. Instead of just doing research memos for the litigation partners, I'm drafting motions to the court. One partner who is a primarily electrical engineering partner randomly gave me an application to do, but he calls me into his office and goes on a 40 minute stream of consciousness conversation about the invention before telling me exactly what he wants me to do. I like a challenge though, and so I'll muddle my way through this one (plus it is in a new and interesting field, GPS). I had thought that it would be tough billing 1850 a year and work goes so slow sometimes, but now that I've gotten a short taste of being an associate...I can see that I'll quickly be buried with work like everyone else at the firm and that makes the days at work fly by. All in all, the transformation to associate is pretty neat.

The movers showed up earlier than expected on Thursday morning of that week, and Kathy and Bruce stopped by to surprise us and help us start the unpacking process. I escaped to work after most of the unloading was done, and Bruce worked in the yard while Kathy and Kelley worked inside. By the evening, most of the new bookshelves were assembled and the yardwork was caught up. We went to IKEA, the Swedish superstore sensation...and looked around for quite some time. On Friday Kathy and Bruce went home and Tim and Granny showed up to help. Once I got home Friday, it was time to work all weekend. Tim did lots of stuff outside like clean out the gutters and edge the walkways and driveway. Granny set up the kitchen and dining room before turning her attention to the living room. I tackled the basement which was quite an effort (there was no path between the storage space underneath the garage and the rest of the basement thanks to a half-basement full of boxes. Over that weekend we hammered out all the rooms except for the office, the upstairs, and other small details that will undoubtedly take quite a while to get all the way through.

So in the past 2 weeks, work has gotten busy as previously mentioned and we've kept working on the house little by little. Kelley's been doing OK, sleeping a lot due to being sick the past couple weeks. We've gone in for a second ultrasound and now they want to do a third. Hopefully the hospital doesn't screw us over financially on these extras, but I guess they have to be done. The previous landlord is trying to screw us out of our security deposit and an extra month's rent for failing to give them 30 days notice of moving out. We're fighting that one, but the manager apparently refuses to call me which is just so mature (as is completely lieing and claiming they did not give us an eviction notice or lose our rent check for May...which they did). Landlords are so scummy, and they really have no reason to be. I'm sure a place like Bexley Woods has serious problems with certain tenants, but that's no reason to try and screw the people who follow the rules and the people who are generally not trying to screw them over. We'll see where that goes, but I'm not going to hop up and send them a check for $1000 just because they say so. Even Patrice was not that much of a bitch, although she took out a good chunk of our security deposit making "necessary repairs." So the first weekend was unpacking from moving with the in-laws, and the next weekend we went up to Columbus to clean the old apartment and hang out with the Burtons and the Villas. We watched some UFC, and had a great time after working on the apartment most of the day to get it nice and clean. We're hoping to keep in close contact with the Columbus friends, either by going up for the occassional weekend or in the case of the guys, emailing each other at work all day (you should see some of the topics we get on...)

I've managed to not play a softball game yet. Every week it's been rained out, or lack of interest (which should stop now that we've got 3-4 summer people and myself back in the mix), or one week they changed the field and the person supposed to stay at the original field and tell us where to go did not stay long enough to tell me. I'll try to bring some stories once we have something to talk about. It's a nice Tuesday night diversion. We also had our partner-associate dinner for May and it was at Primavista, which as the name implies, sits on the hill overlooking Cincinnati and the river. Very lovely view, and the food was OK. It was good to catch up with some of my co-workers in an informal setting. This weekend Dave D. from work hosted all the associates and spouses/girlfriends over for dinner. That was fun, lasted far longer into the evening that I would have expected. Of course we showed up first, and we were 25 minutes late! Apparently that's how people roll on the weekend, just showing up 30-45 minutes late to come in fashionably late or whatever. Next up on the firm calendar is the Attorney-Spouse annual outing, this year it's a dinner cruise on a riverboat. That should be interesting.

It finally feels like things are settling down (financially as well as otherwise). Bar exam classes started this past week, and so I tried to go to the live class I signed up for. There's only like 5-6 people in there and all are from UC, so I'll just stick with the DVD's. Plus it saves me lots of money on parking at UC garages and eating dinner out every night. Let the diligent 8 weeks of studying begin this week, as I tackle Contracts and Torts. What fun!

If you don't watch Lost, you should really borrow or buy the DVD sets of the three seasons and the fourth when it comes out this fall and catch up. It is definitely the deepest show on TV right now, and this past season you could tell the writers have found their direction in storytelling again. In addition, House had a fantastic finale as well. Guess those writers had some good ideas percolating while they went on strike! Now it's on to summertime, where TV is terrible so we watch a lot of movies and Reds games.

So that's all for now. Don't know how often we'll update this blog, but hopefully some house pictures once everything is truly settled. Onto bar studying!

Hooding Weekend

2008-05-27T20:11:00.001-07:00

And this ends a journey, from August 1989 (first day of Kindergarten) to 2001 (high school graduation) to 2005 (OSU graduation) to May 9, 2008. Nineteen full years of being a student all culminating in one ceremony where you change what you've done for the vast majority of your life and switch it to a productive career. It will be fulfilling to finally stop racking up huge bills and start paying them off, and to do what I enjoy every day as some class schedules are nothing but training. But in the end, graduation is a ceremony for families to enjoy and celebrate one of their own and their accomplishments.

Wednesday after my last final ever, Kelley and I went to Melting Pot. We had an awesome dinner and the special dessert of the month was Bananas Foster which was different and good, but not the same as their more chocolate-y dishes. So Thursday when Kathy got in, we finished our goodwill runs and then went to Melting Pot for chocolate. It was good stuff, and we had a server who was one year away from applying to OSU law school. Good luck buddy.

I actually had trouble sleeping due to a little excitement. Hard to believe, but you don't get many celebrations like this one. We wake up bright and early and get down to Palace Theatre for the Honors Convocation. Looking over the list of awards, I thought I was definitely getting a useless certificate for the top grade in Legal Writing (the better part of that award was the nice Black's Law Dictionary we got over a year ago), but I had no idea if anything else. I knew I was in the running for one of the top Appellate Advocacy briefs, and I thought I was almost a lock for the top student in Intellectual Property coursework. Then follows one of the longest 1.5 hours in my life, as countless awards and pieces of paper get handed out. As it turns out, I had forgotten my volunteer time for Moritz Ambassadors (admissions office) 1L-2L years, so I got a certificate for that as well as the Legal Writing. No AppAd award, but I was thrilled to see Larry take home a Top 3 finish. Also did not get the IP award, which went to Bart and Steve. I knew I was screwed when Professor Lee said the award was going to two people who survived all four of his IP classes (which means they did not take patent law 2L year and so I guess all of us who were truly interested in patent law got the shaft on that one). But let's face it, they are all cute little certificates that don't mean a ton and they should be spread around to the most people possible. the cutest moment was when Keener went up to accept an award and his little kid yelled out "Daddy!" when he was accepting the award midstage (Keener smiled and waved out to him). The best moment outside of Larry's award was definitely the big AK taking home a nice plaque for a prestigious award (the name of which escapes me now). We escaped the convocation and went over to a little pizza place to blow the brunch hour. The place was dead, which was just fine. Once we got closer to noon, we trekked back to the car to get the cap, gown, and hood.

Met up with Mom and Steve and Bruce at the Theatre, then walked around back to go to the graduation staging area. We then gathered over 200 people in the hottest little "hospitality suite." You can imagine what the biggest room in the back of a theatre looks like, and it's not that huge. Eventually we line up down a very long hallway leading to the ceremony, where we proceed to stand in alphabetical order for way too long. The highlight was greeting OSU President E. Gordon Gee on his way into the ceremony. That guy is amazing for the university (again) and is a vast improvement over that bitch Holbrook. More waiting, and then we got to finally go in. I couldn't find my family thanks to the ridiculous amount of waving families out there, so whatever. Got to the seat and in for the long haul.

To start us off, Brian Smith showed off some outstanding pipes in the National Anthem. He should really consider singing because those are his gifts, but whatever. The higlights of the ceremony were definitely the speeches. E. Gordon Gee gave a nice little rousing speech, and then at the end he says "you all have a great day" and walks off the stage. Exit stage left. I guess he had some more important things to attend to, but it was definitely funny watching him just leave the building. Professor Oesterle got best professor award, and he gave a nice speech making fun of a lot of the more interesting aspects of our class. He especially bashed on Alexis which was funny yet surprising. Then Phil Eckenrode gave the student speech and it was absolutely fantastic. I knew he would knock it out of the park. The LLM student wasn't that bad either. The only real downer was the infamous Brewer speech, which failed on its softer moments and ended with an unforgiveable disaster (NEVER EVER end a speech "Class of XXXX, We Did It!" at a law school graduation after Legally Blonde...that's just plain jane and overdone). Maybe I'm jaded, but you know what it's over and who cares at this point the exploits of Smith, Miller, Seifert, and Brewer. We are all moving into our careers and let the firms or government deal with the various personalities. The top 25% stood up for recognition, and a lot of surprises in that lot. Top 10% was pretty expected though, and I'm happy to have my name in the graduation booklet for that (even though that's only for 5 out of 6 semesters). Got the hood fro Oesterle and that was that. Took some pictures in the super-crowded theatre and alley outside before returning the cap and gown and running off for dinner.

The 8 of us (James, Dad, Mom, Steve, Kathy, Bruce, and Kelley and I) went to Logan's Steakhouse and I got a big steak for celebratory dinner. I received a nice OSU watch and an OSU clock for the office as well as other small nifty nick-nacks. My Dad is getting me some nice diploma and bar admission frames. The usual nice take for graduation. After going home and relaxing for a bit, Dad and James came over and we actually got some four-player Rock Band going. I never would have thought my Dad would play drums and sing, but we rocked it out for a couple hours. Then we finally got to bed and man was I exhausted. Between the finals and the prep for moving and graduation, I was already beat before the real moving began.

Sunday we packed up the big new TV and sound system as well as the spare bed and covered it all with plastic (it was raining of course) and finally hit the road for Cincinnati after 8 PM. We got in and unloaded in the rain and dark, then put the bed together. Another restless night of sleep and off to my first day of work the next day. This leads us to the move, but we must wrap up the law school entries here before getting into that (which will be later as there's much more to catch up on and not enough time tonight to write).

So law school. Over $100K in debt that I did not have, but I have a very lucrative job close enough to OSU football, right in town with my favorite baseball team, and close enough to family for them to reasonably visit and us to reciprocate. I think I will be tons happier as a patent lawyer than I ever would have been as an engineer...and I'll make a lot more money doing it (a nice bonus on top of the most important thing, happiness). I accomplished everything and more of what I set out to do as a student, including nothing lower than an A up through high school, high school valedictorian, summa cum laude in Mechanical Engineering, and top 10% in law school. Those things are nice and they sure make my Mom and Dad proud, you can just see it in their eyes as they were grinning more on the day of Hooding than I've ever remembered seeing them. But I just hope I can translate the successes of my past life (and make no mistake, it is now the past life) into professional success and success as a father and husband. That's where the road of life leads now, and I can only hope to have as good a time as I had the past three years, despite the hard grind that is law school.

Thanks to all the friends and sometimes foes who made law school entertaining and somewhat life-consuming. I'll miss most of you as only a handful are moving to Cincinnati, and we'll catch up whenever we can. Thanks also to all the readers, who have survived the much-too-long breaks and given supporting (or disagreeing and not-so-supporting) feedback. I will continue to write as the scary world of being an associate, passing the bar exam, and becoming a father come up on my horizon.

In all things there is an end and a beginning, and while we look back sadly at the days long lost, we must dwell on the bright future that those days in the past have paved the way for.

Or in the words of a character I admire, we journey through life "to boldly go where no one has gone before."

The Finals Season

2008-05-27T19:01:00.000-07:00

Well it's been since mid-April, and wow how things have changed since then. We will start with an entry on finals season, which flew by. I finished up the bibliography issue and turned my attention to three days of work before starting the focus on finals. On Saturday I sat down with some fellow JDR peeps Julie and Larry and I ripped through Larry's outline in 2 days, making fixes and changes along the way. Monday morning Larry and I met with Nick and Jeff at Caribou and I got another cup of the magic Earl Grey. We hammered out some fine points of law and went to Wendy's for another gastrointestinal-safe pre-finals meal of chicken nuggets and such. I honestly did not feel 100% prepared, but we had a great outline for the class.

So we get into the exam and the multiple choice section is an absolute nightmare. Professor Johnson puts a state code in the back where only parts of the Uniform Trust Code and Uniform Probate Code are adopted, and even those are changed in some circumstances just a little bit. Everything left out is common law. What this means is for every single stinking question, you are forced to double check the law in the back of the 40 page exam packet and then your outline before even thinking about answering. I spent too much time on this and rocked into the essays. The first was an in-depth trust question which I rocked I think. The second was a four-part wills question. I got through the first part, sped through the second, and wrote about a sentence total for the last two parts combined. Ick. So much for time management. I think maybe a solid B on this one, an A if I rocked the multiple choice (which is my strategy, but this multiple choice was a nightmare).

The next exam was on Friday and it was Professional Responsibility. With having to study for the MPRE twice thanks to snow and Greenbaum's exam being on the exact same subject material, I knew spending more than a day would be killer. So I went to work two more days to get away from it all, then came back and really just breezed through a JDR outline, changing it enough to fit my own needs and make it my own. This only took about 4 hours. So I definitely blew off this exam, but it was not that hard. We had at least a half hour too long on this one, but I wrote to the gun because that's what you do. I felt like I covered everything except reporting requirements in the essay (which literally covered about everything in the course, a real disaster of a fact pattern), and did OK in the multiple choice. I figured a solid A.

Now the final exam of my law school career I took more seriously than any other since I ripped through Business Associations in 4 grueling days. Again it was Larry and I, and this time I spent four days meticulously ripping through his outline while he stayed a little ahead of me each day outlining the course. After 4 days of rip-roaring discussion including a lively debate on supplemental jurisdiction and the limits imposed. It's funny how absolutely giggly and ridiculous your sense of humor gets after 4 days of intense studying. The bar exam is going to be a trip...but I was finding the funniest mis-spellings in my class notes. That makes sense, considering I spent more time in that class playing Tecmo Bowl and Scheherazade than taking notes. There's just a limit to some professors, and while I love Greenbaum...by the second session every day he did not really have enough to keep me interested. Plus Civil Procedure is pretty simple...there's just a hell of a lot of topics covered. I cannot imagine the old days a decade ago when Civil Procedure I and II were combined into a year-long 6 credit hour first year class. That would be a nightmare! Anyways, we were rocking longer than most as Civ Pro was on the last day of regular finals. It felt good just to finally get to the final exam.

I thought it would feel special or like an accomplishment to go to your last final, but we got in there and it felt like just doing business. By the time we got to this last one, as a 3L you just go in there and laugh at all the super-serious 2L's while rocking the exam out as best you can. More scantron multiple choice goodness, and these were much harder than his Professional Responsibility questions. Unlike PR, I thought our outline was key to rocking the essays as well. There were some gray areas, but this should be another A.

So the finals were over, in a blink of an eye. We had decided after a couple breakdowns that we should have the moving company pack the majority of our items once we found out the estimate was a couple hundred below what the firm was willing to shell out. We still spent the Thursday after finals going through boxes and getting rid of over a truckload to goodwill and half-price books as well as countless bags of trash. Moving is a big pain, but at least it gives you a chance to go through and cut down on the useless belongings, of which we probably still have too many but we got 80% of it out this time.

So on to Hooding weekend...

The Final Dance and Baby News

2008-04-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

Umm, before I begin I have to share the good news instead of burying it in a long entry. If you have not heard, our first ultrasound was Thursday and we will be welcoming a girl into our family in September. Paige Elizabeth Fitzgerald. We're keeping the boy's name in our bank for later as I think we both like it a lot, and we'll have a lot of time to think up a good middle name and another girl's name for the next time around. We also adopted Zach's dog P.J., a boston terrier to be Chip Dip's sister. So the conversion from independent newlywed couple in school to full on family and career couple is really beginning to take shape.

Sorry for missing my normal American Idol blog and this part of the blog for the past three weeks. Let's just say journal and life got incredibly busy. Lots to cover, but before I forget...I totally called KKK Kristy Lee Cook going home again and she finally delivered. VFTW has moved on to Brooke White, which is easily my pick for the worst remaining. More on Idol tomorrow when the Top 6 compete. In other news, real TV (House, Lost, etc.) is back this week. Awesome.

Speaking of awesome, there have been a few things I could bitch about from this crazy world the past few weeks, but this one takes the cake. Crayola announced they are renaming 8 of the crayons in the 64 pack to appeal to a "new generation" of kids. Here was what that great online poll left Crayola with:
1. Laser Lemon is now Super Happy
2. Wild Tangerine is now Fun in the Sun
3. Screamin' Green is now Giving Tree
4. Beaver is now Bear Hug
5. Turquoise Blue is now Happy Ever After
6. Hot Magenta is now Famous
7. Orchid is now Best Friends
8. Wild Watermelon is now Awesome

What the hell Crayola? Just when I'm about to bring a child into the world, I find out that Crayola is now going to teach them that Awesome, Famous, Super Happy, etc. are COLORS? Crayola was doing a great service keeping things like turquoise, magenta, and orchid in the list of names because that helps children learn difference shades of primary colors. I can envision 25 years from now, someone going to Lowe's/Home Depot or a car lot and asking for Awesome house paint or a Giving Tree car. Seriously? Makes me want to go buy some 64 packs while sanity remains on the shelves for my future children.

Speaking of seriously?....so Burger King has a huge ad campaign now with a robotic king and people from the future saying what a hassle it was to eat with fork and spoon. Then they show an honest-to-God breakfast Burrito as the food of the future. That would be fine if BK actually invented something, but McD's has had a breakfast burrito for like 20 years. Breakfast of the future? BK needs a time machine and some common sense in the marketing department.

Today was an exciting day, for multiple reasons. First, this was the final day of regular classes for upper level law students, and this means my final two law school classes were today. What started with Contracts and Crandall in August 2005 (or to take it back farther, Mrs. Montgomery's kindergarten class in September 1989) ended today in April 2008. Hard to believe it's all over with a few finals, but that's how quick law school passes you by. For the record, I will keep this blog address and just change the title...to something yet TBD. The final two classes were Wills with Johnson which was rushing through 4 final cases to try and cram more material we could cover on trusts in the final, followed by Professional Responsility with Greenbaum. Art gave us a nice little speech about ethics and going out there in practice at the end of the class, and it's always nice to have a professor invite us to stay in touch. He's one of the few I will keep in touch with thanks mostly to his interest in my sportswriting (assuming that continues). Daniel summed it up nicely at the end of class, "How Great Thou Art." Indeed, and now I get to see two of his exams in the next couple weeks.

So the end of the class era was one big thing today, the next being finishing something that has plagued me for too many hours the past 3 weeks. I finally finished up the bibliography issue for JDR and now I am done except for reviewing the bluelines when Issues 3-4 come back from the publisher (and that will take 5 minutes). Issue 3 is still not at the publisher thanks to one author yet again making lots of last minute changes and not understanding the concept of a camera-ready copy inspection. Everybody runs into tough authors on all journals, but we've had some doozies on JDR this year. Issue 3 took slightly under a month longer than I originally anticipated to push through, despite being overall much better than Issues 1-2. Issue 4 only took a couple of full days of work, but I was incredibly upset. I cannot imagine how you can do a bibliography issue for the field of ADR and not include a single article from the second-best journal in the field from Harvard and another in the top 5 from Cardozo. So 18 pages of article entries (45 pages last year) was expanded to 26 or so by me. Furthermore, I really expect the ME's and the bib editor to give their respective articles and issues to me in publishable quality. Based on what the bib editor told me about her tough travails getting things form Excel to Word, it might have just saved us all time had I done the transferring. Not my job, but when I have to waste 3 hours alphabetizing all the entries, another 3 hours fixing the index, and 6 hours writing up new entries or fixing poor effort ones from the staff (of which there were too many)...I begin to question what my job really is. But a ray of sunshine today when Issue 4 was done, after 3 weeks of pretty intense work JDR is ready to publish and done as far as my desk goes.

[Before I forget, the JDR Banquet was boring as snot. Interesting table with Kyle and Mark (2L's) as well as Guy and Xavier (3L's). Sat in the back, got called a teddy bear under my "tough exterior" by the new EIC and got another useless certificate to match the staff member one from last year. I actually got more accolades last year because I got another sheet of paper announcing that my note was being published. At least Larry and Kate won the important awards, although Erik deserved one and I might have got one if not for going against my best friend and the sweetest guy on journal (yes that's a man-crush). But one last rather incompetent attempt at running a social event from JDR this year, and they have lots to improve upon for next year...you'd have to hope someone learns how to care or acc-check. Good luck Kevin, Keith, and Kyle, because you'll need it. Congrats to Erik and Paige on making it through this year as well, even though there are a couple loose ends to tie up.]

And the final thing making today awesome (and I don't mean watermelon) was the Issue 2 advance copies hit our desks at JDR central today, meaning the subscribers and JDR will have the published Issue 2 in the next couple days. I finally have one copy of Issue 2, where my note is...and it's great to feel the accomplishment of having 2 issues officially published as well as having my note published in the leading journal of the ADR field. After completing the bibliography issue for last year, I really think IP Phil and my article (both on IP) in Issue 2 will fill a gap in the field from the past couple years and may actually get read or cited. If nothing else, I will always have a written work in the annals of legal scholarship forever. That's cool even though the club is large. So the final day of classes was made better by finishing journal work and being officially published.

My finals schedule is pretty easy. This week I'm working W-F, next week Wills is on Monday, work T-W, Professional Responsibility on Friday. The following week I have Civ Pro II on Wednesday and hooding is Friday. I'm sure it will fly by. Speaking of hooding, so OSU Bookstore in all their wisdom lost my cap and gown and invitation order. So I cannot get invitations (they offered to rush order some I could have by May 2, but I told them that is ridiculously too late), and I have a gown size a couple inches too short. Not really noticeable, but I'll have to wear black pants and shoes on the ceremony day to look OK. How annoying. I just don't like the feeling of being forgotten...but at least they had a back-up cap, gown, and hood for me to take.

All of a sudden we are a little over a week away from getting the keys to the new house. Moving in less than a month is scary when we haven't truly started packing things seriously. Kelley is finally getting over some morning sickness by the looks of it, so she should be able to focus better once she stops working on Saturday. Also have to figure out which moving services I want to bring in for a moving quote. The firm is paying, as long as we keep it reasonable overall. Speaking of the firm paying...I cannot imagine not working for a few weeks out of school. Lots of my friends are taking the summer completely off to hammer on the bar stuff right away, but I know I would burn out too quickly with that. So I'll earn the extra money to get us through the summer (although the bar exam loan is a nice backup despite using half of it to pay off Kelley's credit cards - 7.5% is better than 16-20% interest - and some new house purchases / graduation presents to myself). In addition, working 5 weeks will get us on insurance for the time I'm off for the bar and beyond, which should cover any special problems we run into late in the pregnancy. Let's hope those don't happen, but I like having the insurance blanket.

Speaking of work, so apparently an email goes around saying Chuck Figer and I are looking for a legal assistant. As usual, I find this out from other people who got the email that wasn't sent to me. I'll be happy to join the "Attorney" file this summer or fall so that I get all the relevant emails lol. So now I've got 5 resumes in my inbox for interviews with Chuck. First, this probably means I'm moving down to 22 with him to keep us both close to the new assistant. Second, this should be fun...a legal assistant and a new associate both not knowing exactly what the heck to do together, woohoo go team. I've never looked at resumes to try and hire people, so this will be a different experience. I'm looking to help out actively on the firm hiring committee anyways, so a good learning experience. Plus, I'll get to know Chuck better. Softball starts tomorrow, but I'll obviously miss the first month due to finals and whatnot.

Just like last year, Kelley had the final two teams right in the NCAA pool and lost her money in the finals when her team lost. But the highlight of the Final Four was our last poker and games party where we are playing Tribond (clues are three things with something in common, you have to find the link to answer correctly) and Daniel and Aaron are in a challenge showdown. In these challenges you read clues one at a time and the two people shout out answers trying to get the link. Well the first clue is basketball...and Daniel says "Hoops," which is the correct answer. Aaron losing to Daniel (who hates sports) on a basketball question while watching the Final Four is priceless. But it gets better. We are all giving Aaron hell for that, when he blurts out..."it's like that old song, Hoop, Jump It Up." And we all look unconfortably around the table until we figure out he's referring to Tag Team's "Woop, There It Is." So now if you see him in the hall or elsewhere before he leaves for Philly, call him Hoops (Jump It Up) Applebottom. He'll love it.

The last full week of class was interesting. I was a witness for Paige and Holly's trial practice trial, and that's a great class for future litigators. More work than I anticipated, but I was not terrible (I hear the judge was asking who I was because I did a good job and he hadn't met me, he's a Federal District Court Judge who teaches the class for OSU) and Paige and Holly won. The only downside was that the judge ran into a full day trial which lasted to 6:30 instead of 5:00. So their trial ran to 11 PM, part of the reason I couldn't liveblog Idol last week. But it was Mariah week so who cares.

The Reds have opened their season with a highly disappointing 8-12 start. Already 5.5 games behind the streaking Cubs and Cardinals, now is the time for the offense to wake up and actually support the decent pitching our new rotation has put out there. We'll see if they can do better now that quite a few game sin the next 20 are out of the division. Other than that, the NBA Playoffs just started so that will be something to keep an eye on (my call is Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, Orlando, LA Lakers, New Orleans, San Antonio, and Utah moving on).

One final thing - another awesome bit of news came in last week when the MPRE Scores came in. I got a 125 (need an 85 to pass in Ohio) which puts me in the top 10% approximately (according to what I've read). Cool. Hopefully I can parlay that knowledge into a good grade in Greenbaum's PR class on the same subject material. Daniel and Chad also passed when we checked scores together, so congrats to all who made it through the small first part of the bar. Now there will be no drive to South Carolina or distrating MPRE study during post-bar vacation. Yay!

Oh fine one more before I go - my graduation present / gift for the new house. So our big TV blew up over a week ago. We went to replace it and got a Philips LCD 42" from WalMart, but took it back the next day thanks to a problem with a couple pixels broken. Unfortunately we had to visit WM two more times and get Huntington Bank on the phone while at WM to force them to give back the money in a reasonable amount of time (not two weeks). Damn Wal Mart. Anyways, we went to Circuit City and decided to upgrade for the new house as well as get a graduation present for surviving law school. We walked out with a not-broken Toshiba 42" LCD TV and a new Sony surround sound speaker system, as well as a PS3, Rock Band, and all the necessary cables. I found out Rock Band on Wii will be the broken PS2 version, and I'd like to be able to play some DLC, especially if Metallica keeps releasing songs on there. Plus I don't really care for Xbox 360 after seeing their first two years of game releases. I thought this purchase would also open up the catalogue of games to the literally thousands of PS2 games now available on the cheap, but the current model of PS3 (the only one you can get) is not backwards-compatible. Sigh. Still happy with the real version of Rock Band and the blu-ray player, but the PS3 will need to come out with more games to make it better. I've only got about 10 games to finish on the Wii, so no rush! Everything looks great and works great, so while we had to splurge quite a bit, it's nice to have some new stuff to watch or play with.

Well this entry has gone on forever, but now that we're moving into finals I will not be able to speak much about the actual goings on of law school until after hooding. Honor Code be damned, honor code be damned. Have a good week and we'll see you two Idol fans tomorrow!

The End of a Career

2008-04-02T21:09:00.001-07:00

Call it Consistently Inconsistent, Men's F'ing Rea, MFR, MFR minus Judas, Middleton Forever Reigns, or The Well Hung Jury...the names have changed but the good times never did. And now the career (which started as two guys begging for two random teammates after the deadline for signing up) is now over. Daniel and I could have ended up with anyone from Bart Keyes to Brian Smith, but the two people daring enough to sign up were Abbie and Brodie. Friendships locked in forever, even though Abbie moved on to an estrogen-laced team and we added Kelley.

The semifinal opponent was The Blev Stube, and the game essentially was a mirror of last week for 18 frames. We won the first by a slim margin again (this time 11), and we were essentially up by 15 in the 8th when the foundation frame came up. They rocked it, we did not. It hurts when they string together 4 in a row and then a double in the last couple frames...but I'm sure Eckenrode knows how I feel lol. So no magical run to our first final. Before we shut the book on it, I kept track of how we did over time and it's interesting to see how much better we've gotten over time.

1L Fall Semester
Team Record: 11-10
Team Average: 438.6
Dave - 139
Brodie - 140
Abbie - 90
Daniel - 70
We were the #15 seed in a 16 team playoff, won the first round, lost in the quarterfinals (13-14)

1L Spring Semester
Team Record: 13-11
Team Average: 461.5
Dave - 140
Brodie - 143
Abbie - 98
Daniel - 80
We finished in 11th place, but missed the 16 team playoff because the league manager decided to stack the playoffs with the top 8 in the standings and the next 8 highest team averages (which we weren't good enough for)...the king of bowling league bullshit there. (13-11)

2L Fall Semester
Team Record: 13-8
Team Average: 488.1
Dave - 154
Brodie - 132
Abbie - 106
Daniel - 95
We finished as the #1 seed in an 8 team playoff. Lost in the quarterfinals. (14-10)

2L Spring Semester
Team Record: 17-7
Team Average: 473.7
Dave - 136
Brodie - 140
Kelley - 118
Daniel - 82
We finished as the #2 seed in a 16 team playoff. Won the first round, won quarterfinals, and lost in the semifinals (24-9). One note is that we went 22-2 against 8 opponents and 2-7 in three weeks against eventual champion Bill Browne's team...how painful.

3L Fall Semester
Team Record: 17-7
Team Average: 489.8
Dave - 145
Brodie - 142
Kelley - 110
Daniel - 93
We finished as the #4 seed in an 8 team playoff. Lost in the quarterfinals. (18-9)

3L Spring Semester
Team Record: 17.5-9.5
Team Average: 499.5
Dave - 147
Brodie - 145
Kelley - 114
Daniel - 95
We finished as the #6 seed in an 8 team playoff. Won the quarterfinals, lost the semis. (21.5-11.5)

So with the interesting setback of 2L Spring Semester (which was really our most dominant performance of a season), we improved the whole way. That's enough of the stats, and it's time to officially close the book. Grand total: 103.5-64.5. I'd call that a nice career friends, especially for a team that was made up by random chance!

Props
MFR, the designer line by Alan Michaels
Everson's sniping ability
The Sleeping Giant
Bullshit pin action
Long Sleeve
Middleton
Cane's Chicken Fingers
Awesome costumes
1 Tall Blue Moon, 1 Large Pepsi (or a Rum and Coke), and 1 order of Fries
And many other inside jokes to numerous to mention.

Slops
Inconsistency
Bill Browne's consistent 220 games against us
Plumber crack 1L-2L year
Pocket shot splits and Brodie's 10 pins left
The playoff system
The people who ran the league
Neck cramps
Inconsiderate opponents starting practice at 9:00 or before when hardly anybody shows up before 9:10-9:15
Lane 6, and every other lane which messed up constantly
Having to move on to a real adult league next year (well that's kind of a split decision actually)

The Hellish Weekend Begins

2008-03-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend, we are driving from Columbus to Cincinnati tomorrow morning, doctor's appointment in the morning, work all day, drive to Valparaiso Indiana tomorrow night, wake up for a 7:30 tipoff of my little sister's first game of nationals, leave first thing Saturday morning and drive all the way to Marietta. Back Sunday night. Somewhere in there I need to knock out a bunch of final reads for JDR Issue III so I can focus on MPRE prep and JDR Note Selection next week. I hope C.J. does well in the two games we are able to see. There will be 13 of the Fitzgerald clan there, so we get to see more than just my siblings and Dad and Patti. That should be fun, even though it's too short. Then we get to see what Kelley gets for her big 25th birthday, other than the Ped Egg, telescoping camera lens, and dinner I'm getting her.

So I was going to post a poll before tonight to ask whether the Buckeyes would go farther in the NIT or The Well Hung Jury in the bowling playoffs. The debate still rages after both quarterfinals tonight, as the Buckeyes are going to NYC for the NIT semifinals, and good news - we are back in the semifinals again. That's as far as we've ever been (one semifinals loss, three quarterfinal losses, and one missed playoff appearance before now), and this time there will be no Bill Browne team to fret about. Tonight's results were as follows:

The Blev Stube (Ben Rose, Steve Hood) def. Penal Servitude (Bart, Avonte, Christy, Jen) 3-0
The Well Hung Jury (us) def. Prima Facial (Eckenrodes, Kominsky) 3-0
Pin Pals (Constantine, Glankler) def. Motion to Strike (Dobyns, Kyler, Derek Smith) 2-1
We Use Fingers (Spangler, Rich Helm) def. Capital Pinishment (1L's) 2-1

I have absolutely no idea who plays who in the semifinals, but the careers of the solid Eckenrode and Bart/Avonte teams is over. Three primarily 3L teams left with the 2L Pin Pals, and someone must win. None of the quarterfinals was particularly close except for ours. We won the first game by 1, and then lost our handicap edge in the second game within 3-4 frames (which is very bad news). We managed to hang tough through the 8th frame where we were practically tied going into the 9th. Then we had the most amazing and clutch foundation frame ever. Even if we don't win it all, this frame was one to remember, as we all but clinched with strikes by Daniel, Kelley, and myself and a spare by Brodie. A couple of splits and opens on the other side left it pretty much done. Way to have the killer instinct team. I bowled average (144-151) despite a staggering 4 splits in game 1 and 2 more in game 2, so that's OK with me. I think the most fitting final would be Spangler's team against ours, so hopefully we don't get paired next week and we have a chance to do that.

Two more notes: first, UPS blows big goats. So they show up sometime on Tuesday when Kelley is not home and leave the note saying the second attempt will be Wednesday and they check off the boxes for 2 PM - 5 PM and after 5 PM. OK, well we had no problem with that as Kelley was going to be home during that gigantic time window. Well nothing came and at 8 PM I call to see the status. They told me they showed up at 12:17 PM. What the fuck? So now they get to hold my package until Monday when I'll go pick it up. It just better not be returned to California.

Second, I called Chikezie leaving on AI. Yay on being 2 for 3 on who's going home. KKK Kristy, enjoy your one week out of the bottom three. And for the record, I'm going to stop putting Syesha in my Top 3 if the tween-tards insist on disagreeing with me about her every week.

See you after the hectic weekend, and next week...we have NIT hoops, bowling semifinals, American Idol Top 9, and the MPRE take two. Exciting!

Oh and before I forget...

2008-03-25T18:50:00.001-07:00

Since I cannot do it justice, here's a link for you all to see. Go to 0:00-0:58 of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7aUxGK4WqM

'Nuff Said.

Bracket Busted?

2008-03-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

Is your bracket busted before the first weekend is over? Yeah me too. As usual, my upset reads did not come in during the first round and I fell a couple off the pace. Then yesterday the coup de grace: thanks West Virginia, now I can cheer for Big Ten teams and underdogs the rest of the way. Back in high school, I used to run the regular bracket contest and my tennis buddy Brandon would run a Sweet 16 pool for those whose bracket is busted by the first weekend (that being 80% of the people who try to pick the Madness). Like many other years, it would be good to have one of those again...

Speaking of basketball, the Lady Buckeyes choked for the third straight year in March Madness last night. Two years ago they were a 1 seed and lost in the second round to #9 Boston College, last year they were a #4 and lost to #13 Marist in the first round, last night they were a #6 and were upset in the first round yet again by #11 Florida State. Jim Foster knows how to win Big Ten titles (4 in a row), but he's got to figure out something to do for the dance. I was correct about Ohio State's men's team being in better shape to learn for next year by going to the NIT, and after a solid game against UNCA they get California Monday night. I've got another credential, and Larry and I have tickets to the game as well (we're dragging along a third to sit in my paid seat). Should be good times, and hopefully next week we'll be looking forward to another trip to NYC for a NIT final four (the Buckeyes made the preseason NIT final as well this season).

Oh, before I forget...I promised this comment to a couple of people...

FUCK YOU TWEEN-TARDS!

Just when I thought American Idol fans had some modicum of taste and wanted some different styles of performers this season on the summer tour (the top 10 make that tour), they go and cut my girl Amanda this week. Well I hope all you tween-tards enjoy KKK-Kristy Lee Cook and her absolutely awesome Dolly Parton remakes of rock songs. Plus, the tween-tards inexplicably put Carly in the bottom 3...did we forget about her this week? So inconsistent...we'll hope the Top 10 does a better job this week than the Top 11 did this week. Wait, what am I saying, with the exception of Archuleta it simply has to be better!

Oh and one more thing, the result show seriously needs cut down to a half hour, or even better, a 3 minute press conference. The Idols they bring back to sing show how poor this season's contestants really are, and the quirky phone calls to say things to Simon or ask wank-wank questions to wank-wank contestants like Ramiele and Jason. Please stop.

On the bright side, REAL TV IS COMING BACK NEXT MONTH! Lost will be wrapping up its short season, House finally comes back for some regular episodes with the new team (which I will call Team Kumar now that I've realized one of the three is Kumar from Harold & Kumar), and the Moment of Truth will finally not be the second best show on Fox.

Watched I Am Legend last night. Pretty solid performance in Will Smith's version of Cast Away. Definitely worth watching a few more times. Also finally got through The Break-Up (bleh), Hot Fuzz (slow at first but pretty funny), and Michael Clayton (OK, need to see again to fully appreciate it) this week. Stick with the Blockbusters, and not the ones according to the Oscars, at least for now.

Spring break from law school was very relaxing, and now we'll be in the stretch run for the MPRE re-do in a couple weeks and then finals in 6-7 weeks. I ignored journal work too much while watching basketball, oh well. Just makes for busy evenings. We'll get Issues 3-4 out eventually. Everything seems calmer now that Issue 1 is in the hands of the subscribers. It also did not help that the first of 7 notes I have to read for good faith did not meet good faith at all. I swear sometimes people forget that writing a note is for a credit hour...I mean, how could you turn in something that has clearly never been spellchecked, let alone proofread? How unprofessional.

Spent last Sunday with Aaron and Larry, playing 4-player Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The game is very good as a party game, right up with the high standards of the other Wii titles so far. Now if they could just get some good sports and third-party support. Yes I mean Rock Band. The real reason we had them over was to hear about last weekend's ABA moot court competition (the other top moot court teams, along with our National teams from the fall). Well they have a lot of stories, which happens when you do moot court and especially with Brian. I'm not going to tell the stories myself, but needless to say the experience more than lived up to what happened at the Gibbons competition last year. At least I have five more people who completely understand what I wrote this time last year...big middle finger to Ms. Brewer and all others who decided to pitch a fit about speaking the truth in your own personal blog. Some people take small stuff too seriously, while neglecting their duties to investigate the real problems with the moot court program. But before I forget, props to Tiffany and Chad for Top 10 oralist awards and kudos to Aaron/Tiffany/Brodie for almost overcoming the inevitable crappy first round judging.

Bowling playoffs were pushed off a week very late on Wednesday, so only the teams who anticipated being in the playoffs showed up for the final regular season week. We swept without Brodie because we were going against Aaron's absent team, so we are in the Top 8 for sure and I think we'll bowl against the Eckenrode team. I think we've only bowled against them once if at all, so that will be nice to get in one battle against a fellow 3L team before hooding.

Roadtripping to Valparaiso Indiana this week for Lutheran March Madness. The national Lutheran invitational basketball tournament for 7-8th graders is next weekend, and my little sister C.J. is playing in her final games before high school. (Plus, it's as close as her traveling team gets to Ohio for games) She was pretty good the last time I saw her, and apparently she's tops on her team. We'll be able to see her first two games, and hopefully they place well in the 32 team tournament. So that's the big thing on tap for this week, that and Kelley's second doctor's appointment.

One more thing before I go: I promised a little about the house, and now we have the lease signed. It's over on the west side of town, about midway between I-74 and US-50 south of Cheviot. The drive is about 20 minutes to downtown, which is reasonable. The house has a nice big fenced-in yard and a paved patio to put the grill and a table on. The house itself has two floors and a basement. The first floor is relatively small, featuring two rooms and one walk-in closet. We'll use those rooms as the master bedroom and the baby's room. On the main floor there are four main rooms all connected to each other and a bathroom. I think our plan is to make a formal dining room, a living room similar to our upstairs living room now, and a regular dining room with our casual kitchen table and the piano. The kitchen is the other room. There's also a very small one car garage on the ground level, connected to the basement. Downstairs is like a cave, with winding passages a lots of room. Half the basement is finished, so that will be the second living room / poker and game room / bar. It actually has a bar in the finished half, so perhaps that will be a place to store our liquor. The unfinished half has a small back storage room under the garage which should be able to suit our storage needs, a laundry room, and a large unfinished space which can be more storage or utility space (since the garage is so small).

We've just started the process of prepping for the move in a couple months. Kelley is going through all her clothes and donating a bunch she doesn't wear anymore. My first downsizing project was video games. There's a lot of NES/SNES/N64 stuff I'm never going to pull out again unless it's right there on the shelf, so I ordered a NES/SNES retro duo combo system this week and pared through my collection of games to keep the best and the ones I will play again (plus a lot I can get rid of thanks to downloading them on Wii's virtual console). So that's over one storage tote gone for me sometime in the next two weeks once it sells, and we'll finally have a retor gaming system out that we can play with friends. Yes this means I'll have Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam Daniel and Larry, so I'll expect regular visits to Cincinnati to relive our Nintendo closet days in the journal suite. I think the next thing after that will be clothes for me as well, as there's definitely some stuff that can go for me as well. Then it will be onto storage boxes in the storage space...there's got to be stuff packed away I don't want anymore. One thing that will be nice once we get to the new house is buying 3-4 more bookshelves to put out all our books instead of storing them in boxes. But enough on that, back to the super-exciting Villanova blowout of Siena. I love when the CBS schedule fails miserably...

A Long-Awaited Update

2008-03-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

Well I couldn't just have an American Idol blog entry, so here's a brief update on the past month and a half. As usual, things have gotten busy around the law school world but not too busy like last semester. Journal work is the primary background busywork that some days makes me want to scream…but other days it's actually entertaining. On the whole, Issues I/II were nightmares and led to what I figure is a yearly "Do Better!" meeting like we had in January and like Dave Shelton had the year before. I'm just starting Issue III accuracy checks, but the Witkin Note (which got moved up to Issue II due to problems with an Issue II note) was done really well so I have high hopes. It seems like the ME's really put in the extra effort even if the staff did not. Issue I finally shipped out last week, and it's nice to finally see a JDR journal that we brought out. It might be a couple months later than usual, but hopefully it's a good one. Larry and I found quite a few errors when just paging through it, but most of them will not show up online because they are formatting things. And quite frankly, I did not do the formatting on Issue I so that's not really making me feel bad (other than the fact that I should have probably manned up and done that on all the issues...but at the time Erik offered to do the work and I was only too happy to let him take it). Issues II/III should be better anyways because Erik and I are getting better I'm sure.

Issue II is at the publisher now, so we should have a Blueline by the end of this week and get that turned back around so printing can start and maybe finish by the end of March. If I write a little more often (say weekly if I liveblog American Idol), perhaps I'll let you know how those Issue III final reads are going.

Picked up Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Wii 2 days ago. Definitely a fun fighting game for parties (which means I'll suck at it compared to the general gamer), but the one-player mode is pretty fun so far. Pit/Kid Icarus kicks serious ass with his arrows from long distances and smashes up close. I still think the Ice Climbers are the best, as you cannot get more annoying than them. Also picked up Super Monkey Ball for GCN, which has an OK single player mode and a great bowling mini-game Kelley and I played for hours two nights ago.

Speaking of bowling, nearly the entire season has passed by without a peep from me. Our final chance for MFR to win the championship (although I argue being the #1 seed going into the playoffs twice counts as "real" bowling league victories because no regular league has a playoff) was a little bumpy, as we hit teams on hot streaks seemingly every week. We could never put 3 wins together in a week, but we limited the damages and sat at 11.5-9.5 going into last week. That was a half-game out of the playoffs, but last week was position week so 3rd and 4th were bowling each other (both 12-9) and we could pass one of them for sure with at least a 2-1 against the 6th place team, Larry's team. Brodie rolled a 180+ the first game and got 4 strikes in a row, and combined with my 150+ game...we won the first by a decent margin. Generally this has brought out the best in our opponents, but we were not to be denied this time. Everson rolled one of the best games of his life (140+) and I rolled above average again to carry the team...Everson beat everyone else on the 2 lanes scratch but me which is amazing. We finally got our 3-0 and improved to 14.5-9.5. The half a game was a classic 3 weeks ago as well, as I had a spare in the 9th and we were down by 27 with only me left to bowl. I go up and get a 7 with the first ball, meaning I will need the spare and a strike to tie. I deliver the spare, and then pull a Brooklyn strike out of my ass to get 2.5 games that week [over Abbie for the last time].

So the playoff picture looks like 8 teams, and it's a pretty loaded field. The usual 3L suspects are there (all of this assumes the bowling league gets the standings right...), a couple of 2L teams, and one 1L team. The big misses are both the finalists from last semester, the neo-Middleton squad and Dobyns & Co's Motion to Strike...but you cannot make it every time. We only made the playoffs 5 times out of 6. The first two times there were 16 teams and we made the quarterfinals once and the semifinals once. The last two times there have been 8 teams and we've lost in the first week to the eventual playoff champion both times. I'd like to think we can get to at least the semis again, so hopefully fates smiles on Longsleeve and Company this week.

Watched the Grammys and the Oscars in recent weeks. The Grammys were pretty good this year, especially considering they went outside the box and gave the highest award to a Jazz musician for only the second time in 50 years (yay Herbie Hancock). Kanye West is a certifiable psychopath, and you know you've hit rock bottom when Vince Gill makes fun of you as he accepts the best Country Album award. I had to pull out my Carlos Mencia Season 1 and show Kelley his parody of Golddigger. It is one of the funniest bits I've ever seen on TV, and so true as it turns out. "He's not Jesus...He's not Jesus, yeah." The Oscars on the other hand...hmmm. I'd like to blame it on the WGA strike, but that is just not true. As usual, have not seen any of the Best Picture nominees (but watching Michael Clayton as we speak). Juno looks fantastic, but did not win the awards. There will be Blood and No Country For Old Men just do not look all that great to me, but they took the major awards. George Clooney and the girl form Juno got robbed in my opinion. I have no opinion on Atonement. Crash and The Departed were both very good, spanning the distance between artsy and good to the normal consumer. I don't know if No Country For Old Men can say the same. Maybe we'll buy it used someday and find out.

The Columbus Blue Jackets are such a joke. Ten years and no playoff appearances. This is the NHL, where half the teams in the league make it...but the ol' CBJ cannot get it together for enough of a season to make that happen. I love having the NHL in town, but you have to do something eventually or else we'll stop watching. If I want to suffer, I'd prefer to watch the Reds. Speaking of terrible, how bout my Knicks? Worst franchise in NBA history is not out of reach as long as Isaiah runs things in NYC. Moving onto teams I care about that actually do well, congratulations to the Packers on getting one last good run with Brett before he retired. I wish they would've knocked off the Patriots instead of the Giants, but as long as Sunny-Side Up Belichick doesn't win, we all win. Actually I'm going to broaden that...as long as Boston in general doesn't win, we all win. Celtics, Red Sox, Patriots...ugh. Even the Yankees are better than the Red Sox, and that's hard for me to admit. Here's hoping the Reds get it going in my first summer in Cincy. At least there's one team in that town I can cheer for.

March Madness is upon us, which means it's time for the bracket pools. I ran one every year from high school through undergrad, but stopped in law school thanks to not wanting to compete with a friend's pool. Kelley came in 4th I think last year, so maybe we'll break through and win some cash this season. No clear front runner like Florida was last year, and tons of mediocre teams from seed line 4 to seed line 12. Maybe some real madness a la George Mason again this year, after last season's super-chalky finish.

We got over 20 inches of snow in Columbus Friday and Saturday. 16 inches in 24 hours is the most ever for the town, but as it turns out it was not all that bad. The weather is pretty warm this week so things have melted nicely in the three days post-snow. We've gone from knee high snow down to boot high, but you should've seen Chip bounding through the snow. That was absolutely too funny. I'm pretty happy it occurred right before spring break so that the warm temperatures can work on the snow and ice and I only have to deal with one week of hellish parking on campus this school year. That's a lot less than last year, when we got 3-4 inches of snow but then it would freeze and everything would be icy for weeks at a time. At least it gives everybody something to talk about (The Blizzard of '08, as it were).

The blizzard knocked out the MPRE which was supposed to be this past Saturday. Sigh. I still have one undone pratice test I'm saving for the rescheduled test week, and I may have to redo one of the 3 I've already done to get ready again. What a pain, but at least this helps me get ready for the Professional Responsibility law school exam in May. Yay BarBri. The rest of law school is going well, spending more time in the Journal Game Closet with Larry, Brodie, and Daniel than before which is good bonding in our last few weeks together. Brodie and Cheggs are ridiculous at Mortal Kombat, and Daniel, Larry, and I are a second tier. Some NBA Jam also occurs in said closet, but to save Daniel's eyes from rolling too far into the back of his head...we'll start talking about other things such as how tasty milk is.

There are funny moments all the time, but one happened today in class. Greenbaum calls on me in Civil Procedure and asks if I will help him, to which I respond "sure, why not" in a very unenthusiastic voice. Greenbaum them says "that's the spirit, even though I know you probably would like to think about basketball instead right now...let's talk about the work product doctrine." Larry starts busting up laughing beside me because I was looking at Ken Pomeroy's college basketball articles and rankings leading up to Selection Sunday right then, and it was all I could do to keep a straight face as Greenbaum had me pegged (whether he knew it or not). Also, VNES has made class far more bearable, as the Java game requires no solid internet connection which is good since my computer has trouble with the law school network. Looking through my collection of Nintendo systems, I really don't want to get rid of all my old games but I also will likely never set up a singular old Nintendo system again (Wii plays GCN games, so I have like 75 games playable on Wii and Xbox with another 20 or so downloaded on Virtual Console). Then I saw in the past 2 years new hardware has come out which plays SNES and NES games and has improved hardware for reading the games...so no more fighting the old equipment. These systems are super-cheap too, so I think I'm downsizing to one of those and getting rid of NES, SNES, N64, and GCN. The only real loss is N64, but I've got the most important games [Zelda, Mario] on a GCN disc or on Virtual Console. The only ones I will miss are Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but those types of games are kind of a dime-a-dozen now. So that's the plan...and maybe save whatever I make on the deals for Wii Rock Band, supposedly coming out later this year.

Anyways, gotta get back to jumping through hoops to take the bar exam, and all other interesting stuff in the law school life. PS - got a house in Cincy, more on that next time.

Breaking Political News

2008-02-07T14:02:00.000-08:00

Just when things started to get interesting in the presidential primary, news has broken which simplifies things considerably. First, Mitt Romney has decided to "suspend" his candidacy after the dismal Super Tuesday showing. Based on the differing state laws, many of his delegates will now go to John McCain, solidfying a nearly insurmountable lead on Mike Huckabee in the GOP primary. The so-called conservative block will now not be split between Huckabee and Romney, so expect Huckabee to gain some ground in future primaries. It will not be enough to derail McCain, especially with all the delegates he will inherit from Romney. So the GOP goes to McCain.

All that doesn't even matter though, as we have late breaking news from an undisclosed location between Columbus and Belpre, Ohio. At 5:02 EST, Aaron Applebaum, famed editor of the Ohio State Journal on Criminal Law, has formally announced his endorsement of Barack Obama for the presidential race. With $7.2 million dollars raised in the 48 hours following Super Tuesday and this blockbuster endorsement (as well as Hillary running out of money), Obama will be the first black, oops I mean African American president in US history in 2008.

When asked why he endorsed Obama, Applebaum was kind enough to elaborate: "Well I was kind of leaning toward McCain as a centrist candidate, but then I went to his website looking for his stance on the issue I care most about, that being education. In the list of Issues on the McCain homepage, there are 13 separate listed issues but education is nowhere to be found. This troubled me too much to ever think about endorsing Mr. McCain. Huckabee is a religious right psycho, Ron Paul's supporters scare me, and as for Clinton...well if Bill were running then OK but this country is not quite ready for her to be the first woman president, as my good buddy Oprah Winfrey says."

There you have it: the most important endorsement of the campaign trail has come in, and Obama should certainly expect another jump in fundraising following this monumental achievement.

Stay tuned tomorrow as we cover: Indiana Hoosiers, fraud or contender; and we have an insider scoop on where Bob Knight is going next (heads up Kelvin Sampson, better get the resume going). Until then, this has been breaking news brought to you by ANN, the Apple-Bottom News Network.

Happy New Year

2008-01-21T19:57:00.000-08:00

Let's face it everyone. There's nothing better than my entries concerning moot court competition weekends. But alas, I've heard from many quarters many times over that it is just time to move on. So where to start...lots of fun in two months to report. After finishing up moot court duties, it was time to turn right into exam preparations. I had fallen behind in reading in some classes which is the first time that it had happened in law school, so I did not know how cramming would go. Spent about 8 hours preparing an outline for the back of my Sales supplement, and really could not see wasting more time on the exam. I have been brutally honest on professor evaluations ever since I got sick of them third year of engineering at OSU (the law ones are the same), but I've never written anything so mean as I did to Creola Johnson. To reflect my true feelings on the class, I wrote "taking this class makes me wish I left learning Sales to Bar/Bri." I could not sum up my feelings better. Although I still kind of dislike Professor Crandall for quitting on his class and giving us an unfair final exam, I have to give him credit for teaching us the UCC way more than a normal contracts professor. Sales ended up being a waste of time in part thanks to him. The Sales exam was a 75 question multiple choice test, with an extra essay question "optional." It was not very optional as I think everybody but one person in the class took the essay. Professor Johnson only reads your essay if you are borderline A/B or B/C or if you've failed...but everything in law is a gray area so you never really know how well you will do on a multiple choice test. She says she tests this way to prepare you for the bar (a portion of which is multiple choice), but I just call it lazy. Not only is the teaching in the class simply reading the answers to textbook problems, but then exams are not even graded by her...it makes me question what she gets paid for on some level. I know she's probably great in Consumer Protection law, but for Sales it's just bad. I got through 73 of the 75 questions on the multiple choice, which was farther than most people I talked to. I figured I would do OK in there, but it really could be anything from a high A to a C.

The next exam on deck was Securities a week later. I worked the two days following the Sales exam because money around Christmas-time was a little tight (and to get away from exam stress), which left me only 4 days to prep for the exam. It does not make sense to me how we learn probably more than 10 times as much information in one 3 credit hour class (Securities) as we do in another 3 credit hour class (Sales). I had another study break on the Saturday before the exam for my first Magic tournament since Regionals 2007 in June. The format was Lorwyn limited and the PTQ was for a Pro Tour in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, which would've been awesome because I could have seen family over there. Still, I did not really study the format and the Marietta boys (Shep, Joey, etc.) had been going to a few PTQ's before this one and knew the format much better. Still, I managed to start 4-0 before running into a couple of buzzsaw decks that my mediocre card pile could not hold up to. The highlight was my first ever feature match against the 2006 Ohio state champ and 2007 state runner-up in Round 1, who I bashed 2-0. I played two people who ended up in the Top 8, so it was a better than expected performance and a nice study break. I left after 6 rounds instead of playing it out to drive home in the foot of snow that had fallen in 2-3 hours that afternoon and study some more. Aaron, Derek, Dom, and I got together for a little study group on Sunday, but it only lasted a couple hours since Derek and I needed to outline the second half of the class still. I spent the rest of Sunday doing just that. The exam was about as expected with a few in-depth essay questions touching on some major themes in the course. Professor Rose's policy question I did not really get into, so I figured that would sabotage my grade...he said he values consistency over 3 goods answers and one incomplete answer (which is exactly what I delivered...sigh).

I had one day to prep for International IP law, but that did not seem problematic as we covered even less than we did in Trademark and Copyright, and I know how to study for a Lee exam quickly. Everything seemed straightforward, and doing a lot of practical international patent work at WHE helped during the semester to reinforce what we learned. The exam was typical Lee, some short answers that were very easy and an essay which was long, involved, and tough to finish for a methodical thinker/slow typer. I had a great answer outlined in my head, but just like Securities, I could not quite get it all out before time was up. I figured I did OK, but no better than Copyright and Trademark (both low A's). At least exams were over, and only one more semester to go. Worked for another couple of days and on Saturday, it was off to Iowa for Christmas.

Another interesting thing during finals was getting new phones. We shopped around at T-Mobile and Verizon before settling on staying with AT&T. Kelley got her Blackberry Pearl she's been coveting and I got a Blackberry Pearl. It's really not much bigger than the Pearl, and it has a full QWERTY keyboard to make texting easier. I highly recommend it even after a month, and the Blackberry internet service was a life-saver in the internet wasteland that is visiting our families at Christmas. Yes, there are people not connected to the internet...and we're related to them.

My Dad called early in the week to ask if we could drive out on Friday instead of Saturday since Iowa was under a winter storm warning for Saturday. Unlike Ohio, in Iowa a winter storm warning is a big deal. We could not change the plans, so we drove on Saturday and hit nothing but clouds and rain until a few miles into Iowa. It literally turned from rain to snow in a little under a minute of driving, and the effect was dramatic. We stopped for dinner and new wiper blades at Coralville mall just outside Iowa City, and in the hour we were stopped...the roads went from clear to nearly impassable. I drove the rest of the way to my Dad's, and it took forever due to the road conditions. It snowed all night so we likely made it just in time. The next day we were supposed to go to Grandpa Norm's, but the snow was blowing with the steady 30 MPH winds and drifitng over the roads quicker than it could be dealt with...so the family gathering and church was cancelled the next day. Kelley and I ended up staying just at Dad's the entire 3 days we were there with the exception of one escape to Wal-mart and Half Price Books for cold medicine. The siblings are doing well, and they absolutely LOVED the Wii. Kelley and I are thinking we'll try to get Dad and Patti to go in with us on a Wii gift for the siblings next year. Nevertheless, it was fun watching them play Warioware and Guitar Hero. The roads were finally clear enough on Christmas Day and the plans to have people over to my Dad's got the whole family out for games and a big dinner. Nothing special to speak of, but it's always good to see the Iowa family and sit around the Fitzgerald game table. That reminds me, we need to track down a copy of Tribond. As for Christmas, we got the usual gift cards from the Iowa family. Moving on...

Cleaning out the Cavalier was fun thanks to the snow. Those 30 MPH winds I was referring to, completely packed the car with snow so that I had to dig the wheels out from the undercarriage and opened the hood to find no engine, just a bed of packed snow with an engine hidden somewhere inside. Still, we got on the road to Ohio the day after Christmas to continue our busy week. We started at Kathy's place (mother-in-law), and had a fun evening with the 4 dogs all trying to find purchase on one little full sized bed with Kelley and I. Thank God for the nighttime cold medicine to knock us out. Kathy and Bruce always get tools for me for Christmas, and this year was no exception. Got myself a power drill and a craftsman jack and jack stands for a car. Kelley also got me a nifty four bottle liquor shot dispenser that will go well in the future bar. Next it was my grandparents in New Matamoras, and we had a nice afternoon with some snacks and discussion with them. Left with some more stuff from the auctions/sales they go to all the time as well as our Christmas present (hand-made placemats). Then it was off to Kelley's Dad's and grandparents' house. Got the usual lot of nice house stuff from them, the big present being a wine cooler that now resides downstairs in our apartment as a shortcut to going upstairs :-) The final stop on our whirlwind tour was my Mom's place, which was more fun than last year when the weddings abd fallout were still a raw wound. Mom and Steve seem to be doing well, and it was nice to see my old cat Muffin again...I swear Siamese cats refuse to die for like 20 years. Muffin was one day from being put down at the vet's this year, but is now recovered. My Mom actually gets us some fun gifts which is a nice alternative after getting house stuff and tools and gift cards all week (balance is good). The truck was stuffed full to the brim when we made our trek back to Columbus a week after starting for Iowa.

It was nice to be home, and I decided to take the whole next week off from work to relax and detox from life basically. We had a small New Year's get together where we played non-poker games such as Dirty Minds, Trivial Pursuit, and Apples to Apples. Also hammered through the last of the final reads for JDR Issue 1 (way overdue, but oh well). Then it was time to go back to the routine of school 3 days a week, work 2 days a week, and weekend days. We had another small party for the OSU-LSU game, which obviously was about as exciting as last year's National Title game. What I find funny is how people have lost perspective and forget how awful it was to lost to Michigan basically every year and almost every bowl game under John Cooper. Now we get 5 BCS bowls (3 title games) and a 6-1 record in 7 years against Michigan, and sportswriters and other Columbus geniuses want to run Tressel out for not being good enough to win the big one. I've never seen so much whining about losing a game we really should not have been in, but in this crazy season a rebuilding Buckeye squad was just as good as most teams. LSU was just better, and thanks to all the juniors coming back the Bucks will have another good chance in 2008. That September road trip to LA against USC will be titanic!

Also went to see the basketball Buckeyes with Mom and Steve, and they are doing decent for how young they are. The Northwestern game we went to was a joke, as the Buckeyes played like crap all game and still had so much more talent than Northwestern to win by 11. We'll see if the basketball Buckeyes can continue the Big Ten title streaks the football and basketball teams have put up lately. It's a great time to be a Buckeye, even if we cannot win national title games against SEC teams. Oh, and for the record, anybody who thinks the SEC is faster than the Big Ten...please put the tape in of the LSU game and watch Beanie Wells burn the whole LSU defense in the first quarter. Now if Tressel can get Terrelle Pryor away from Rich Rod and UM, we'll be set for years.

Work has been about normal, with more international appeal briefs and office action responses. Also got to supervise a meeting with opposing counsel in a document review for a litigation, so it was nice to do that. I defnitely get most of my work from my mentor now, so I'll probably get really good at bedding systems and mechanical processes to make storage systems. I realize why they brought in 5 new associates last year and at least Jim and I this year...they promoted 4 associates to partner this year at the Holiday party. In a firm of 45 attorneys, that's a big swing. All the new associates passed the bar exam, so hopefully Jim and I will have the same success this year.

The new class schedule is nice a breezy-easy. Most of my friends seem to be loaded up, but then they did not all do the full-on moot court and journal together run that got me 10 credit hours. I only need 9 more credit hours, so I managed to only take 3 classes: Professional Responsibility, Civil Procedure II (both with Greenbaum), and Wills (B. Johnson). Both professors are pretty entertaining, and both go methodically through the material. Not too much reading to do, and the subject material in the classes is not too bad. Should give me plenty of time to do JDR stuff to finally get some issues published and also time to relax that will not exist this summer thank to the bar exam. Signed up for Bar/Bri with the DVD upgrade last week, and starting to look at the Ohio bar exam application to take the exam (not to be confused with the ridiculous character and fitness application). So I'm planning on working 5 weeks after Hooding and then taking 8 weeks off. 6 to study for the bar, 1 for the bar exam itself, and 1 for vacation with the in-laws in North Carolina to unwind from the bar on the beach with beer and sunshine. There might be a little overlap from BarBri and the last couple weeks of work, so I'll have the DVD's just in case. It should be a real fun couple of months. But for now, the classes are easy.

Got grades finally this week, and ended up about exactly on my average for the semester. Managed somehow to get low A's in Securities and Sales, so I kept the "no-C" streak going. The seminar grade was no surprise, and I did get a pleasant surprise in International IP by getting a CALI. This is my fourth CALI (Legal Writing, App Ad, and Federal Income Tax being the others), and finally I get a super grade in my practice area! All in all, another successful semester at Moritz, made even sweeter by the fact that it all does not matter anymore. I guess I'll have a chance at top 5-10% at graduation, which would be cool. Law school is definitely a hard challenge academically, but our class is finally within breathing range of being done with it. That will be a sweet feeling.

Finished up the publishing files for Issue 1 this weekend for JDR, and that feels like a big accomplishment. It hopefully will be all downhill from here as nothing could be as bad as symposium articles. Plus, Issue 2 has my own Note in it...so I have a little special motivation to make that issue a good clean one. About a month from now we'll finally have replacements picked from the staff for next year, and then I can share how much fun it is to be exec ed with a poor 2L! Also went to a Magic pre-release this past weekend with Shep to play some 2HG team Magic...Villa and Burton (also retired from the game) also played, and we all stunk it up but had fun doing it. Got home in time to watch both NFL conference championship games go opposite how I wanted them to...damn you New York Giants!

Bowling started this past week, and MFR (now called Well Hung Jury) will make one more grab for the title. We started with a solid 2-1 against Aaron and Chad's team...and we may have a lump or two in the coming weeks due to minor sandbagging at best. I've averaged over 150 with the new bowling ball which actually hooks, and it looks like I'll be able to be more successful without throwing my arm out of whack like I did with the old ball.

Well now comes the juicy part of my entry...there are three things more I'd like to write about but the fun one where I bitch out things in the world I hate (Al Sharpton, Global Warming, and the WGA strike included) will have to wait for another entry if ever.

So first we'll have the bad news. Finally figured out why Tom and Heather basically cut all their friends off from contact including us since September. Turns out Tom cheated on Heather and there are some tough consequences he has to face. It's really unbelievable, but he's really remorseful and I don't think he'll make the same fuck-up again...whether Heather stays with him or they move on to other people. It makes me happy to be in such a stable relationship where I don't have to deal with life ruining crap like that. He'll make it, but it's a tough time. He also finally quit Magic and I'm selling his cards on ebay for him. but that's enough of the bad news...

The good news is absolutely awesome. I'm sure it will take some of you by surprise, and others may already have guessed what it is. Kelley and I found out this past weekend that we will be parents in about September 2008. Kelley has had baby fever for years, so it's a very exciting time. It's almost perfect timing as well since a month and a half after the bar exam gives us some leeway for early deliveries without me having to miss it for the bar exam or something crazy like that. So in the course of 2008, I will go from student and newly married to working man and father. It should be a great and interesting year with all the changes.

That's all I got for you for now. I need to get the six hours of sleep I've left myself to function on a Tuesday at Moritz. We'll see you around, and I promise more frequent entries with all this time I have. After all, one cannot look at JDR articles all day!

The Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance

2007-11-19T16:24:00.000-08:00

The moot court season was about the opposite of last school year, with a couple exceptions. Instead of crapping out the brief in one night and getting in one practice argument with Berman, this year we did numerous practice arguments (thanks to everyone who helped with those BTW) and spent a lot of time on the brief. Instead of having one of the worst weekends of my law school career, this past weekend was one of the best. In both competitions I had to miss things I would not normally miss under any circumstances (Kelley’s Birthday and Barrister’s Ball last year, OSU v. UM this year). However, the more things change the more they stay the same…at least for the team I was on.

Both Team Scarlet (Lee, Tom, myself) and Team Gray (Holly, Justin, Erik) did an absolute ton of practice arguments the past three weeks to get ready, and I think we all finally were confident and ready to go. Our team decided to ride up together Friday evening to the Regional competition in Cleveland, and there were plenty of laughs on the ride up. I do not recall what context Tom gave for this comment, but the funniest thing said on the ride up was something getting called “The Shining Jewel of Crowning Ignorance.” Little did we know that this would be the theme for the weekend (we changed Crowning to Colossal over time, but the meaning is the same…the dumbest things you can think of fit into this theme). The ride to Cleveland flew by which is remarkable given how boring that drive can be at night. We checked into the Hampton and had a Team Scarlet pow-wow for a couple hours to finalize our argument outlines and answers to tough questions. There were quite a few 2nd Amendment issues they discussed (which my lack of knowledge allowed me to chime in what were probably not very helpful comments), and a couple in my preemption issue. Looking at how the other competitor briefs dealt with my toughest issue, we decided on an answer but had to laugh at how bad the Petitioner briefs were on that point. Headed to bed around 12:30, with the Hawaii football game in the background.

If you watch college football, you will understand this bit. If not, then you’ll figure it out. Every week in college football, ESPN nominates a handful of plays to be the Pontiac Game Changing Performance of the week…so in that mold, I present the Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance of the weekend award. There are quite a few nominees, but the first came on Friday night while we were discussing these tougher issues. A local TV station in Cleveland (channel 5 I think) has the cheesiest newscast in the world. One of the two anchors had on some colorful suspenders and every few minutes the newscast would cut to a wide-angle view of the anchors, then do a fast zoom in right up to the anchors, where they would say something dramatic. This is perhaps the worst TV news strategy I’ve ever seen, and apparently those comedy movies making fun of the fast zoom were grounded in fact! So the ridiculous TV news in Cleveland is the first nominee for Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance.

Surprisingly I slept well (Lee not so much I hear), but I still shot out of bed at 7 AM due to excitement/nervousness over the competition. As it was OSU-UM Saturday, I wore the closest thing to Scarlet and Gray that Beazley would allow (scarlet tie, white shirt, black suit). I also threw in the Teddy Ginn Jr. jersey and a Buckeye necklace for later. Plus it is always good to have the lucky Buckeye gear. Met the teammates for the complimentary breakfast in the hotel and the six of us with Beazley made our way to the Cleveland Justice Center. Let’s just say the building is dated, much like the hallways in Moritz. 23 stories of courtrooms, so they must be churning through a lot of litigation in Cleveland. We received our brief orientation from the competition director (who wore plum-colored shoes, as Holly pointed out) and our courtroom assignments for the two preliminary rounds. We decided to have Beazley watch Team Gray’s morning round and then our afternoon round. There was enough pressure on Lee who was arguing first in the morning argument, so we did not need Beazley there if that added any pressure.

So we go up to the courtroom a few minutes early and meet our opponents from Case Western (the host of the competition). There is also just one judge, an older gentlemen. Around the time of argument, the bailiff decided to go see where our other judge is, as every courtroom was to have two. The competition directors could not contact the other judge, so the bailiff came back to explain the situation. This is what she said: “Since our second judge could not be contacted and we cannot slow the competition, what we will do is proceed with just one judge and adjust your scores accordingly.” The four of us arguing all probably wanted to ask what adjustment of scores meant, but Lee was the first to speak up and ask the bailiff. The bailiff says, “we will take the score from this judge and double it, and then we will divide your overall score by 2 to find your average.” At this point she realized just how stupid that was, so she qualifies it by saying “it’s kind of like just taking the one score as the average.” No, that would not be kind of like the one judge score, THAT IS the one judge score! We were stifling the giggles on this one. This adjustment of scores (doubling the score and then dividing by 2 to find the average) is the second nominee for Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance.

As it turns out, the second judge was running late and made it just in time to sit for our argument. For those of you who don’t know moot court, the judges are grading you on your style and form and how you react under pressure of questions in an appellate argument. Their relatively subjective scores are added to you team brief score (60/40 percent) to find out which team wins the round. The more judges you have, the better it is. This is because one judge may grade you down unfairly for something, and fewer judges means fewer questions and a “cold court,” which is tougher than responding to questions of a “hot court.” We were happy to have the extra judge. Before getting into the argument, let me illuminate the issues we covered. Petitioner was the State of Old York, who passed a handgun restriction law that was challenged on Second Amendment right to bear arms grounds as well as federal preemption under the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (which stops states from regulating motor carriers). The Respondents are Sun Longone, a guy who is asserting his second amendment right to bear arms…and York Loading Company, a package delivery service like UPS or FedEx who lost profits due to needing to comply with Old York’s Law. So those are the sides, and clearly the Second Amendment is a sexier issue than preemption. There’s also a lot more research of historical cases on the 2nd Amendment, so that’s why both OSU teams set two team members to write and argue for that issue, and one team member who wrote the preemption part of the brief and argued both sides at competition.

Our first argument was Petitioner side against Case Western, where Lee does 2nd Amendment and I argue preemption. Lee argued very well despite a fairly cold court, with one bump in the ride. At one point the older justice asked Lee to distinguish this case from McGee v. Connecticut. I’m sure Lee’s face must have shown absolute devastation at not knowing the case, but he just rolled with it and told the court he was not familiar with that case and moved on. Later in the argument Lee was talking about the most recent Supreme Court case Miller from 1939, and the judge asked if Lee would disregard the case because it is so old, and Lee disagreed with that sentiment, which led the older justice to say “As someone who happens to be 68 years old, I’m happy to see that you don’t think old opinions should be discarded.” My argument was one of my best ones I had done for that side of preemption. The only struggles were when the older justice brought up the parts of the State Law challenged under the 2nd Amendment (but not under preemption for some reason) and forced me to explain to him why those State law provisions not at issue were not preempted. I explained those were not at issue and tried to give a substantive answer for his question, at which point the justice tells me to stop and he calls the bailiff up to the bar to ask the bailiff something. He then asks me to proceed and I continue, trying to forget about this line of questioning. Near the end of my argument the younger justice asked me if the criminal liability on delivery drivers is a heavy burden and I said no…then he repeated the question in a menacing tone, so I realized my error and explained that it was a heavy burden, but that did not make the state law automatically preempted. The opposing team then went, and each of them did well. The 2nd amendment guy was asked by the older justice, “are you a member of a militia?” and when the guy said no, the justice asked “why not?” The guy actually had a quick-witted response saying he was registered for selective service but not yet called. Later in the argument the guy was arguing that the State Law was not a restriction on handguns but an outright prohibition, and the older justice asked “Didn’t prohibition end back in the 1920’s?” The girl doing preemption also did well, but she spoke so fast it was hard to follow her points. At one point in the argument, the older justice said “Now hold on a minute honey, what evidence do you have in the record for significant economic effect?” Yeah that’s a little demeaning, but she rolled with it and went on. Lee gave a great rebuttal, including answering a question about preemption which was his biggest fear about rebuttal.

Once the argument was over, we left the room to let the judges deliberate and Tom and Lee were freaking out about the Connecticut case he cited. We go back into the room and receive commentary from the judges. The older guy then told us he fucked with each of us to see how we perform under pressure. Nice. So the McGee v Connecticut case was completely made up, he called the bailiff during my argument to disrupt me, he asked the militia questions to mess with the Case guy, and he said “honey” to see how the Case girl would react. He preached from the bench that judges who are demeaning to women still exist today and they need to be reported because that language is unacceptable. I can see wanting to teach a point in a classroom, but this is an advocacy competition and messing with people like that seems awful. I presume he wouldn’t interrupt a black competitor with the N-word, so this guy was something else. The critiques were about even. Lee was criticized for starting a little shaky before the court asked questions. I was criticized for wearing a red tie (no reason given) and smiling too much (I got that same comment last year in competition and Lee thinks it is because I naturally smile a little when I talk to people, not because I’m going out of my way to smile…I just don’t get it but I cannot seem to control it). The second judge also said that I got the short straw of the four arguments to make and did a nice job overcoming that. The comments were similar on the other side, but the girl got absolutely blasted for speaking way too fast. We figured that with those comments that it was a close argument but we probably won narrowly. Still, the result came back from the bailiff for respondents (Case Western) and we had to walk back to lunch with an 0-1 record. Beazley and Team Gray came out with a win, so at least we had one win and one loss. Still, this older justice fucking with each competitor is clearly the third nominee for Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance.

During lunch we went over to a hotel bar across the street and watched the first quarter of the OSU-UM game. We stayed until OSU scored a touchdown early in the second quarter to go up 7-3. It looked like it was going to be a good game, but we had to go argue. C’est la vie.

Onto the afternoon session, which now has Tom and I arguing for Respondents against a team from Detroit Mercy. Beazley and Lee settled down in the background, and we had a couple judges again this time. Detroit Mercy got up there and had some serious problems. The court was relatively hot, and the 2nd amendment guy on Detroit kept conceding points to the court and struggling with questions. With 3 minutes left in the argument, the court explicitly asked why he was conceding so much away? How could he win if he conceded these points? He had no answer for that. The Detroit preemption girl got up there and was clearly a little shaky in responding to questions and getting back on track in her argument. She at least did not concede so much, but she also used cases that were only in my preemption brief (no other team used these cases to make the points she made) and fell into traps of relying on a presidential signing statement and the federal handgun act. Considering that I wrote that brief and knew exactly how to kill those points from 3 weeks of practice, I was ready to rebut all those points in my argument. Tom gave a very good argument, certainly one of his best that I’ve seen. Then I got up there and gave what we thought was a good argument, hammering all of opposing counsel’s faults while making my affirmative case for preemption. The Detroit team waived rebuttal, which is a huge opportunity lost for extra points at the end. Needless to say, our solid arguments and their terrible ones led to a conclusion that Beazley and the three of us all thought we would win for sure. We go back into the room and get criticism from the judges. Nothing terribly unfair here, but they did slam the Detroit guy for conceding his case away. Oh and one more very interesting comment for me: this judge said I got the short straw of the four arguments, but did well with it. Sound familiar? Apparently I’m really good at playing the victim, since I got the “short straw” of the arguments on BOTH SIDES OF THE SAME ISSUE! Unbelievable. The bailiff came back with the verdict, and handed the folded piece of paper to the judges. When the judges opened the verdict, the one I was watching was visibly taken aback or shocked. They read: petitioner wins. We couldn’t believe it (and apparently the judges couldn’t either), but we wished Detroit good luck and went to sulk in the hotel bar across the street. We got to watch the last 7 minutes of the OSU 14-3 victory and that combined with a couple beers helped ease the sting and shock of going 0-2 in arguments. Team Gray also lost their second round so we had one team who did not know if they were going to make Sunday’s quarterfinals and another already eliminated. Despite thinking our brief was one of the top 5-6 out of 18 teams, we concluded that we must have not gotten a good brief score and it brought us down.

We went back to the hotel and got ready for the House of Blues banquet. I had thrown on my Ginn jersey and Buckeyes over my white dress shirt and scarlet tie, and it looked so good that I decided to not change into something else for the banquet (other than switching suit pants for jeans). The dress shirt and tie under a jersey is not quite sweater vest, but it does remind you of Tressel according to my teammates. The banquet took it’s sweet time, and no open bar like last year’s competition…so it was just interesting conversation with Beazley and all the OSU people. The ribs at House of Blues were very good, and I was happy I got them after seeing how awful the chicken and noodles dish ended up. The cornbread was the highlight of the meal though. A Case Western professor gave a speech about how to lose an appeal which was sometimes funny but not really. At least he was brief in his remarks, so the competition director could get to announcing the quarterfinals. The Best Brief award was also given out first, and guess who got best brief…of course it was the Case team that beat us in the first round! Both teams we faced made the quarterfinals, and thankfully so did Team Gray from OSU. Holly won the double-coin toss (more on that later) and picked Respondent side so they would be on-brief for the Sunday morning quarterfinals.

Now this double-coin flip procedure. To decide in every round who does which argument, the competition director gets a representative from both teams and has one of them call a first coin flip. Whoever wins the first coin flip calls a second coin flip. The winner of the second coin flip gets to pick which side they want to argue. This statistically makes no sense whatsoever, as the coin flip is fair and 50/50 every time you do it. I’m guessing one year in the past something happened during a coin flip…and the losing team said the coin flip was unfair because they were not able to call it or whatnot. So instead of arbitrarily picking one team to call the coin toss, they use a coin toss to decide who gets the right to call. There’s one problem…they still have to arbitrarily pick who calls the first coin toss! Not only is there no statistical difference in the double coin flip, it has the exact same arbitrariness as before! The double-coin flip procedure by its very nature is the fourth nominee for Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance.

Both teams hung out in Lee and Tom’s hotel room after the banquet, kicking back with a couple beers (not so much for Team Gray) and lively discussion. It was fun to reconnect a little with Justin and Erik who were in my 1L section and to get to know Tom, Lee, and Holly even better. My two teammates had not read the infamous blog entry about my other moot court competition, so some good Brian stories went around with all the other law school stuff. There of course were more “Shining Jewel” comments and other inside jokes that I will spare the readers. We’ll just say it was a good time. Tom’s wife dropped by the hotel, and she and Team Scarlet went out to the Cleveland Panini’s bar while Team Gray went to study and get a good night’s sleep. At the bar we watched a couple of good football games (WVU-Cincy, Oklahoma-Texas Tech) and talked all things moot court, law school, and Buckeyes. The bar in Cleveland had the most eclectic crowd I’ve ever seen. People of all ages and walks of life, as well as all races were in the bar at one time. There were a couple people getting jiggy or interpretive dancing to the music behind us, and there were some professional-looking people having a quiet drink a few tables down. The drunkest guy in the bar and the drunkest girl were making out near us at the bar (nasty) and when she walked away we noticed this guy was pimpin with his fly open on his jeans. He was sitting in such a way to show it off to the whole world that he is just too cool to zip his fly. That guy also makes it in as the fifth nominee for Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance.

Woke up Sunday morning, went down to grab a quick breakfast and ride over to the courthouse to watch and support Team Gray in their quarterfinals. What was funny about this round was that Team Gray ran into the same problem that we did on day 1, that being there were only 2 judges when there were supposed to be 3 for each quarterfinal. The third judge was called and said he forgot. Nice. So the competition director comes up to explain the situation, and said the teams could decide to go ahead with only two judges or that the competition director would be the third judge because she was the only person qualified. The teams decided quickly to add her as the third judge, which she was stunned about because she did not expect them to take her up on the offer. After delaying a bit more to get some score sheets for herself, the competition director sat down and was the third judge. Don’t offer something you are not willing to give! Both teams in the quarterfinals did a nice job, and the court was relatively hot which helps. Holly and Justin gave really good arguments in my opinion. There was one judge who asked very probing questions and tough questions to each competitor, and was by far the best judge in the entire competition that I saw. The arguments were pretty close in this round and it was really too close to call. The verdict came in: Respondents (OSU) wins.

The team immediately went to the semifinal round, which would determine who makes the Top 2 and goes to National competition. Holly lost the double coin flip, but the opponent shockingly chose to be Petitioner, despite that being a harder argument and that put themselves off-brief against the OSU team who would be on-brief. In any event, the team they were facing for nationals was the Detroit Mercy team that Tom and I lost to inexplicably. This was favorable as Holly and Justin have been arguing Respondent side against us for a couple weeks (and our brief’s argument for Petitioner was clearly used by the Detroit team). The Court consisted of 2 real judges and a practitioner, but they were as cold as a cucumber. They asked the Detroit guy one question in 14 minutes of argument! They did not warm up to ask many more questions of the Detroit girl, Holly, or Justin. The problem was that the Detroit team are great oralists, and they delivered an amazing argument for a cold court. This was a polar opposite from what they did against Tom and I (struggled mightily against a hot court). Holly and Justin gave solid arguments, but after the Detroit team beat us so shockingly I just assumed they had a pretty good brief. Detroit had a slightly better argument and so I figured they would knock out the other OSU team. Sure enough, the judges came back with the verdict for Petitioner. We all congratulated Detroit and Lee, Tom, and I left the building immediately. Tom and his wife were riding back together, so Lee and I hopped in his SUV and hit the road.

Just when the weekend seemed over, Lee gets a call right before we stopped for lunch 15 minutes out of Cleveland. It’s the other team. Turns out the after we left and Erik, Justin, and Beazley left, Holly was putting on her boots to leave the building and got stopped on the way out by the competition director. They told Holly a terrible mistake had been made and that OSU had actually won the semifinal round. Holly called Beazley and tracked down Erik, but could not get in contact with Justin (who was the only person who knew the preemption arguments). Beazley waited for Justin at the hotel just in case he went back to get his car out of valet, and she managed to get Justin back to the courthouse just in time to argue with Erik in the finals (Holly lost the double coin toss again and was put on Petitioner side this time). Lee and I obviously did not go back for the finals, but it turns out OSU lost that one. Still, second place in Regionals and a trip to Nationals for OSU, the first time in 7 years. Oh, and messing up the verdict in the most critical round of Regionals…definitely a sixth and final nominee for Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance!

Congratulations to Holly, Erik, and Justin. Professor Beazley and Monte Smith both noted that you need good briefs, good arguments, and good luck to do well. Team Scarlet did not have the luck for sure, but I’d rather go out with our best arguments and a good brief as opposed to messing up arguments. We went out with guns blazing, losing to a team who won best brief and a team who lost a nationals berth by a hair. Plus OSU could only send one team to nationals anyway, so as a group of 6 we did exactly what we went to Cleveland to do. This moot court weekend was a great time, made even better by the OSU thrashing of Michigan. I know Holly and the rest of my 5 teammates were terribly worried about what I would write about them (LOL), but other than going 0-2 personally…the weekend was fantastic. Looking forward to helping Team Gray go win OSU some pride at national competition.

Before I put a wrap on this entry for good, there still is one item of unfinished business. We must declare a winner of The Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance! To remind you, here were our nominees:

1. The TV newscast in Cleveland, with the suspenders and fast zoom in from a wide angle shot
2. Score adjustment: Taking your score from one judge, doubling it, then dividing that by two to find your average
3. The judge from Team Scarlet’s loss to Case Western who intentionally fucked with each competitor
4. The double-coin flip procedure for determining who argues what side
5. The guy at the bar with the fly wide open, sending a big pimp message to all of Cleveland
6. Announcing the wrong winner of the semifinal round, then crushing the happiness right out of the real loser (Detroit)

The competition is fierce, but there can only be one winner. The TV newscast and guy at the bar just don’t stand up to the rest. The judge from our first round might be a royal prick, but not really ignorant. You could really take your pick from the other nominees, but the winner is…

Petitioner!

…

Wait. There seems to have been a mistake. The winner is Respondent!

That’s right: your Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance is announcing the wrong winner of the semifinal round. Way to mess up your most important job at the most important time CWRU, and call into question all your other “decisions” on the weekend. For all that, CWRU gets the crown! Congratulations to them on achieving the Shining Jewel of Colossal Ignorance.

All of a sudden, a slow down!

2007-11-18T18:51:00.000-08:00

It has been so busy since going on vacation for fall break that blogging just kept slipping down the list of priorities. Too bad, because lots has happened in the interim. This entry will go back and try to cover vacation forward to this weekend, which deserves it's own entry just like last year. But thankfully moot court weekend was absolutely awesome this time, as it should be!

So details from the Florida vacation left out from the short entry in October. The cruise was good as mentioned back then. A couple highlights were watching a magician-comedian and finally figuring out the grand old game of Craps. The shows are generally decent on a cruise ship, but they brought this guy in when we were in port at Nassau and he was outstanding. The whole schtick was him failing miserably at a bunch of tricks and then working a real trick into the act at the end of each "failure." Craps is an incredibly simple game once you figure out what all the bets you can make are. Sticking with the Pass Line, the odds bet, and the 6/8 single number bets are the way to go and we had some hot shooters with the dice who won me enough money to make us almost even in the casino for the entire cruise. That's a success when you play as much Roulette as we did! The craps table also is a neat big piece of furniture, and Kelley and I decided that we may have a couple professional casino tables in our future home (in my classy poker room with the bar). That should be nifty.

We returned to Florida to spend 2 days with Angela. She lives in the center of Florida now about 45 minutes north of Orlando and she had an appointment in Jacksonville the morning we returned from the cruise to Canaveral, so we took our time driving from Canaveral to there, dropping by where NASA is. Once we made it back to her little town, guess who was driving her? Her ex-husband Jim. Nice. So we went out to a bar called the Blue Martini that evening and finally got a chance to knock back some drinks and just relax. I dropped 4 shots of Bacardi 151 with no chaser at all, just because I like the burn. The bar was incredibly classy and upscale for being at a mall in Orlando (the bouncers literally walked around and made people take their feet off chairs, etc.) So Jim showed some of his true colors at the bar. Let's just say he's around Angela to try and get back in her pants...and he acts like it too. Jim is a perfectly nice guy to me, but he doesn't really listen to Angela, or treat her well. So once they sell their house, I'm pretty sure he'll be officially kicked to the curb for good. It could be worse...

So we saw Chris at Burton's wedding the weekend before the cruise, and he seemed to be doing a lot better. He said he had broken it off with his girlfriend for good, and they have been on and off for years so I thought no big deal. Well Kelley came across Connie's blog and she had written a nice entry about what happened. So Connie writes that Chris is such an ass because he never did half the chores when he was in school and she worked for 2 years...but let's see, that's what you do for someone you love. Anyways, he kicked her out because she told him she was pregnant with some other guy's baby. So he told her to get the hell out, and she had to go stay with her parents. She said "who kicks a pregnant girl out?" and called him a heartless son of a bitch. Well honestly, that's exactly what he should have done. To continue their relationship would be hurtful, fake, and ridiculous. Then in the SAME BLOG ENTRY, Connie goes on to brag about how hot the guy she cheated with was (if you had to cheat, damn did I pick the hottest blah blah blah...you get the point). And how she's so happy about having his baby, but clearly Chris was in the fault. All her friends were supporting her in the comments, calling Chris the biggest jerk in the world for this. I'm so happy he is finally away from that psycho. So in retrospect, Angela could have it worse. Let's hope it does not get as bad as Chris.

Guitar Hero III finally came out right after vacation, and it was nice to finally have that for Wii. The guitar feels a lot better because when you hook the Wii-mote into it, it gives the plastic guitar a more appropriate weight than the other systems. Also wireless is way better, but anyways on to the game itself. The song set has a few weak points and there are no good bonus songs, but the regular lineup of songs is way better than anything else they had brought out in the first two games. Plus the vast majority of the songs are the originals done by the artists instead of covers. Highlights include Bulls on Parade by Rage, One by Metallica, Same Old song and Dance by Aerosmith, Stricken by Disturbed, and Welcome to the Jungle by GnR. Also the new boss battles are challenging but good (original riffs by Tom Morello and Slash, and a final battle agains the devil which happens to be The Devil Went Down to Georgia). I blew through all the songs on Medium and have been struggling through Hard. Kelley is way better than me at the game, but I'm sure it will get many more hours of gameplay this year alone. Now I need to find a friend who has the game for Wii so we can figure out what co-op mode is like.

The other good thing about Guitar Hero is that you can fit it in to blow a few minutes when you have them, with no real time committment. I'll have more time for my other games now, but the past few weeks it's just been forcing it in wherever. As of this week, we have 15 games for the Wii, many of which I have not had a chance to fully get into. These include Super Mario Galaxy, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, and Zack and Wiki. All of those are the best games for the Wii, so we'll have to see how far I get through those during break. At least I've gotten good at Guitar Hero on Hard and beaten Super Paper Mario...

School has been kind of a constant drone in the background. Finally got the first and second accuracy checks finalized and made it through the third accuracy check for JDR. Now we are on final reads for Issue I (and II when we get to it), while Issue III is through the first steps. I was going to be diligent and get Issue I final reads done by mid-November, but I am just starting them this week. Securities class is now getting blown off in every regard, as I skim the readings and read the slides. Lots of friends apparently in the same boat for that class, so we'll need to pull it together. I made it through my last two days on call in Sales, and of course they were the first day after fall break and the day after Veteran's Day. Nice. It would be cool if she would send out the assignments in those cases before the evening before! At least that class is easy, but the multiple choice exam will be kind of random. International IP ended last week, and we'll have an exam in about a month. That should be easy enough, patent and copyright is interesting stuff. Seminar is done this Tuesday, but it has been essentially done for a couple weeks with both papers turned in and final presentations left. Despite writing each paper for Judge Sutton's two seminars in a day or two before it is due, I managed to get the same decent grade on all of them. Nice consistency. This seminar has been better though because all 20 of us are giving oral arguments on our assigned current SCOTUS cases with a devil's advocate giving the other side. C.J. and I actually managed to make a securities case manageable last week, and this week I get to explain my death penalty racial discrimination case (Snyder v Louisiana). The best so far was after Chad gave a very serious explanation of a voting 1st amendment case, Everson was his Devil's Advocate and dropped some absolutely hillarious lines in his rebuttal. Let's just say the opening was "The Romans threw Christians to the lions, and that's what is happening in this case because Washington is throwing political parties to the lions, destroying them." He also tied in Utah, putting cats and dogs in a room together for 2 days, and the Real Slim Shady. Some days, academic conversation needs a little humor. So two classes are all but finished (except for the IP final), and two others need to be cracked down on all of a sudden now that moot court is over. But more on that later.

So the Writer's Guild strike actually came about and all of a sudden we are facing a long winter of reality TV. Maybe that will be good for the country and we'll all go hang out at the gym. Or maybe not. It's really disappointing that 24 will not come back MLK weekend now due to the strike...the preview for Season 7 was amazing. No more CTU, and now Tony Almeida is back...apparently as a villain. This could be a return to greatness after the first disappointing season in series history. The only good fall shows we've found are Kitchen Nightmares based solely on Gordon Ramsey...and House of course. The House story arc leading into the holiday break has been fun, but now it's time to pick our 2-3 new doctors and get on with it. Clearly Foreman, Chase, and Cameron are staying on as a part of the series, so it should only get better with more characters in prominent roles. I've also grown attached to Don't Forget the Lyrics and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader, as well as Cash Cab. Game shows that require some general knowledge but not Jeopardy knowledge. Perfect to watch. Still, once House goes off the air it will get nice and redundant...Fox has to be salivating though as American Idol will dominate the airwaves even more than usual this year.

Bowling season ends this week with the finals, but we don't know who's in it and we don't really care. Our hopes for a title come down to the final semester, as we went into the playoffs as the second best team in the league (tied for first, but lost to them 2-1) and lost in the quarterfinals. Brodie had a serious cramp up in his neck and could barely throw the ball in the quarterfinals. Still, he did better than I did. Daniel carried the team game 1 and Kelley beat my scratch series for the first time ever. We bowled decent as a team but it did not matter because the team we faced bowled way over average. Still, we've entered the last three playoffs in 1st, 4th, and 2nd overall in a league of 24 teams (32 last year). In a real bowling league that would be successful because there are no playoffs...just the regular season. Fun times nonetheless, and hopefully we do better next semester. But much like moot court, it take s a little luck to match up in the playoffs with teams that are not bowling out of their minds that week. Brodie and Daniel came with the costumes this year, so that's what we are known for.

College Football has been crazy. The four games in a row were fun, including the road trip to PSU. A guy just randomly messaged me on the Buckeye Ticket Forum and got me a ticket in the Buckeye section for face value. He was a nice guy to hang out with in Happy Valley all day as well. The Beaver Stadium is very large and impressive, much more room than what we have in the Shoe or Michigan's Big House. The home schedule got a lot more interesting too, as Michigan State only lost by 7, Wisconsin led by 7 in the fourth quarter before surrendering 28 straight points, and Illinois shocked the Buckeyes. I'm a little upset that my last game as a student was a loss, but it seemed like the fate of 2001 when we lost our last home game to Illinois (the last time they were decent) and followed it up with a road win in Ann Arbor. Well of course the Buckeyes got that again this year, in the most impressive fashion. Michigan held under 100 yards total for first time in 50 years, Beanie Wells sets an OSU record against Michigan with 222 rushing yards, Mike Hart and Chad Henne stuffed terribly to go 0-4 in their careers against OSU, and Lloyd Carr retiring after being the first Michigan coach to lose 6 out of 7 to OSU and the third to lose 4 in a row. It will be interesting to see how the rivalry goes under a new Michigan coach. I did get a press pass to the WVU-Louisville game, and that was quite the experience. Sitting with a bunch of local newspaper writers and NFL scouts is something else, especially in a climate controlled pressbox with a buffet. Morgantown is a great college town and I loved that first trip to see a game there. Now that the Buckeyes are in the clubhouse at 11-1, the Rose bowl is certain while another BCS Championship game is possible with one more big upset of LSU or WVU (assuming the Big XII is won by Oklahoma). It's been a great 7 years as a Buckeye student. 1 National Title, 5 BCS Bowls, 2-3 National Title Game appearances, 4-2 bowl record, 6-1 Michigan record, 4 Big Ten titles and 3 in a row during law school. Absolutely awesome. Living in Cincinnati will allow us to continue to follow our favorite team, which is good because Cincinnati Bengals football blows. Enough said.

Sportswriting still going well. By all means, see my articles weekly at www.southerncollegesports.com. This week I explained why Tim Tebow should win the Heisman, and the argument would be a lot easier now that Dennis Dixon of Oregon is out for the season. But you can read that at your own leisure...

Work has been decent when I get a chance to go down there. I've been set up permanently at a "law clerk desk" which Jim Carey works at on Tuesdays while I come in for R-F some weeks. The assignments have been OK this fall, not as good as summer but it is hard to do time-sensitive stuff when you are only there periodicially. All 5 of the new class of associates passed the Ohio Bar, so that was great news. No OSU 3L's made it through interview season with another offer from WHE, but the two 2L's I heavily supported got offers. I know one person declined and the other is debating, but I hope he decides to spend next summer there. The firm is the best IP firm in Ohio, hands down. It's a good place to be.

All of a sudden, I have time again. No more bowling, football Saturdays, moot court, seminar, IP class, etc. JDR final reads and finals. Anybody want to go out for a drink?

So I've left out moot court, but I think everything else has been covered effectively. I've got a fair bit to say about this past weekend, but it is getting late and so I'll write tomorrow evening. I know my moot court teammates are on pins and needles waiting to see if I bash them thoroughly like the last time I went on a Moot Court trip, but this will not happen. The story is still pretty funny and needs to be told when I can tell it well, so come back tomorrow for that one. See you then (all 10 of you readers, and that's just because 5 of you are my moot court teammates!)

Oh and in case you were wondering, the title of tomorrow's article will not be something generic like "Bowling Semifinals and Gibbons Weekend." No, it will be far greater than that. It will be The Shining Jewel of Crowning Ignorance. And when that's the theme of the weekend, you know it was fun.

It's all tied together...

2007-11-13T22:44:00.000-08:00

Moot court competition is this weekend. Last year's moot court competition used Saved by the Bell characters, and I was trying to prove AC Slater was nuts so he did not get the death penalty. Then I come across this gem right before this year's competition:

Guys this is probably the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. I was at my girlfriend’s house tonight for dinner, and shortly after I had to go #2. My Gf's brother was in the downstairs bathroom, so I went upstairs to use the master bathroom. I was about to take a dump, and I remembered something my friend told me called AC Slatering. AC Slatering is when you take a dump facing backwards on the toilet, just how on saved by the bell AC Slater always sat backwards on a chair. So when I was taking a dump, my stomach was facing the back of the toilet, and my back was facing the door. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and began to get nervous. Since AC Slatering is a tough position to get into, it requires taking off your pants. So there I am sitting in my GF's parent’s bathroom taking a dump with my pants off and facing the wrong way on the toilet. My dump was about halfway out when the footsteps became closer. I then turned around to see that I had not locked the door. Trying to finish as quickly as I could, I began pushing harder and harder. Suddenly, the door opened, and my gf's mom stood there in shock staring at me. We made eye contact for a split second, and I was so embarrassed I wanted to die. I quickly finished up, got dressed, and ran out of the house as quickly as I could. I am expecting my gf to break up with me tomorrow. I am so embarrassed and I hope my gf doesn’t blabber about this, Ill die if anyone else finds out.”

Wow. AC Slater is nuts. But not as nuts as someone who forgets to lock the bathroom door in these circumstances. I think finding this story is a good sign for this year's moot court competition. Don't ask me how...it just feels good. Much like I'm sure AC Slatering feels good.

National TV

2007-10-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Went to the Penn State-OSU game this weekend. Fun times as we bash them 37-17. Went to watch taping of Gameday Final on ESPN afterwards, and got on TV for about 0.3 seconds. It's at the beginning of the video in the post below. For your convenience, here's a screenshot.

Video

2007-10-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Back from Vacation

2007-10-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

An update...simply because I'm sitting in Securities class listening to another fascinating discussion of the only case worth mentioning that ever came out on Section 11 liability, the bowling alley case. Funny how we always do this one on a Wednesday. Bowling night tonight should be fun, as we get into the stretch run before the playoffs. We are 13-2 after five weeks and should probably have the playoffs locked up tonight if not already. Then it is all a game of week to week luck.

Interestingly enough, the baseball playoffs have been going pretty much as I envisioned, with the glaring exception that the Cubs did not make win a game, let alone make it into the NLCS. The Rockies are on some kind of roll, and I think it will be interesting seeing them face a team with far superior hitting and pitching (both the Indians and the Red Sox are just better). Go with the underdog though, as the Rockies are just too hot to lose the Series.

I do not know how I still have a winning record in my game of the week picks on Southern College Sports. I'm 13-11 now which is far worse than other seasons but given how half the Top 10 teams have been losing every week, it's too unpredictable. I should have an article up later today which is one of my better ones this season. Two weeks ago I wrote an absolute monster around working on my moot court brief and seminar paper, but then last week was a short one due to vacation. I'm hoping the PSU-OSU press credential comes through later this week, but the WVU-Louisville game is still out there waiting for a response. At least I've got a press pass for Ohio University's finale against Miami (OH)...never would have guessed the team fighting for a MAC title in that game would be the RedHawks, but that's how it looks now. In any event, I'm planning on going to the next 4 Buckeye games after missing the past 3 (2 road games and Kent State due to vacation). I'd like to be confident that the Buckeyes could take care of their schedule and keep that #1 ranking they have now, but in this season it should surprise nobody that I still think we lose somewhere.

The Big Ten actually might have 8-9 bowl eligible teams for their 7 spots this year, which is a flip from the past 3 years where the Big Ten got 2 BCS bowls and only had 6-7 bowl eligible teams (leaving 1-2 bowl spots open for others). Here's guessing those conferences jumping in on the Big Ten's spots the past few years don't open up spots for teams like Northwestern and Indiana this year. There are currently an astounding seven teams at 5-2 (Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Penn State, Indiana, Michigan St, Purdue) and each of them will likely join the Buckeyes as bowl eligible. Even Northwestern at 4-3 and Iowa at 3-4 are threats to get to 6 wins, so this should be an interesting back half of the Big Ten schedule. Every team left on OSU's schedule is 5-2, but the teams couldn't be more different. I have about 98% confidence the Bucks win at home against a team like Michigan State, but only about 35% confidence that we can escape Happy Valley next weekend with a win.

Wouldn't it just be great is the Buckeyes played against BC or USF for the title? It will not happen but we can dream while those teams remain undefeated behind us.

Vacation was nice, until the drive home! The cruise was so much better than three years ago, highlights being no jellyfish infesting all beaches this time, sunny skies, smooth seas, nothing boarded up in Nassau, etc. Added another HRC bear to the collection, and this one is the most different so far (bright green bird jump suit on a bear, it's interesting). It was so great to absolutely not think about law school in any meaningful way for 7 days, but it was not to last. There just is nothing better than an all-inclusive resort/casino/etc on the high seas. It would be nice to actually get some friends to go with next time, so we'll have to start bugging them to save up some money sooner rather than later.

The drive home was going well until Virginia. Virginia is 66 miles long on I-77, ending in a tunnel to West Virginia. We stopped at mile marker 56. Three hours later we'd finally moved ten miles and went through the tunnel (pushed down to one lane), and it appeared there was no reason. WTF Virginia and West Virginia? But whatever, got back at 4 AM, got awake the next day and turned in the mooot court brief on time. So that's that. Back to the grind, class is over.

A long awaited update

2007-10-02T21:24:00.001-07:00

Well it's been far too long, but I feel that I must write before vacation and I'm having writer's block on the moot court brief again. We are already into Week 7 of the school year and much has happened since the last time I wrote. Let's start with school...

Classes are whoop-de-doo fun. Securities is hard to read for anymore but still better than Sales. I hope I can sludge through Securities like I did in BA, but it seems like so much statutory material every week to outline. Might have to start early. Rose is an awesome professor though, and his auction for money envelopes was classic good stuff. Sales class makes me dumber every time, but we have to go because of the enforced attendance policy. Seeing some Creola Johnson questions on quizzes also indicates that her all multiple choice test will be a nightmare. All this for bar prep or remedial contracts...at least I have many friends in there suffering with me. International IP is the highlight of my reading for each week, especially since we are starting the patent half of the class this week. Copyright was OK too, but I'm happy to be moving back into my field again. Lee is good as always. I guess Mike the new IPLS president is passing around a petition to get the school to run a patent drafting class next semester. I do not know if I can sign it in good faith because that class does not seem useful to me now that I'm working part time and learning how to do it for WHE on the job (which is all that matters for the future, not some academic notion of perfection). Finally we have Seminar, and as usual I am happy keeping the same grade on the first paper this semester as I got in all my assignments for him last year (when over half the class serves on boards of the top 3 journals at the school, it's tough to stay in the median let alone on the top). Judge Sutton is the absolute bomb, and I cannot wait to have him grill us national teams for moot court class later in the semester.

Speaking of moot court, hopefully the Michigan game is another 3:30 or 4:00 kick this year as we should be done with our preliminary rounds on Saturday by 3 in Cleveland. Our team has had a bit of bad luck with computers...as I have wireless problems slowing my process, Tom had half of one side of his computer ripped out by a would-be computer thief, and Lee's laptop actually has been stolen. Crazy times...not even a lock stopped this thief. We are slogging through the brief and will hopefully be done before I go cruising. The topic is a good one, with the first issue being whether the 2nd amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms, and the second issue being federal premeption of state laws. I am doing the preemption issue and will be doing both the argument for premeption on both sides. It's quite a bit less sexy than the second amendment, but I like the challenge. Journal is going OK, as we finally got the Pope article today (3 weeks late) and we will move seamlessly from the end of the first acc-checks to the second round for Issue III two weeks after fall break. Thankfully the administrative duties of my job will slow significantly after October as I only have 1 more acc-check to prepare and then the 2L notes to read and grade. Everything else will now move to the substantive portion of my job, that being final reads and publishing. More work for me, but it's all stuff I can do at my leisure thank God.

Well Kelley got fired from the church job because they found someone eight months early. Whatever. Her last week was a hymn sing this past Sunday and it was nice to hear her play so many songs one last time on the old pipe organ. Maybe she will take up a little more piano at the house now...I think she's hoping to get on at COSI with Sarah, where she will get more hours than she is getting from the daycare job. Plus she hates that job. Sarah is finally moving out late this month as she bought a condo across town. Will be absolutely lovely to have all the space and home office back for sure. I do a lot of work at school in my office, but for writing papers and home work I like to have a place to get away not consisting of my comfy chair and our bed. I'm also working most weeks R-F down in Cincinnati. OSU callbacks are going on now and Laura came through last Thursday while I was there, some other guy on Friday, Dave L. went today and Keith will be down there with me on Thursday. It's greedy but I really want Dave and either Keith or Laura to receive and accept offers there...I want coworkers I know from my school days! I'm just now getting back into the swing of things at work and getting more efficient. The money is good and necessary until Kelley gets back on her feet but really I'm just glad for the break from school life. Plus it is nice to build up a repertoire with the work friends before getting there full-time.

Bowling is off to a great start. We've already bowled against Aaron's team and Bart's team in the first four weeks, and we lead the division with a 10-2 record. Hopefully things will keep up but I do not think we will need much more to make the playoffs this semester. Then it's all a luckfest from there. Ohio State football swept through the joke schedule of September and is now #4 ranked. We'll see how appropriate that rank is with the tough roadie at Purdue this weekend. I wrote perhaps my longest non-preview article ever this week because I just had lots to write about, so feel free to scoot on over to southerncollegesports and check it out. In TV Solitary ended this week and I can only hope for Solitary 3.0! House is back and looks to be quite entertaining as House cuts through 40 interns to find 3 apprentices to replace Chase, Cameron, and Foreman. I think we will continue to get the occassional appearance by Chase and Cameron also, so perhaps not all is lost and changing in House world. It's the only thing to sustain us until 24 and Lost come back.

We watched the premiere of Cavemen tonight. That was quite possibly the worst pilot I've ever seen. Just outright BORING the whole way through and not very funny. I had bet that the show would be awful, but I figured it would at least be novel and funny for a couple weeks. Oh well.

Baseball playoffs start tomorrow night, and boy what a finish in the National League. Anyways, here are my predictions sure to go wrong as always!
Chicago Cubs over Arizona Diamondbacks in 4
Colorado Rockies over Philadelphia Phillies in 5
Boston Red Sox over Los Angeles Angels in 3
Cleveland over New York Yankees in 5
Colorado Rockies over Chicago Cubs in 6
Boston Red Sox over Cleveland Indians in 7
Boston Red Sox over Colorado Rockies in 5

Wouldn't it be sweet if the Indians played against the Rockies in a super low-budget market world series, or the Indians against the Cubs in a battle for one team to end a LONG world series drought. Probably will not happen, but we can hope.

Well hey I cannot think of anything else to speak of and it is getting late, so it must be time to wrap this entry up. Cruise to Bahamas and out of the country next week, so probably will not update until middle of the week 2 weeks from now at the earliest. Have a good fall break law school people and everyone else, see you next time.

Getting into the flow...

2007-09-02T22:19:00.000-07:00

The second week of classes and school went down a little smoother than the first. Of course there was the complication of Kelley going out of town to Wisconsin all week, but now she's back as of tonight and we have a full house again. Her cousin Stephanie got married right before us last year and had twins in October of last year, and now she'll be raising them by herself for a while because her husband died. It's a very sad situation, but Stephanie has a lot of good family supporting her if she needs them. Kelley said it put here in a real tough spot emotionally because the family kept bringing up our recent news and success (accepting the job offer in Cincinnati, which will make her "the rich cousin") and she felt guilty about that coming up when everyone was so sad about the death. It sounded like the whole week was absolutely awful, but hopefully things get back to normal again now that she's home.

On the home front the classes for week 2 were a tad more interesting than those of week 1 (getting through with review type materials and starting to hit some more meaty classes). Securities keeps me about half interested, International IP is a great class, Seminar has the same interesting discussions, and Sales looked better after this week because we will have on-call lists. I'm up on 9-11, so we'll see how bad I can answer questions then. Found out what weeks of the school year I'll be busy with Seminar and moot court, and I'm a little pissed about Moot Court. Last year it was Barrister's Ball and Kelley's Birthday...so I picked National to avoid the spring only to end up having competition on the Saturday and Sunday of OSU-Michigan weekend. Which means my streak of 6 straight OSU-scUM games is over, but hey it was a nice run (5-1 and 3 Big Ten titles clinched against the Wolverines). The guys on my team seem like good guys and everything I hear about them is positive, so there should be no repeat unfortunate experiences. We will be at Case Western for our regional in the national competition as well, so much better than the early rumors of Akron or last year's which was at Moritz. Brief writing will start in a week or two I think so it will be time to get going on that. You better believe I will have my pocket radio with me on moot court Saturday...as I don't want to hear about the Michigan game from anyone other than the radio guys. Got a DVR this week which is ironic as I might have ordered one after finding this out just to record the big game. It's bery nice not having to set a VCR anymore.

Speaking of the Buckeyes, went to the home opener for the second year in a row on Saturday. Went with stepdad-in-law because obviously Kelley needed to give her ticket to someone, and it was his first ever college or pro football game live. I gave him a similar experience to what I got for my first ever OSU game, as we woke up early enough to go to the Buckeye Bob tailgate for a little over an hour before trekking to the stadium. Most of the usual crew were there including David Way, Paul, Doug, Dan, etc. Talked to Bob about the offer in Cincinnati and the last year of school, and he says he can still feel the anxiety for others taking the bar exam every July (despite being 25 years removed from that this year). It's funny that due to David Way and my mom working together for so long that I got hooked into one of the best group of tailgaters at OSU and a group of attorneys at that. They are limiting the number of times students can go to the Moritz tailgates to 2 this year, and Kelley and I may only make it to one of those (next week against Akron). Good for the breakfast food type tailgates and noon games, but I'd rather go to Bob's on most occassions. The new field turf looks sharp in the stadium, but the endzones and the block O at midfield being bright scarlet takes a little getting used to. It was hotter in the stadium than I ever remember, but it was OK because humidity was very low for Ohio. They say it got up to 140 degrees on the field turf because that rubber sucks in heat. In any event, I'm looking a little like Two-Face from Batman movies right now because right right side of my face and neck is sunburnt while the left side is not at all. Go figure. The Buckeyes look like a pretty good defensive unit this season, and the offense should be good by the time the big games roll around. The game that worries me is Purdue, as I do not know if we can win a shootout and Purdue has one of the best offensive units in the Big Ten. Definitely hoping that press credential comes in for the Penn State game now, as the Purdue game is Burton's wedding and the Michigan game now is Moot Court. Should be a good season no matter how it goes, but I've got my sights on a one-loss Rose Bowl year.

Not too much to speak of during the long weekend, although I did pick up a few good DVD sets for our collection and viewing pleasure. Ghostbusters 1 and 2 gift set is on serious sale right now at Best Buy and Target if you want those, but everything else was used stuff (seasons of House, Boston Legal, Mind of Mencia, and the Godfather trilogy were the vast majority of what I bought). Spent good time with Everson and David Lee, and now I've seen firsthand what a beautiful thing Brodie vs. Everson is on the Dr. Mario game. If you've ever seen Brodie bowl, it's pretty much the same...except in front of a TV. Also had a live fantasy football draft after the game Saturday at Panini's with Aaron and some other law school guys. Some guys did not show which was disappointing, but we got it all hammered out and my team seems pretty acceptable. I sacrificed my QB position to have higher quality RB, WR, and DEF. So my question to you is this...should I start Romo or Vince Young this week? That will be the the question of the week every week for my fantasy team.

Well it's getting late and I have some work to do on Labor Day (reading to do for this week's classes and my weekly SCS article among other things), so time for me to get off to bed. Short week this week with Labor Day giving us only 2 days of classes, but next weekend is another home game, Sternwheeler fireworks, and preparing second round acc-checks for the staffers so a busy time all around. Also time to make final substantive revisions on my student note. Fun! We'll see you next week if not before.

Top Nintendo Entertainment System Games

2007-08-31T23:34:00.000-07:00

The original, the best. Here we are on Friday and we finally come back to the NES and a top 15 games for it. There were around 700 games for the system and given Nintendo's strict licensing and control systems...that was a remarkable number of games and variety. Without further ado,

15. The Adventure of Link - This game may not have made the list until the past couple of years when I got on a quest to beat a lot of older games I could not stand or be good at as a kid. While I still believe it was a huge mistake to change Zelda to a completely different style of game, the game is pretty well done for what it is. Zelda 2 also happens to be one of the hardest games in Nintendo history because the controls were kind of tough to get good at consistently.

14. TMNT 2: The Arcade Game - Like Street Fighter for the SNES, TMNT 2 stole many quarters from me and others in the arcade era. TMNT 2 is not a great single-player game, but partying with one other player (or 3 others in the arcade) was what made the game awesome. How can you beat finally giving Shredder the heave-ho as well? The only thing keeping this game out of the top 10 was the fact that on the NEW you couldn't play with 4 turtles at once.

13. Galaga - While this game may have been much more cool back in the arcade or back on the atari, the space invader battle game was simple enough to get good at and challenging enough to keep players coming back for more. There's nothing like the outbursts you have when your double-ship gets plowed by kamikaze alien forces or you mess up when trying to make a double ship. Sometimes the most simple games are the best.

12. Dr. Mario - This game is another that might suffer from me not being introduced to it until recently. I had originally thought this was a Nintendo knockoff of Tetris, but the game is an amazing 2-player battle which Tetris did not offer. You can up the intensity and handicap the players, all aspects of making a tetris-type game into something even better. This game is reaching legendary status on our bowling team.

11. Metroid - Again just recently playing this game, but the game that started the Metroid series in 1985 is amazingly well-designed. The gameplay is simple and challenging, but all the power-ups and add-ons (missiles, morph ball mode, etc.) that are so amazing when done in 3D in the Prime series were thought up in 1985 for the 2D original. It's actually amazing there were not more of these games over time, but we will always have the original thanks to downloading it on the Wii.

10. Marble Madness - While I realize that I'm in the severe minority by putting this "stupid marble race game" above games like Metroid, this is a game I've always been fascinated with. It is a successful concept too as Super Monkey Ball ran with it on the GCN and just this month there's a Marble Madness type race game on the Wii. While there are only 6-7 levels and they are easily memorized, the game is still challenging to get through today. What really made the game was the 2-player race mode.

9. Disney's Adventure of the Magic Kingdom - There were a couple of kiddy games that ended up being really good for the NES (Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers being the other), but this game had it all and then some. Not only did this game make fun battles out of 6 of the most famous DisneyWorld rides, it remains challenging today. The variety in the games was also refreshing.

8. Tecmo Super Bowl - If there's one thing you can see from my game collection, I love playing sports games and always have. Unfortunately they get dated every single year by the newest and updated version, and old system sports games fade into obscurity when looking at the top games in retrospect. This game breaks from that mold though and was the absolute shit back in the day. The quintessential football game on the NES remains playable and fun today.

7. Super Mario Bros. - I've seen this game on the top of many NES lists, but these people are simply delusional in my opinion. This game is great, but it was just the beginning on the NES. The game has lots of replay value, but you do get so good at it eventually that it is not really challenging. This is still the game that hooked us all into the revolution of gaming that was Nintendo and the lovable plumber platformers. Our princess is indeed in another (later) castle on this system.

6. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out - Whether it is Mr. Dream or Mike Tyson, this game is the only real good boxing game until the Wii allowed us all to actually punch and dodge. While Glass Joe and Soda Popinsky are some of the biggest jokes ever, learning how to combat and getting good at beating fighters with great special moves like Bald Bull, King Hippo, and the dude with the turban and tiger was a tough challenge and fun at the same time. This game also kind of channels the spirit of Rocky movies in my opinion...in any event beating on boxers was always a great way to let off steam on the NES.

5. Final Fantasy - One of the more disappointing yet awesome moments of the past 4 years was when my dad found a sealed copy of this game at a yard sale. Yes sealed. Yes a yard sale. Absolutely unbelievable, as there might not be 25 other sealed copies of this game in existence. What was disappointing was he broke the seal wrap and tried the game out, not liking it and giving it to me. Well I was happy to have the box and book and everything in mint condition, but still...this is the RPG that blew open the RPG market. Good characters and varied gameplay allowed this classic to spawn the most famous series of games in the past 20 years.

4. The Magic of Scheherazade - While Final Fantasy gets all the credit and deservedly so, this RPG was actually the only one I got into back in the NES days. This little hardly known gem was certainly one of the best games on the NES as far as gameplay and depth and difficulty go. There was also plenty of comedic value in pissing off the shopkeepers by making low offers on their goods multiple times until they kicked you out of their store. The title of the game is nearly unspellable and copies of the game are damn near impossible to find now, but it's worth it if you ever see one.

3. Tetris - From Russia With Fun. This play on the famous movie title really was fun as the Cold War was just beginning to wrap up. This Russian block dropping game was so addictive and fun (the Sudoku of its days for you young kids out there) that it actually led to worried companies because worker productivity was down due to people playing this game obsessively. The only downside was no 2 player mode, but the game is still iconic and good enough to overcome that.

2. Super Mario Bros. 3 - This game was the most expensive and hard-to-get game in NES history because Nintendo hyped up the release and did the worst of their short stocking of stores for this game. It was still worth the $65-70 dollars retail stores demanded for it (after this game Nintendo went to a $50 price for everything that has not changed in 20 years and is now pretty affordable). This update of the classic SMB platformer had better graphics, more items, inventive levels, and nice controls and music. The thing that keeps this game super-playable though is the fact that you can play it in a co-op 2 player mode instead of the independent 2 players in competition for SMB 1. One of the best games ever made, this game set the bar high for all future Mario games (and has only been matched in awesomeness by Super Mario 64...but high hopes for Super Mario Galaxy).

1. The Legend of Zelda - Unlike SMB 3, this game is not loved as much overall because it is not a kid's game and not a casual gamer's kind of game. For someone like me though the Zelda game is the best you could get for an adventure battle kind of game, and it was unique and smooth in its creativity. Zelda and Mario have to be one and two in any NES discussion, and the genius of S. Miyamoto in bringing both these games to light is unparalleled in game design even today. The original Zelda had plenty of depth and difficulty to make it hard to get through over and over again, so the replay value is high even today. For a single player game on the NES, it doesn't get any better than this.

So now it is finished. You've seen my top lists this week for all the various Nintendo systems, so feel free to comment and tell me how you would rank them. But enough talking about the Nintendo, it's time to go play some of these old classics and solve my craving. Have a great long weekend!

Top Super Nintendo Games

2007-08-30T22:49:00.000-07:00

The Thursday feature is the SNES, the golden era of Nintendo before the Wii came out. Plenty of good games, improvements on the 8-bit games, and nice hardware made for many great games. A top 15 should cover it nicely.

15. Super Star Wars - All three original Star Wars movies were made into a great set of SNES games, but this first game was the best of the bunch. Taking Luke Skywalker and shooting down enemies or kicking ass with a lightsaber was just simply outstanding. Enough challenge to keep you going through all 15 levels also.

14. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Quest - Took the fantastic graphics of the original and made the levels a bit more original and varied. The game was still a little too easy to do after you got good at DKC, but the controls and graphics were solid enough.

13. Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting - This was one arcade game that seemed to eat everyone's quarters in bulk back in my childhood, so when an improved version hit the SNES it was a dream come true. No more quarters after quarters and better controls on the SNES controllers than at the arcade. The combos were better in Turbo and the characters were slightly better than those on Mortal Combat (although I have a soft spot in my heart for Sub-Zero, Scoprion, and Rayden). Definitive 2-person combat.

12. Super Mario All Stars - Yes this game was just SMB 1-3, but there was a lot more to like here. Not only were the graphics updated and improved for all three of the classic Mario games, but the previously Japanese-only SMB2 was offered as the Lost Levels. This alone was enough to make the list, but revisiting three of the best NES games was also very nice.

11. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars - While I was not a huge RPG fan as a kid, there were just some games that you could not miss. SM:RPG finally branched Mario out past the regular platformer and saw characters such as Luigi and Bowser in new roles. An interesting twist on the Mario story that was so successful it opened the door for Mario Party, Tennis, Golf, and more Kart games.

10. Final Fantasy II - Speaking of RPG's, the most famous RPG series came back for the sequel on the SNES and was no disappointment. Just squeaks my Mario because this game was a lot more in-depth and not an introductory game to the RPG market.

9. Final Fantasy III - Unfortunately this game was destined to be the final FF game to arrive for Nintendo as Square took a first step toward fighting Nintendo's policy of exclusivity and short supply. Another solid version of the classic RPG though.

8. Starfox - This was the game that sold the FX chip graphics in the SNES, making a relatively realistic flight combat game. While the graphics are still a little polygonal, the effect was very high-tech for the time. Controls of the Arwing were easy and the game had tons of replay value. The best early space/flight and fight game.

7. Super Mario World - While this game arguably was not all that much better than SMB3, SMW brought my favorite Nintendo character of all time into the mix, that being Yoshi. Every hero needs a sidekick, and Mario finally got one in the green dino. An excellent start for the SNES, and the game is still fun today.

6. F-Zero - Again a game makes much more out of the graphical capability of the SNES than seemed possible for any console games at the time. F-Zero really did a nice job of making you feel like you were racing futuristic hovercars at ridiculous speeds. The only downside to this game was that it needed a good multiplayer mode to be the best racing game on the system. As it was, it ends up getting beat by...

5. Super Mario Kart - While it is true that SM:RPG smashed the door open for other Mario types of games, SMK was the first new type of Mario game. Still the absolute best racing game on the SNES, this game was very challenging despite the lack of really good graphics. The multiplayer battles were genius as well.

4. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - The second Zelda on NES was too different and hard for me as a kid, so I grew away from Zelda in the SNES days. Looking back this was a mistake because this console's Zelda went back to the original and improved everything about it. The dungeons and bosses were better, the graphics were better, and the story was improved. A great addition to the Zelda line.

3. Donkey Kong Country - This game began to show gamers what we could expect from the next generation of systems. The graphics and backgrounds are stunning and pretty. The game was simple yet somewhat challenging and fun at the same time. The only downside to the game was that it was a bit short, but still a very solid game.

2. Super Metroid - Many will choose this game as their number one, but I never got into Metroid until Prime came out. Looking back and playing the original and Super Metroid, these were great games that were inexplicably stopped after this version (until the current Metroid Prime series started). Even the current Game Boy Advance and DS versions of the sidescroller are not as fun as Super Metroid, so it earns the number 2 spot.

1. Chrono Trigger - As someone who did not get into RPG's, this game was far and away the one I spent the most time playing for 2 solid years of the SNES. The game is so good you still cannot track down a copy for less than $40-50, and this game defines what a good RPG is. Not only are the story and characters good, the game has around 15 separate endings to try and get for beating the game in different ways. This game therefore is so deep and re-playable that it easily takes the top spot on this list.

One final day to go, and the Friday feature will finally take us back to the 1980's and the console that brought us into the modern era of console gaming, the Nintendo Entertainment System. No longer would Atari and Intellivision rule the world of games.

Top Nintendo 64 Games

2007-08-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

The Wednesday feature is where Nintendo began to flounder as a console maker, the Nintendo 64. Many good franchises either started or continued on this system, but the third-party support was too low and that led to Sony's success in my opinion. Nonetheless, there were some classics to fill a Top 10.

10. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - For the first and only time so far in the Zelda series, Nintendo had to come up with a second game on a system using the same control and graphical layout. The game suffers from not being as good as Ocarina of Time, but that's unfair because OOT was perhaps one of the best 3 games in history. This game is actually more deep if you go and try to get all the masks, and ends up being enjoyable in the end.

9. Mario Kart 64 - The follow-up to the huge SNES hit did not disappoint, as the graphics upgraded significantly and the courses were just as good as the original. The real improvement in this version was the better courses.

8. Starfox 64 - The original Starfox was great due to the FX graphics on the 16-bit SNES, but a jump to 64 made things much better and more realistic. All the worlds and paths to Venom are fun to play through so this game has a lot of replay value. The controls are smooth and familiar, working at their best in the 3D boss battles.

7. Waverace 64 - Given the title of the last 3 games on the list, you can see the lack of creativity in this era of Nintendo game-naming. Near the launch of the console, Waverace took a completely new race genre (jet ski) and actually managed to pull it off very well. The physics and randomness of the waves and how they affect you are a great challenge. This looked to not be a huge title at launch but ended up being one of the greats.

6. Perfect Dark - This was dubbed the improved version of the super-popular Goldeneye 007. While the game utilized the expansion memory pack well, the game was not much of an improvement over Goldeneye. Graphically more pretty, this game was an excuse (along with Majora's Mask) to help sell more expansion memory packs. Still one of the best first person shooters ever brought out on a Nintendo system.

5. Goldeneye 007 - The classic first person shooter on the N64 wins a top five slot by being the Halo of its day. Halo 1-3 has and is single-handedly selling a good percentage of the Xbox systems sold, but the first game to really master the genre was Goldeneye. Not only did this game follow the movie very faithfully, the multiplayer was outstanding. The original Halo was a true highlight of the N64 experience.

4. Mario Party - While Goldeneye was far more popular and perhaps better back in the day, in retrospect the beginning of this franchise was a brillant move by Nintendo. Combining the fun of minigames with a board game background is a formula that has been sold for 8 iterations now successfully. This game did not have very good graphics, but it did have great party value.

3. Conker's Bad Fur Day - Just like Eternal Darkness on GCN, this is my sleeper pick that not many people played but everyone should experience. BFD mixed a lot of pop culture references of the day (incorporating the Matrix, Saving Private Ryan, and many other things) with some very funny original characters (Opera singing Poop Monster anyone?) to create one of the most playable and funny games in history. Yes it is a little crude in humor, but more adult humor in a game is always appreciated when well done. Also a good multiplayer mode to put this in the top 3. On some systems this might be the top game, but...

2. Super Mario 64 - Another Mario launch title, another great game to lead the console into the market. This game introduced the platforming game and the gaming world in general to 3D gaming, and what an introduction it was. This game pushed the limits of the hardware but ran so smoothly that nobody could possibly complain. We were all too wrapped up in the graphics and the notion of playing in true 3D. The game is also truly fun with bunches of different levels and lots of variety to get all 120 stars. A real gem and Top 10 all time likely.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Perhaps the greatest game of all time, OOT took everything Nintendo learned in making SM64 and took it to a whole new level. The graphics are even better (you could just watch the sun rise and set and the moon move across the horizon in awe without being bored) and Zelda moved into 3D combat perfectly. The storyline was very well written and the different elemental kinds of dungeons has continued to present-day Zeldas (Forest, Fire, Water/Ice, Shadow, Desert, Light/Shadow). The movement between young link and adult link is also a great part of thr story. This game was the definition of success and should not be missed by anyone.

Well there's the short list for the N64. Looking ahead, the Thursday feature will be the Super Nintendo, and we'll be back up to 15 games as the first golden age of Nintendo is what we will be going back to tomorrow.

Top Gamecube Games

2007-08-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

The Tuesday feature brings us the Top 15 games from the Nintendo Gamecube. Yes there were 15 good games for this system, despite the much-maligned criticism of the Cube. The fact that the Wii is backwards compatible to the mini-discs of this system will help these games continue to see play for the next few years.

15. Star Wars Rogue Leader - It had been quite a number of years since a Star Wars game blew me away, but this game was outstanding. Early in the life of Gamecube, this was a game that saw a majority of play time on many Cubes. Good for kids and adults, this is a sleeper on the list.

14. Super Monkey Ball 2 - The original may be on many people's lists, but SMB2 channels the greatness of the old game Marble Madness and adds a level of 3D complexity to that genre not seen before. This game is so good they rushed out another for the Wii launch, so hopefully there will be more in this series.

13. Resident Evil 4 - Same argument as the Wii version, except on GCN the game is simply a port of the PS2 and Xbox versions. Still a great game worth looking into if you prefer the traditional controllers.

12. Timesplitters 2 - A friend introduced this gem to me on the PS2, but the GCN version is just as good if not better. Timesplitters reminds me a lot of Goldeneye 007 which is a good thing for those who like mission-based spy type first person shooters. A nice story to back up the traveling to different time periods keeps the game varied and fresh.

11. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - Every trio of games or movies has to have a dark middle tale, and the Metroid Prime series got just that in Echoes. This game is much like the original, with the only problem being that the designers should have gone further in developing the series.

10. Resident Evil - While RE4 gets a lot of press for being quality, the first Umbrella Corp zombie battle is a classic not to be missed. Cheap scares abound as well in this surprisingly successful hit.

9. Super Mario Sunshine - While most other systems launch with a Mario game alongside, GCN decided to launch with a Luigi game instead. While we all love Luigi, Sunshine was only disappointing in that the gameplay did not improve much over Luigi's Mansion. The game is a noble addition to the Mario line, but will probably fade to obscurity over time.

8. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door - The 2D Mario series continues to impress with this entry and certainly provides more than the platformer at #9.

7. Mario Party 7 - GCN had an amazing 4 Mario Party games come out in 5 years, and that is just too many. While the market was saturated, the minigames themselves really got better in this one. With a little more work on the graphics and board gameplay, this series could have gone to greater heights.

6. Super Smash Bros Melee - Many people would put this in the top 3 for sure, but I just am not huge into the fighting genre. This is a fun game to play but is only more fun than Mortal Combat and Street Fighter because the characters are Nintendo classics. Still the controls are almost perfect and the boards are nicely interactive, so the gfame ranks high even for me.

5. Animal Crossing - While pulling weeds, fishing, running errands for others, and building up and decorating a house may not be an adequate escape from real life for some, this game is terribly addictive to those who like the SimCity or Sims genre. While the characters do look childish and doofy, the gameplay is actually very fun. The kicker that puts this in the top 5 is the ability to carry characters and designs to your friends' Animal Crossing neighborhoods. The interactivity with real time is awesome also.

4. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - Initially I did not like the cel-shaded graphics of this game or the fact that I beat it in one weekend, but now I realize the game has so much depth just like Majora's Mask did (both games suffer because the basic storyline does not require a lot of these interesting side quests that are available). I may never like the cel-shading, but this game does earn its place in the Zelda landscape as a good game.

3. Wario Ware - This game certainly did not seem like much of a hit when it first came out, with Mario Party holding the minigame crown for so long. The question was why would you buy a game of minigames when you could play minigames as part of a bigger board game in MP? The answer was that when the games are so well designed to make a party laugh and replay the game for hours on end, you have something that beats any Mario Party. Wario Ware was one of the best in the GCN era.

2. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - And now we get to my sleeper pick on the Gamecube. For those who have played this game, you will understand why it ranks so high on my list (and many others). If you did not pick up this game and many players did not, you missed one inventive and easy to get into game. The storyline is compelling, the game has some cheap thrills and scares a la Resident Evil, lots of fighting and spellcasting action, and the best addition to any adventure game in years, the sanity meter. You had to keep up your health and magic meters, but the sanity meter made you hallucinate and see things not there, which is very inventive. The game is also playable many times because there are three different pathways through the game based on different kinds of Magic. A real hit.

1. Metroid Prime - I really wanted to put Eternal Darkness here, but it goes against the grain to put an unknown in the top spot. Metroid Prime updated a series that had been dead since the SNES days (despite huge NES and SNES popularity) into 3D and first person shooting, but Metroid was still more than awesome. While many of the same aspects from the 1986 classic came back, doing it all in 3D environments with a new juicy storyline just made everything perfect. With the Mario and Zelda franchises bringing out mediocre games and the Starfox franchise being all but murdered by a terrible outing, it was nice to see one of the old classic Nintendo standby franchises take over the throne in such a nice fashion.

Tomorrow is Wednesday, and that will bring us to the Nintendo 64. The Top ten will be revealed then (the N64 suffered from poor games far more than any other system in Nintendo history, which is why the list is limited to 10, and also coincidentally why Sony got such a great market placement).

Top Wii Games

2007-08-27T21:27:00.001-07:00

The Monday feature, a little late but then again this list is so preliminary after only 8 months with the system. We begin with a couple of honorable mentions which will likely make the list once they come out.

Honorable Mention: Super Smash Bros Brawl - This game will probably compete with the Gamecube version for one of the most popular party games in the Wii.

HM: Super Mario Galaxy - There are certainties for every Nintendo system, one being that there will be a high quality Mario game. This game looks like it will revolutionize the Wii platformers and be nearly as successful as Super Mario 64. Big times await Mario.

10. Wii Play - A collection of nine mediocre games comes together with a pack-in Wii Remote for the same $50 as all other games. For $10, you really cannot beat the value assuming you bought the Wii-mote at retail value. The games do grow old in a hurry though.

9. Madden NFL 07 - Certainly to be outdone by the 2008 version once EA gets off the pot and brings out the Wii version, the 2007 Madden showed that the future is bright for football franchises on the Wii. You finally feel like you are in the game by throwing and stiff-arming and all the other neat moves you can do.

8. Mario Party 8 - While this game has a new set of great minigames, it offers nothing unexpected or new to the Mario Party formula. It's nice to have Wii minigames, but the visual quality should really be better. Perhaps this franchise needs a break. Still a fun party game.

7. Wario Ware Smooth Moves - This was the first set of crazy new Wii minigames, and the set is actually better than the Mario Party ones. The big disappointment is that Wario Ware was a great party game for the Gamecube, but this is only 1 player. With a few more hours of design this game could've been in the top 2-3 for a long time. Single player Wario Ware is not as fun.

6. Resident Evil 4 - The Wii version incorporates all that was great about the other versions and adds beeter control with the Wii-mote. The silly scare tactics might be gone, but the game is devilishly scary still and challenging.

5. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007 - TW has been a vastly improving sports franchise the past half-decade, and this entry is no disappointment. The Wii Sports template for golf was imrpoved upon and made easier in this classic.

4. Wii Sports - The pack-in game with the system does not disappoint, as the games show off the basic realm of control possible with the Wii-mote. Bowling is amazing, Tennis is scary realistic, and the other three are all fun to play over and over again. A nice introduction to the Wii.

3. Super Paper Mario - Although Super Mario Galaxy may change this perception, but the best Mario games to come out since Super Mario 64 opened the door to 3-D are all in the Paper Mario 2-D series. Of course there are some 3-D puzzles and aspects, but a primarily 2-D game shows how well the platformer games continue to be playable.

2. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - OK so I don't have my hands on this game yet, but it appears that this game will set the bar high for graphics, story, and first-person shooter controls on the Wii. Add in the fact that Metroid games are some of the most popular games out there, and you have a sure-fire winner. This could end up #1 eventually.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - The most genius decision outside the design of the Wii was Nintendo pushing this game back a year to become a Wii release title instead of a second Gamecube title. The best entry in the Zelda series since Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess did everything right to set the bar high for Wii games. The controls are seamless, the graphics astounding, and the difficulty about perfect. Twilight Princess will be a hard game to beat, but the new Metroid and Mario games may just surpass this instant classic.

So there's the current Top 10 list for Wii, subject to many changes. The fact that there are 10 games to rank (and 6-7 of them very deserving) in one year is a good sign for this system, which gains market share and strength every day. Nintendo is entering a second golden era with the Wii for sure.

Tomorrow, we cover the top 15 Gamecube games.

The First Week

2007-08-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

Nothing quite like the first day of school, and this will be the last time (one would hope) that a summer ends and school begins for me. Quite a difference 18 years makes though, as I remember being so scared and excited with a brand new backpack in one hand and a box lunch in the other as a 5 year old kid in New Matamoras, OH. Now I just grab my satchel of law books and laptop and rush out the door to prevent being late.

The first class of the new term was Securities Regulation with Professor Rose. Rose is a new guy who just came from Northwestern Law School, and the law school is really happy to get this guy. He calls on people alphabetically with a third of the alphabet on call each day of the week (MTW), so I guess we early alphabet people only need to care about Mondays. He not only is a powerpoint professor who puts his slides online, he seems to know a great deal what he is teaching from his experience as a broker. A good corporate professor not named Oesterle, who would have thought? I think I will enjoy that class, which is why I'm taking corporate type classes to fill the time this year anyways.

Sales with Professor Johnson is interesting also. There is plenty of mixed opinion out there on Professor Johnson, but she seemed OK in one class this week (Tuesday was cancelled). This is another Whaley book so I'm going to treat it as remedial Contracts since our 1L contracts was essentially UCC Article II anyways with common law mixed in. It should be easy but Contracts didn't turn out so hot, so I'll have to keep on it. The subject is kind of boring...however, with Professor Johnson being the only random Socratic method teacher this semester, that should be enough motivation to do the reading. Lots of my 1L class in there as well. Happy to have Larry in the class and maybe we'll study group despite our terribly different study styles (me being last minute and him starting early). More on this class later when we've had more of them as Professor Johnson is hard to get a read on this early.

AK and I were late to Johnson's class and she is a stickler about attendance and being on time (whatever floats your boat), so we got our proverbial tongue lashings at the beginning of class. Shouldn't be too hard to make a class after an hour and a half lunch break, unless you go to Eddie George's Grill apparently. I like EG's place, but on this day they were not very busy and took literally 55 minutes from the time we ordered to the time the food arrived. Then half the food had to be sent back because the orders of chicken wings were ice cold and the steak was medium rare for somebody who dislikes the sight of any pink. So I wolfed down mine and AK had his boxed up to go when the wings were warmed again, but still we were late. Thanks EG's. Word to the wise...maybe avoid that lunch destination until they get quicker service (probably when the undergrads come back). Even though that's Johnson's pet peeve, at least AK and I got our customary tardiness out of the way on the first class.

The other two classes are only scheduled once a week, which is unfortunate considering they are going to be my two favorite classes. Supreme Court Lit with Judge Sutton should be as much fun as the State Con Law seminar was. I'll take a more active role in class too as I was all but dead silent in class discussions last semester (too many very assertive 3L's in his seminars). This seminar is all 3L's and would be chock-full of A's even if there were a regular curve on seminars because there are tons of people from our 1L section and tons of OSLJ people in there. There should be plenty of good class discussion though with the people that are in there, which makes for a good seminar. I'll be writing on Justice Alito, so kind of a fresh slate there to work with. International IP with Lee should be a good time, and hopefully I will not need to miss any more class after missing the second hour this week to go to Cincinnati. The usual suspects are in that one for one more IP go-round with Lee.

All the JDR things seem to be going well finally. Got one of the two late articles and passed it off to associate editors. The other one is AWOL, but Erik finally is contacting the author to say "Where is it?" I'm hopeful that they just decide to not get published, but probably not. Just another year where the publication schedule will be pushed off by one author...we're used to it. This week the articles go to the authors, which means I'll need to work on my note for the last time as an author. Also in journal related news, Daniel and I got the Nintendo room up and running (well minus a TV) so that's good. In honor of the Nintendo room and because I was bored enough surfing the net to find some top 25 lists, I'm going to post one countdown a day this week of top games for each system. I'm sure nobody will agree but you can only go by your own experiences. we'll go backwards in time, so Monday look for the Top 10 Wii games (as you might imagine, this list is still preliminary). Tuesday Top 15 Gamecube, Wednesday Top 10 N64 (because there just are not 15 good games for that system), Thursday Top 15 SNES, and Friday Feature Top 15 NES.

Football season had officially returned with the high schoolers this past weekend. Marietta busted Parkersburg South for 25 unanswered points in the final quarter to win on the road 38-20. That's absolutely remarkable and might mean Marietta could seriously compete for the SEOAL title. The other team I follow (Frontier) got crushed in a league game week one 39-12, so another poor season for the tiny school I started in. But more importantly, this means we are only 6 days from BUCKEYE FOOTBALL! We have such an easy schedule for the first 8 weeks that barring a meltdown in Purdue or Washington, we should be 8-0 entering the beef of our schedule. Then we finish at Penn State, home against Wisconsin and Illinois, and at Michigan. The Big Ten schedule is also backloaded like the Big East was last year, as the last three weeks have the top three teams visiting each other (11/3 Wisconsin at OSU, 11/10 Michigan at Wisconsin, 11/17 OSU at Michigan). While I'm looking forward to November, just getting out there this weekend to watch the new Buckeyes grow up against Tressel's old school Youngstown State.

Went down to Cincinnati this week on Wednesday to watch the Reds play the Braves and go to dinner at the ballpark with the firm. It's nice that they move around their quarterly partner-associate dinner to various different places around the metro area, but of course any time I get free Reds tickets I'm not complaining. I could seriously tell that Keith and the guys wanted me to accept the offer, and of course Keith tells me about who he is interviewing at OSU OCI. Turns out Jim (the other summer) accepted his offer and we had a long chat after the game in the firm's parking garage. Kelley and I discussed things over after I received a couple more important rejection letters on Wednesday night...and we have big news. I ACCEPTED THE OFFER! Had to call and turn down 3 callbacks, but 2 of those were firms I was not particularly interested in anymore based on location. We are happy to be done with it and be in a great firm in a good local city. Did not think last year at this time that I would be taking the Ohio bar exam, but that's how it is. Sharing Reds season tickets with Jim and his wife should be nice too. Now we can start looking at neighborhoods and houses to rent. Fun!

So now that those decisions are off the table and football season is starting, it really feels like school time again. That's all for now, but hopefully some of you will enjoy the lists coming this week (or will comment back with your own favorites). Have a good week!

The End of The Summer, 3L Year Arrives

2007-08-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Well it's time to get back into old habits, especially sportswriting and blogging. I tracked down my old blog right before it got deleted and pulled many of the posts over here from 1L year and last year of undergrad. Some tough days back then, but some good days. But that's in the past and mostly for me, so let's move back to the present and catch-up from a much too short summer break.

My last entry listed my schedule for the year, and it's so hard to believe I'll be in class again Monday. Kind of sucks because I'm ready to be done with school, but this will likely be the last year of school ever for me so I should enjoy it to some extent. Went to go buy books yesterday and I'm pissed at the bookstores. Not only do they never stock many used books (although I went too late to get them this semester), they have trouble getting law books in before classes start for some classes. So I've got 5 of my 8 required books so far, but hopefully the others will come in next week. Doesn't seem like too much to ask, but OSU is not geared for us law students. I actually had to ask permission to go into the textbook section of Long's (one of two bookstores that carry law books) because they had it roped off "in preparation for the upcoming quarter." Undergrads don't start for another 4 weeks...so thanks for being so accomodating Long's. Speaking of slightly inconvenient changes, the construction following me around campus continues...the last part of the shell that was the Ohio Union came down 2 weeks ago. First the mechanical engineering building, then the main library and Oval, now the Union. At least the major points of campus will be nice to come back to :-)

I'll highlight some of the good and bad points from the past few weeks, but looking at the summer overall, it was a success. Went to two more Reds games, a third bobblehead night where we actually beat the Brewers and climbed out of the NL Central cellar, and of course the July 3 fireworks game for our anniversary. Diamond seats are more than amazing, and we're hoping to go at least once a year for that. Not only the best and most comfortable seats in the house right behind home plate, but also unlimited food/drinks (yes alcoholic) and service at your seat every inning. You also have a private lounge and bar underneath the seats as well. The seats are very expensive, but I think we definitely got our money's worth. Plus, we won the game against the Giants and saw Barry Bonds hit home run #752. Fireworks were very well done as well after the game. It's funny that Bonds has hit a home run in both the games I've seen him in and Griffey has yet to homer when I go see the Reds despite countless opportunities. Darn fate. If we settle there it will be nice to get Reds season tickets or a partial season.

Last time I wrote we were still in the middle of softball season and it was the day of the formal attorney-guest dinner. Well the formal dinner was dressy, but more like LBD instead of prom wear if you know what I mean. It's definitely a little intimidating speaking to people you work with when you still don't have a full-time offer from them and to other attorneys at the firm you have not worked with, but I'm sure it was worse for Kelley. The dinner was good and the conversation was OK. We sat at a table with Colin (a new associate), Kurt (undergrad co-op student for the summer), and Rich (a partner working half time on his way to retirement)...so lots of different views. Hopefully it will be a little better if we do it again next summer. Softball season ended on a high note as we won our last game in extra innings against the worst softball team I've ever seen. Of course I think that says something that we needed extra innings to beat them, but oh well at least we finished with our first win in over 2 years (they say). Everyone makes the playoffs and we lost our playoff game to a team we were very competitive with both times we played them. Still, it was a good end to the season.

The work itself became much more centered on patent applications. I got plenty of small research projects in all IP fields to fill some time when I got into a lull, but still there were days where I did not have much to do. I completed 8 or 9 patent applications wire to wire, so that's more than most summer clerks at most firms. Also did another office action, but only did 3 of those this summer. Of course the patent search online and at the USPTO was also good experience. One final thing I did work-wise was litigation discovery work and going to a Markman hearing. I couldn't ask for a better work experience for a first-time IP summer associate, and thankfully after being on this path of schooling for 6 years, I am confident this is what I want to do as a career.

The apartment drama never really ended. They finally moved us to the other building 2.5 weeks after they said they would, so I never again really felt unpacked at those apartments. Stephanie was really apologetic and sweet about the whole mess, and I figure Heather (who I subletted from) and her will probably not live together much longer. Too much displeasure between them. It happens even when you live with friends. I'll be looking forward to renting a house next year or a nicer apartment wherever we go. Speaking of friends, the shit hit the proverbial fan this summer at the Columbus apartment. Kelley was there only half the time and couldn't clean much, but Sarah did not help out hardly at all. It got so bad in the kitchen and living room that I wanted to freak out one of the last weekends I came home. Plus Sarah apparently brought her mom into the apartment without giving Kelley notice so the place wasn't picked up at all. That makes us look bad and that angers me a little. Plus Sarah doesn't realize what she says around Bruce (her new b/f) and us...things like "my co-workers cannot wait for me to move out of the slums" and "it only takes 5 minutes to empty the dishwasher, but I just want to relax when I get home from work." I never was particularly happy about wasting my spring break helping her move from Philadelphia into our spare room...but at least I was gone all summer. This arrangement was OK for three reasons: (1) it got Sarah to save up some money and get on her feet here in Columbus, (2) it saved us rent money we desperately needed while I had to sublet another apartment, and (3) it kept Kelley from having to be alone in Columbus this summer. Now Sarah is on her feet, the sublet is over, and I'm back full-time again...so thank God she is apartment hunting. Here's hoping she finds something soon. I'm happy to be a friend and all, but it's time to have my office, my closet space, and our storage space in the basement back. I'm not helping her move out either...that's for her and her family. C'est la vie.

Bruce is an interesting cat. He's quite a bit older than the rest of us and works at COSI with Sarah. Perfectly nice guy, but definitely has a strange streak. Beats me in the geeky department which is hard to do! The only problem is he never seems to treat Kelley and I with much respect, as if we're too young to be smart and mature. He actually opened up to me more when he found out I was an engineering student who went to law school, not some random law student (he was an engineer himself). You can get the picture. I wish them the best, just in a different apartment because I feel like our hospitality is not appreciated as much as it was in April and May.

For free time this summer I spent a lot of time working on ebaying and sorting my Magic collection to sell at Origins. I also read the entire Harry Potter series mostly on lunch breaks at work and of course went to see a good number of popcorn flicks. Best of that bunch was a tie between Knocked Up and Order of the Phoenix, but Ocean's 13 was enjoyable also. The Harry Potter series is the first series I've read that did not have a disappointing ending. While I still recommend the Left Behind series, the Mission Earth decaology, and the Dark Tower books...Harry Potter is the only series strong from start to finish. I could nitpick how slow the first half of book 7 was, but it gave Rowling enough time to wrap up every major loose end and character from the past 6 books (there were a lot). I was also disappointed that there were no more deaths in the main characters, but the primary thing I cared about was Snape and that turned out how I wanted. Anybody who wants to talk Harry Potter can certainly msg me, but I'm looking forward to seeing Movies 6 and 7. Should be a banner holiday movie season for Christmas 2008 with Harry Potter 6 and Star Trek 11.

Best week of the summer was our anniversary and Origins. Kelley and I went out to a very nice dinner at Melting Pot for our anniversary and of course she got her lovely three-stone diamond ring for the right hand. Then we did the Diamond seats Reds game as explained above and that was a good experience. Origins was back to being a blast this year after a year off. Thursday I offed the bulk of my collection for a hair less than I wanted (like $10 less but that's OK as I made about $3000 off the whole collection over the past year), and I played in the Settlers of Catan World Qualifier. You play 4 games against very good Settlers opponents and top scores counting wins and then points moves on to semifinals and finals on Sunday. I got one win and three second-place finishes, so I just missed the semifinals. Still a lot of fun playing a bunch of Settlers because I cannot get people to play much around here. Friday I branched out and tried a couple new things I've been itching to do for years. First was a LARP called Terrorwerks, which was an awesome experience. It was like playing Halo in real life, with Marines and air-soft rifles and alien creatures causing havoc. Also puzzles to figure out along the way. LARPS (live-action role playing games) are definitely a full-on experience, but I really enjoyed my first foray into one and will be trying to recruit my buddies into one next year. I also did one of the National Strategic Decision Making games (NSDM), which is a role-playing game where the controllers set up a scenario involving 3-4 countries and then certain conflicts arise while the players (which are assigned government or media or other leadership positions at the beginning and each having their own personal agendas) try to make deals and further the interest of their country. Our scenario involved Austrailia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. There were lots of people there who have done tons of these (in a room of 60 players, I bet there were 60% that had played 8-10 or more times all the way up to 50+ times...and these games last 4 or 8 hours apiece!). It was very awkward being the rookie and I ended up getting assigned Prime Minister of Vietnam, #2 in command over there. The geo-political knowledge and discussions of my fellow Vietnam players was way over my head...these guys know their geo-politics. Nevertheless, I just did what I could to make deals and not look like a fool. At the end of the game the controllers pick the top 9 individual players in order and recognize them for their great play. I think our group of core leaders clearly did the best for Vietnam and did better than Indonesia and Austrailia, but the shocker was that I was named #1 overall and the winner of the NSDM. This is no small deal to these people, and the rest of the weekend I kept running into people who played the game and congratulated me on my performance. I was kind of shell-shocked, but hey I guess I beat 60 other guys at a game using the lovely beginner's luck. I don't think I'll do that again despite my win because it was a little too over my head, but good times. Friday night Kelley came down and we tried Palabra but nobody else signed up to play. Bummer. Saturday we skipped Killer Bunnies and tried out a bunch of games in the Exhibit Hall (we brought home tons of new games this year and a mega-bagful of dice for Kelley since that's her thing). We played in the Apples to Apples National Championship and Kelley made the final table. I just missed the final table but won a copy of the game in a consolation game. That's a great party game if you have not tried it. Sunday I did some final shopping at the Exhibit Hall and watched the Settlers tournament final, which was for a trip to the World Championships in Germany. Looking forward to going next year and maybe actually getting the gang to go, as it was kind of lonely this year with Tom not going and Shep not coming up.

All of a sudden it was time for the Loyola patent interview program. My insistent bugging and pleading with the career services office (and Jon getting 15 interviews last year while I had 13) finally got some results and OSU sent twice as many as they ever have to the program, 17 people! I got to hang out with some 2L's and a couple 3L's as well as Jim from WHE while I was there. Ended up with 12 interviews when it was all said and done, and they all were easy conversations as you lose a lot of the pressure when you think you have an offer in the pocket. Plus a couple firms were repeats of last year and my experience/resume have only gotten better than last year so those went really well. Highlights were a Charlotte GP firm, a St. Louis branch of a Washington boutique, a laid-back California boutique, and a couple of really solid Indy firms. The NYC firm, Chicago firms, Texas firm, and Michigan firm all would have to woo me pretty well after what I saw in the initial interview. I doubled or tripled my nice clothes wardrobe the week before Loyola and bought new shoes, which messed up my feet badly on Friday. I'm still dealing with it over 2 weeks later, and I think it was a case of sesamoiditis. Essentially I cannot jog or play tennis or go bowling or anything because it was too painful and hard enough to walk without limping. It's finally getting better though, so that's good news. Much more painful than that ingrown toenail on the same toe from last year around this time.

Then it was time for JDR Orientation and the only 2 on-campus interviews I'm doing. Orientation was a long 4 days of hard work, but I think it all came off well and I did not get any complaints from the new staffers. They will be handing in their first Acc-check Monday and then we start the process with the managing editors and then the authors before coming back for a second go-round. I'm so happy to be done with Orientation, but with gimping around in pain and having to run around and stand all the time...it certainly did not help my foot heal. Exec Editor is going to be a lot of work from time to time, but thankfully Orientation is one of the biggest jobs and it's over. Now I have to manage the staff and play the double role for a while as my note is going through the editing process now as well. I probably should have added more substance to it, but I also don't want to stretch it out too long. Maybe I'll attack it this week, maybe not. No big deal either way as I think it's in a good spot even if it is shorter than the other notes we are publishing.

Kelley and I have decided to go on a cruise for fall break, and we chose the one that we took for our first cruise 3 years ago. That one ended a day early and sucked because of hurricane Francis, so hopefully no repeat performance of that. I went back to Wood Herron for two more weeks of 3 days of work leading up to the partner's meeting on August 15, so I could know if I had an offer before I left the firm (and also so I could earn some more money before school). These weeks I stayed in cheap motels at night, but Kelley stayed with me the second week since she had all week off. On Wednesday I got the good news that I indeed do have an offer for full-time work next year. The offer is six figures in Cincinnati which is very exciting given cost of living and full benefits as well (free health insurance for entire family, 7.5% of salary paid into 401K by the firm with no matching required, moving/bar exam expenses, death and disability insurance, etc.). This offer is so good that Kelley and I wished we could accept on the spot, but I do want to see if my better resume opened more doors this year at loyola. I am done with first interviews and sent letters out, but I really only am tracking the 14 interviews. I've already got 4 responses, three no's and one callback with Leydig in Chicago (who I called back with last year). Plus now with the offer I can push the timetable a little bit, so we should have a fuller picture in 2 weeks I'd think. All early indications are pointing toward WHE, but let's not count out the important Charlotte, St. Louis, and Indy firms I mentioned above; as well as any others such as Leydig. Still, it's comforting to know you have a good full-time job at a great firm waiting for you. The only two law school friends I've talked to so far (PS and DE) also got offers and are accepting them straightaway. So hopefully I'll hear lots of good news from friends this week. The other two summers at WHE also got offers, and I know Jim will accept his. Steve is only a 2L this year so he may look elsewhere for his second summer before hopefully coming back. He is our best softball player...we need him!

I'll also be going back to WHE for part-time work on Thursdays and Fridays if I accept the offer. That's good because I'll keep touch with the firm and also make better money than grading engineering papers. I'll also get to do a little bit of what I love as opposed to the likely boring coursework I'm taking as a 3L. Yay to bar exam prep. Also going down to the firm for the quarterly associate-partner dinner Wednesday because they are eating at the Club in Great American Ball Park and going to the Braves-Reds game afterwards. It's the fourth and final bobblehead night, so we'll have a complete set from the summer of 2007 as well. Should be a fun time. Also doing a fantasy football league with others at the firm, so I'll let you know how that goes if I remember. I tried a few different draft strategies in my 3 public leagues and this firm league...see if any of them work.

Also I'll be in charge of the NFL football pickem pool this season. Please email me if you want details, but it will be $20 buy-in for the entire season with payout only to first place unless we get ten or more people. We've only had 4-8 in the past three seasons, so hopefully we get more this season.

Between sportswriting, JDR exec ed duties, National Moot Court this semester, and classes...I'll be lucky to regularly update the blog. But I'm hopeful to keep my usual pace of the past 2 years of law school, at least once a week or so. We'll see you around.

PS - Went to The Beach waterpark Thursday. Why would anybody go there instead of King's Island? The Beach = lame. At least IMHO.

The beginning and middle of summer

2007-06-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

This week on the calendar we officially moved into summer, but around Cincy it's been hot and extremely dry for weeks anyways (spring showers, what spring showers?). Of course on the school semester schedule, we are at the halfway point of summer vacation. Hard to believe but when you are working and staying busy, time flies as usual. I've worked for 7 weeks already at the firm, and only have 5 1/2 weeks left. It's actually 5 weeks spread over the next six as I'll be off the 4th-6th of July for Origins and I'm stopping full time work on August 1 (a Wednesday) to go to the Loyola Patent Interview Program in Chicago and get ready for JDR Orientation which starts that weekend. Then it's back into the grind 2 weeks later. Woo-hoo.

For anybody still scheduling, here's what it looks like for next year.
AUTUMN
Securities (Rose) MTW 11:10-12:00
Sales (Johnson) MT 1:30-2:45
Supreme Court Seminar (Sutton) T 5:15-7:05
International Intellectual Property (Lee) W 1:30-3:20

SPRING
Wills Trusts Estates (Johnson) MTW 9:10-10:00
Mergers and Acquisitions (Oesterle) MTW 10:10-11:00
Professional Responsibility (Greenbaum) MTW 11:10-12:00
Criminal Procedure Adjudication (Michaels) MTW 2:55-3:45

What a wonderful schedule. Should open up plenty of time to go work for WHE 1-2 days a week during the autumn if they decide to have me back and make me an offer. Speaking of WHE, the past three weeks has been busy, and I've finally gotten pretty busy with work. Marked off most of the hiring committee partners on the list of must-work-for these people, still have 3 more to go though. The Washington DC trip was interesting to say the least. Got out of work on Tuesday three weeks ago and rushed home to pick up my suitcase and back into Kentucky to the airport. Steve, Adam, and I met at Outback in the airport and had a good light meal before getting on the plane. I was in the middle seat but both I had the smallest little Asian lady beside me so there was plenty of room. The firm puts each of us in our own separate hotel rooms with two beds (enough room for 4 comfortably, or if you were at a convention like Origins...enough room for 8-10). Woke up way too early the next day to catch the Metro to the Patent Office, which is now in a very nice complex. The public search facility requires two badges to get into, so I had about an hour wasted on getting in the PSF and figuring out EAST, the examiner search system we use to pull up patents and review them. 10 hours of clicking through patents is quite draining and almost soul-crushing in the late afternoon hours, but I got my first ever search done and started work on a second with Steve. We did go out to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse for dinner and had a bill before tip of $299 for the three of us. So expensive, but then again $100 of that was a bunch of white russians for me and Jack and Cokes for the other two guys. The steak was certainly one of the two best I've ever had though, and their barbeque shrimp appetizer comes in some of the most delicious sauce I've ever tasted. Also nice views of DC and Ronald Reagan airport from the restaurant. Then it was back to the hotel and the USPTO for another day (half-day for me due to flight availability) and rushed off to the airport after lunch. I ended up waiting forever to check in and almost did not get on the flight at all. This was a smaller plane and so I was the aisle seat in a 2 seat row...then even later than me comes the window seat. This girl needed the extra lap belt, so you can imagine how lovely our flight was back to Cincinnati (sigh). That's life though and I was just happy to be back in Ohio (Kentucky) when we got off the plane.

The next week the firm found suite tickets for the 3 summer clerks and Dave Dorton and off we went to the Reds game Tuesday night. We actually beat the Angels and the suite is something else. Unlimited food, drinks, air conditioning, private bathroom, etc. Seats are kind of crappy which makes the diamond seats I'm getting for our anniversary better, but the suites are nice as well. Went to the next night's game with Kelley and of course the Reds couldn't win two in a row. But we did get a Harang bobblehead, so we did not walk away empty handed. At work I've actually gotten to work with a couple client matters now (writing them letters, teleconfrencing with an inventor, etc), as well as more office action responses, patent applications, and legal research projects.

Today is the big attorney and guest formal dinner and cocktail party. Should be interesting and hopefully fun. Not as much fun as Barrister's Ball, but maybe a little fun. More on this later. The first week of school I'm going to have to cut out early of Int'l IP to go to the next partner-associate dinner event because they are having dinner at Great American Ball Park and then going to the Braves-Reds game. How could I say no to that? One other thing in the past three weeks was a day-long new associate training at the Cincinnati Bar Association. Some interesting speakers and some very boring ones, but that's how these events usually go. It was a free paid day away from work though so that's good enough for me, and I got to see Avonte and Paige from OSU...seems like all the OSU people working at Cincinnati firms are either from there or married to someone from there. No wonder I'm having trouble accepting the city.

The softball team has also sucked bad, but I missed the two weeks for the summer associate Reds game and the USPTO trip to DC. This past week I finally got to play again and played first base which I'm planning on keeping. We made some stupid errors and made a close game into a royal blowout 16-1 in five innings. Next week is the last week I can go to as they are done in 2 weeks...so hopefully we'll have a decent game.

So the apartment drama continues. They found a family that needed our apartment badly and immediately, so the landlord decided to let these guys move into a smaller 2 bedroom apartment for the remainder of their lease (which solves the absent third roommate problem). So two weeks ago we get less than a week's notice to pack up because these new people are going to move everything for us. The move was supposed to happen this past M-W, but come each day they just don't show up. The new people also do not return Stephanie's calls so we did not know what the hell was going on. I finally unpacked half my stuff on thursday because I decided I'm not living out of suitcases. Turns out that the landlord figured out Heather wanted to prorate the rent since they were moving us to a cheaper apartment for half the month, and the landlord did not want to so she told this family to wait another week and let us know. But the family and the landlord did not bother to tell any of us...so we were just packed up a week early. This sucks. So now they are saying this monday and tuesday, but I will not believe it until stuff starts getting moved. Also had a neighborhood disturbance Tuesday morning as a guy from across the street comes banging on our doors saying "Call the Police!" this white guy and his next door black neighbor had a fight or something and so six cop cars show up and investigate. This made me an hour late for work, but it was softball night so I just took my softball stuff to work and worked later. I'm just happy neither of them had a gun because we had about 12 people shot in those first two days of the week this week. Crazy.

As much as it pains me to say it, the Reds need to give up on this lame season and trade Adam Dunn and maybe even Ken Griffey Jr. for some good pitching. They need to get it figured out, as Harang, Arroyo, and Homer Bailey need some bullpen help. If we end up in Cincinnati I'd like to think I'm paying for good season tickets in 2009, not a joke team. It's like buying season tickets to the Columbus Blue Jackets. Yes I like hockey, but why do I need to suffer through cheering for a team going nowhere with management that just doesn't care?

Our anniversary and Origins is right around the corner, the best part of the summer. Kelley and I are thinking of going on a cruise for fall break this year since we have not done anything big like that for any of my fall or spring breaks thus far in law school. Anybody want to come along?

This past week I got the ebaying of Magic cards done and sorted the rest of the collection for sale at Origins. Finally done with that. This week I've got to update the resume, writing sample, etc. and apply for the OSU Chicago interview program as well as OCI. I'll also work out financial aid for this school year for the final time thankfully. Maybe I'll send out some cold-call letters to my favored markets as well. The only other thing on my plate is finishing up my JDR note, but I've got some flex time for that if necessary.

Also trying to read through the Harry Potter series in time for movie 5 and the final book. I doubt I'll get them done, but I'll work on it. Well have a good week or two or three, depending on when I update again. See you around.

Cincinnati (The vigil works...)

2007-06-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

Yes indeed my friends, I noted the vigil. And here is your response. It is more than hard to believe I've been in Cincinnati working for four weeks now, but sure enough time has flown by that quickly. Let's jump right in.

Let's start with the job, as that's the only real interesting new development in the past 4 weeks. Going into the firm job I think everybody without any law-work experience has to wonder if this is the career they will really like and will do the rest of their lives. I definitely had that worry being so set on IP law since high school really but not having any experience other than engineering work which was not that enjoyable (although I think that was a function of working for a hometown small company). Well that fear has been more than calmed as I love the work and unlike law school, it feels good to go to work and do something productive for inventors and companies as opposed to just "spinning the wheels" in law school. I've heard the same from a couple classmates doing the firm job for the first time this summer, so that's good. The work is just what I wanted: intellectually stimulating, challenging, and lots of variety scientifically. For example, I've worked on things as different as pallets (the wooden platforms you put merchandise on in warehouses and stores), tractor trailer aerodynamics, spinal stabilization systems, and dentistry braces. You never know what technical expertise you will get working in the mechanical side of patent law because everything has some level of mechanics.

The learning curve is tough coming in because responding to an office action (which is a patent application rejection from the patent office based on certain reasons such as lack of novelty or non-obviousness) is something that you struggle with and learn with time. Same for writing claims and descriptions in a patent application. I've had a few trademark research projects which makes me happy I took all the IP I could this year, but no copyright as we don't do much work in that field. I've also done some research projects for patent infringement litigation, including a trip to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals courthouse which is literally a block away from our building. Research is a nice break from the patent work because I'm still learning how to do all the patent work whereas I know how to do research. Our firm uses Lexis, so I'm forcing myself to use actual books in the firm library as well as Lexis now...I like using Westlaw more for school. Each system online has benefits though. Office Actions and Patent Applications will come more easy as time goes along though, and I'm working on one patent application with a guy who's only been at the firm a year and is still learning himself. That's why the billing rate for partners and senior associates is higher than junior associates and clerks. I still ask myself how companies can pay over $100 an hour for my services (which they do), but that's the going rate in this business. But nevertheless, a great start and a satisying work makes for a good outlook for this career path. Thank God.

The only real problem was lack of work, but now I'm rolling in steady work like everyone else after the other new summer clerk showed up 2 weeks ago. I did show up a week earlier than any law clerk normally would because my finals were done a week early and I did not want a big break before work thanks to the JDR orientation two weeks. Everybody's got plenty of work and the firm is growing slowly as they just opened a sixth floor in the Carew Tower, so it was just a matter of time before I got enough beginner-appropriate projects to get me up to speed enough to do regular projects (which are just more mechanically involved).

Our firm has had a few social events in the mix, but not like a big firm. The first one was the annual partner-associates meeting my second week at the firm. This was a nice steak (although many of the attorneys picked the two kinds of fish available) from a place called McCormick's right near our office. The cool part was the associates all went over for a happy hour and a half before the dinner at 6:30 because the partners were meeting about business during that time. It was nice to really sit down with a Guinness and Blue Moon on the firm and get to know my co-workers. The firm also has a softball team which is a fun time on Tuesday nights. We are really bad, as the firm was 6-4 two years ago but has not won a game in the past season and a half. We play against other law firms so we usually do not get blown out, but our problem is scoring runs consistently. We lost 4-12 the first week I went, 4-8 the second (down 3-5 after 6 of the 7 innings, but 3 runs did us in for sure), and 4-19 in six innings last week (we were up 3-1 after three innings before it went to hell). Still a fun time but we need to get it together offensively somehow. I've also got to learn to swing the bat at a softball, as my baseball skills from 8th grade do not translate well today or to softball. We've got enough younger guys though to improve and be a good team eventually.

There is a black tie optional annual attorney-guest ball/event coming up in 3 weeks Kelley and I will attend. Looking forward to that as we had to miss Barrister's this past year for what became the infamous weekend in New Jersey. I also found out late this week that I will be getting the customary trip to the patent office in Washington DC to do a patent search this week on Wednesday and Thursday. Another learn-how-to-do job, but I was promised this trip to DC if at all possible this summer so it should be interesting even though it is work. Also firm pays for everything so apparently we are going to a steak joint called Ruth Chris on Wednesday night and if attorneys brag about it, it's probably going to be some of the best steak I've ever eaten. But overall it's been plenty good enough at the firm and I am getting good reviews on work product thus far. Hopefully I'll manage to work for enough hiring committee partners well enough to get an offer, which I will seriously consider.

There has been a poor side to all of this, and most of it deals with Cincinnati and the apartment. The apartment I chose is great and I even got the master bedroom a week early because of a third roommate moving in early who then did not show up but the master bedroom owner stayed on the couch until she left for NY anyways. Except for one thing. The central AC unit in the building is not working and maintenance is apparently retarded or the problem is serious because one month of complaints and you think it would be fixed. But no. So it simmers up here on the third floor and fans run 24-7. But whatever, it's only temporary and it is cheap for what I'm getting. The commute is pretty good too once I figured out how to avoid I-75 and Vine Street which runs through the most ghetto part of Cincinnati. But overall in my explorations of Cincinnati, Covington, Newport, and surrounding areas I'm just not impressed. I did not expect to be but Cincinnati just seems really crummy. Some of my co-workers have a long commute to get into better areas so if I come back next year that's what we will probably do.

Moving onto the just in case scenarios, I will be hitting the letters and interviews trail again this year, and next week I'll probably start refining my letter for Chicago, Texas, and the midwest. There's a OSU sponsored job fair in Chicago with 10 employers (3 strictly IP), so I'll probably check that out in August as well as the patent interview program, where I have 6/7 interviews. Wish I had more at the patent interview program, but oh well. And the ridiculous supply of letters at the now improved rate of 41 cents apiece!

I finally got my grades in after waiting on BA for 3 weeks after getting the other 3, but Oesterle still hasn't submitted grades for his other 2 classes so I guess we should be thankful. I somehow kept my high average (improved it a tad) and will almost certainly stay in the top 10% through 4 of 6 semesters...and with my job search being a tough one trying to get out of the region...I need a sparkling resume. Yay journal high position, being published on journal, 2L moot court experience, top grades, and IPLS position. What more can I do? Anyways, this semester proved I like everyone else cannot predict law school grades. I said I knocked Trademark out of the park...and I did bad in BA...well I did well in everything but in the opposite order than what I expected. 97 in BA is just inexplicable, 95 in Evidence is nice, and the pair 93's in seminar and trademark are good (but I really thought I was in the running for a CALI in trademark...but Lee doesn't like my style I guess). On the bright side, now I'm through 2L year, I did much better than I anticipated, and hopefully I can work that into some interviews for full time positions. I hear a couple of my other friends did very well also so good for them, but it's no surprise people from our 1L section are doing well because that was a tough section. And we can all see the light at the end of the tunnel, even if that soothing light is a frieght train comin our way in the bar exam. Bonus points to whoever gets that reference without wikipedia.

Kelley's doing well, but I think she's going to switch jobs away from the daycare place because it's finally getting to her. They are bad about not scheduling until the last minute and work policy is a little strange. Plus she has to put up with other people's kids for hours all day, and that would drive me batty. We've been taking in some Cincinnati Reds games which is awesome after seeing them like once a year since childhood. They are awful early this season rather than giving us false hope, so seeing a win is a rare thing. We went to the Bronson Arroyo bobblehead night and saw a loss to Washington 12-7. I've never seen so many runs, but it was cool to see a team I've never seen before (that counts when they were the Expos). Then we went again a few days later to see the Reds beat the Pirates on memorial day 4-0. Unfortunately our best outfielder Ryan Freel was injured and laid motionless on the field for 15 minutes that game too. We've got tickets to see my first ever interleague game in a little over a week against the Angels, also Aaron Harang bobblehead night. Then my desk at work will be bobbling on both sides.

Longer term, looking forward to our anniversary, the 4th of July, and Origins the following weekend. Signed up for some interesting events such as a world championship qualifier for Settlers of Catan, a LARP called Terrorwerks, Palabra, Apples to Apples national championship...and I'm sure I'll catch some poker and perhaps magic too. I'm selling the remains of my magic collection as planned in summer 2007 and the last good stuff is on ebay now, the bulk goes at origins probably in the auction. Also really looking forward to our anniversary, as we both know what we are getting each other. She's getting a 1 carat three stone ring she's wanted since our engagement 3 years ago and also a night out on the town with dinner and tickets to the musical Wicked. She's giving me Diamond seats on fireworks night July 3 when the Reds play St. Louis. I've never been in such good seats! Hopefully the Reds will win too, but that may be asking for too much :-) Should be the best week of the summer though, hands down.

Speaking of rings, Zach (Kel's brother) and his fiancee broke it off. Guess they argued constantly for 10 months since they got engaged, and it is no surprise they are broken off. It's probably better off for him. Crazy happenings though.

Grading the editing assignments for the write-on competition for main journal and JDR, and man does that suck :-) It's usual JDR stuff though. I'm just happy I don't have to read the essays. That would be much worse...40 or more ten page papers on the exact same topic with the exact same ten sources. Ick.

Let's turn finally to TV and movies. TV had a decent end of season. Lost finished in a fantastic manner, actually killing off a main character and some others as well as threatening many more. Plus we found out that maybe flash-forwards is the new flash back for the final three seasons and that could be awesome. Plus we know Jack and Kate get off the island...many more questions but a few answers in great Lost style. 24's mediocre season ended poorly, with the lamest soap opera ending ever of Jack spending the last 20 minutes talking to his comatose girlfriend and crying on the beach. On the bright side they did leave open any storyline they want to do with no cliffhanger to tie back into for the first time, so perhaps Season 7 will be great yet. Finally, House had a good run at the end of the season but inexplicably half the cast quit or got fired in the last episode (all the ducklings Foreman, Chase, and Cameron are gone, leaving just Cuddy, Wilson, and House). This means either some good stuff goes down at the beginning of next season or we have to learn 3 new characters. Hmm, don't know which I would prefer. Overall I think House beats Lost for the best this season because while Lost finished much better, House had solid episodes all season long and a great fall storyline with the asshole cop screwing House and his friends over to make a point. We await next January and February...when 24 and Lost come back. At least OSU plays football in the fall.

The first three blockbusters have come and gone in movies as well. Spiderman 3 was quality but maybe a tad worse than the first two because they had too many enemies and not enough plot behind them. The movie totally could have been carried without Sandman, who got absolutely ridiculous at the end. Shrek 3 was also an enjoyable popcorn flick with a few hearty laughs, but this series was at its best when it was novel. Pirates 3 was an impressive ending to that story and is probably my pick for movie of the summer up till now (edging Spiderman). Ocean's 13 comes up this week which is the one I've been looking forward to most along with Harry Potter 5. Knocked Up looks like a surprise fantastic movie as well, so maybe we'll go catch that at some point. Good popcorn summer so far.

Well I'm sure there's stuff I forgot to cover in 4 weeks, but I got the major stuff. Won't make any promises as to when I'll update again as I'm pretty busy relaxing and working. If you are in Cincinnati or living here this summer and want to grab lunch or dinner, let me know. Have a good summer to all of you still reading.

End of the 2L Era

2007-05-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple of weeks since I blogged last, but it has also been a busy couple of weeks. Now as of Tuesday I'm finally into my last year of schooling (year 19 if anyone's counting), a 3L or rising 3L, whatever your fancy. I definitely understand the mindset of 3L's now in law school with not caring about classes as much and just wanting to get to the bar exam and get into their jobs. After taking the whole IP suite my 2L year, the only course I'm taking in my area of interest is a once a week 2 hour International IP class next year. There's always the patent bar if I want more to do, and I really do not have a large classload. Executive Editor of JDR will keep me plenty busy otherwise and moot court in the fall as well. The 2L year is over though! Hooray!

The first thing to talk about is exams, now that they are over. What a crazy week of studying before exams and through them. Studied Evidence MTW and then finally turned my attention to Trademark on Thursday, but I knocked that class out in one day. After Evidence on Friday I turned my attention to Business Associations for the rest of the weekend before Trademark on Monday and BA on Tuesday.

I don't want to invoke any honor code problems, so I will speak in generalities only about the exams (and I ask that people like Aaron not read the following paragraph). Evidence went OK, but I have no idea where my grade will end up because it is like a big multiple choice test where all you do is see if you can make correct evidentiary rulings. Tests with significant multiple choice portions also have no consistent track record for me, with my highest grade in law school coming from Federal Income Tax and my second worst coming from Criminal Law, both like Evidence. Of course I ran out of time on the Evidence exam as well, but it's OK because god only knows how Simmons will differentiate the class on the final question. I think I knocked Trademark out of the park as everything was easy...and all I have to say is wow Professor Lee, American Idol contestants making a porn video...wow. The BA exam was a little tough as expected, and I wish I'd spent more time on corporations. Nonetheless, half the exam was a softball expected question where you knew exactly how to answer if you attended half the classes in there. I still think BA will be my worst and Trademark my best. We'll see. At least they are over and blissfully quickly.

Since exams ended, I've been busy grading mech eng midterms and I'm dropping those off later this afternoon. Nice to be done with school and my school job, now 2 days of relaxing and prepping for the Sunday evening move to Cincinnati. Hard to believe I'll be earning real money being a lawyer on Monday (well a summer associate but still). Looking forward to seeing what they put me on in the first week. I'll certainly be reporting in from time to time this summer to let you know how it is going. For those in the C-Bus this summer, I will be up most weekends spending time with the wife when she's not working so we can still get together and have some fun. Fun fun fun!

Been playing tennis as much as possible with Tom and Heather the past 3 weeks. I think we've had 6 sets of completely different scores as Kelley and I try to get up to speed (they started a couple weeks before we did). Our first outing was a 2-6, 3-6 loss and our second was 1-6, 4-6. Had a bad outing in the middle of my finals where we started 0-6, but we won the second set 6-4 then oddly enough. Back on tonight and maybe we're finally even again. We're hoping to play every weekend both couples are in town this summer. We'll have to fit it in around all the ridiculous movie blockbusters just like tonight, as we are all going to see Spiderman 3 after tennis to kick off the movie season. Reviews were not great but I think this is just because the first two (and especially the second) were clearly better than almost every other superhero movie in the last 10 years. Seems like too many storylines to me with 3 separate villains and an internal battle as well, but we'll see tonight.

Looking ahead to the summer of the sequels, Shrek 3 looks iffy in the previews to be quite honest. Ocean's 13 will amuse me but will be hard pressed to live up to the original. Fantastic Four 2 will be missed by me as I have no desire to see another good comic book series shafted by terrible movies. Pirates 3 kind of reminds me of the Matrix trilogy in that the first one was excellent and the second was just OK because it's a setup for the third movie. For the Matrix the mediocrity continued, but I have a feeling Disney will have a solid third Pirates movie here. Speaking of Disney (and getting out of the sequel run for a second), kind of wanting to see Ratatouille because Pixar movies always seem good. The end of the summer will bring the end of the Harry Potter book series and the fifth Potter movie, Order of the Phoenix. The end of the fourth book is where the series got incredibly dark and adult, so it will be nice to see the first really dark movie in the series. The previews for this movie look outstanding too. We'll hope for the best. It's a popcorn filled summer for sure.

Speaking of movies, bought and watched the two best picture frontrunners in 2006, The Departed and Babel. Babel was OK but it seemed kind of boring and was a bad Crash knockoff (the 2005 best picture winner over that movie with the Ga-ays). The Departed on the other hand was a very well done artsy flick about cops and criminals and rats. The movie was a joy to watch and I recommend that for everyone's movie collection.

The NBA playoffs has been feast or famine in the first round. The east was unbearable to watch as the three central division teams with the three best records in the east all coasted to sweeps (Detroit over Orlando, Chicago over Miami, and Cleveland over Wizards). The boring and irrelevant series between the Nets and the Raptors has a game 6 tonight nobody will watch outside the state of New Jersey or the state of Canada. The Nets might have a chance to knock off Cleveland, but probably not. The Bulls-Pistons series should finally bring some excitement to this side of the bracket. In the west there were no sweeps thankfully, but the Spurs and Suns (both 4-1 over the Nuggets and Lakers, respectively) were never in doubt. It's still entertaining to watch guards without help fail miserably in the playoffs, and yes I mean Kobe, AI, and Carmelo. The shocker of the first round ended last night as the Golden State Warriors blasted the best team in basketball (Dallas) out 4-2. Not that surprising given the way the Warriors finished the season 9-1 just to squeak into the 8 seed and the fact that the Warriors had the Mavericks' number all season (3-0 against Dallas in the regular season). The last series is going to Game 7 Saturday night with Utah visiting Houston. This has been a very good 4-5 matchup and will be a good game 7. So the west has been entertaining in all 4 series and the east has not. At least the east has one good series next round while the West should have two very interesting and competitive series.

Predictions certain to go wrong: Pistons over Bulls in 7, Cleveland over Nets/Raptors in 5, Spurs over Suns in 6, and Utah/Houston over Golden State in 7.

I find it funny that this Saturday is a huge day for two sports that used to be tops alongside baseball in this country but now suffer miserably: horse racing (Kentucky Derby) and boxing (Oscar De LA Hoya v Floyd Meriweather). The problem with boxing is easy to figure out: ultimate fighting is more entertaining, no heavyweight bouts of note in 10 years, and every fight of any relevance at all is on pay-per-view so nobody can see them. If you want fans, you have to be accessible. The problem with horse racing is that it only happens 3 times a year (the top level racing) and you can go bet on horse races every day of the week at your local track. Sports of the past are the name of the game this weekend, and I'm guessing Jazz-Rockets game 7 gets more attention.

TV has been top notch the past 2 weeks. American Idol has removed three ass-clowns who did not deserve to be there anymore (Sanjaya, Pasty Phil Stacey, and Chris). The last male singer remaining should be gone this week, but I'm sure one of the female trinity will probably have a bad outing and go home. House has been top notch as well, but now with 2 weeks left we are left asking...are they really going to write Omar Epps (Foreman) out of the series? That would suck but I guess if there was a replaceable character it would be him. Still hope House turns it around on us. 24 unfortunately stands out as not that great the past 3 weeks and with 3 weeks to go I just hope the end is OK. I really feel like this season they ended the main storyline with Arab terrorists 6 weeks too soon and crammed all the major 24 threats into one season to try and make it more bad-ass (Nuclear weapons, Russians, Chinese, and Arab terrorists). But we all should have known it was going downhill when Wayne Palmer became president. What a joke. Lost is back in primo form again and appears to be poised to take back the TV crown going into next year.

Time to go run some errands (getting Spidey tickets, undershirts for work, and maybe a windshield repair quote). Nice that the day after finals a crack on the truck windshield grew about 8 inches long and Kelley cut a tire that ended up needing replaced. Sigh :-)

Have a good week. Reports from Cincinnati coming!

I Need To Study

2007-04-17T17:56:00.000-07:00

Yes indeed finals are staring me right in the face now. A short 9 days from now many of us will be sitting down to hammer out Simmons' Evidence exam. Once I start studying (which may not start until Thursday) then I will get through it all but right now it seems so daunting. At least there's only three finals to juggle again unlike last semester. More on this when they come up, but the last two evidence assignments have certainly helped me see a lot of topics in review. Speaking of the evidence paper, jumped in on a group this time because we can work in groups of up to 4. Makes for a lot less work, except for Wolfson who doesn't mind the "research" for our Star Wars fact pattern.

So TV. Tonight is House night, and we watched American Idol too. Since this is the first time I've kind of followed Idol, let's rank the contestants based on country night:
1. Melinda Doolittle - no doubt about it, best singer of the season
2. Jordin Sparks - Good song this week, big drop off from Melinda
3. Phil Stacey - Very mediocre singer but did OK tonight
4. Chris Richardson - Ugh it's Mr. Nasal Voice, reminds me of a poor J. Timberlake
5. LaKisha Jones - She was forcing her voice over a loud song, it was awful even though she sings OK
6. Blake Lewis - Just like LaKisha, country is a bad genre for this guy. Picked a mediocre Tim McGraw song and delivered it like a karaoke champ
7. Sanjaya Malakar - What hasn't been said? I have to give him credit, he's a good sport for everyone knowing he's terrible and the judges are brutal (rightfully so, how this guy made the top 40 is beyond me), and "Let's Give Them Something to Talk About" was a nice ironic choice.

So looking at those rankings and assuming Sanjaya will get his usual voting base (as long as there are more than 4 contestants he will make it through because his "fan" base is not divided week to week among the other 6 or more contestants)...I'd say the bottom three will definitely contain Blake and LaKisha, then either Chris or Phil. I think there's too much support for Blake still, so LaKisha goes home tomorrow. Of course I'm wrong, but I figure I might as well make a game of it.

House was incredible last week with the mental phenomenon of making yourself sick (to a ridiculous degree on an airplane). Nice dual story with Cuddy and House in the sky solving that problem and the young guns solving an old lady's poisoning on their own. This week's is on right now and seems interesting, but House is not something to spend too much time talking about. Lost, on the other hand, was absolutely awesome last week and it appears the season of "the others" will finally come to an exciting climax after spinning wheels for months. I really want to see if my favorite character John Locke turns his back on the flight survivors, as it might cost him his life. 24 this week was also pretty good, although it pains us all to watch that douche bag VP Noah run away with the presidency when Palmer was going to force him out. Of course it is kind of Palmer's fault for popping adrenaline shots like M&M's during the Fayed crisis resolution. Seems like the main story ended about 5 weeks early this year, as now I really wonder what they are going to do the rest of the season. It appears the Audrey exchange goes down next week, so I figure Jack and the Chinese guy who has it out for Jack will be the focus of the rest of the season. Brings us to the end (maybe) of a great storyline started in Season 4. We'll see, as the season has been OK thus far. Just wish for once there was a president on that show who knew how to pick an agreeable VP. Oh well.

Big news of the week: I got two out of my three JDR banquet predictions correct. Xavier will indeed be published and Larry did win staff member of the year, but Larry unfortunately will not be published.
Bigger news: I'M GETTING PUBLISHED! Woot. Makes all those long hours the week before drafts were due worth it. I'll give the note a fresh look once I'm in Cincinnati, as I only have until July 1 to make any significant changes or additions. Xavier and I will be in Issue 2 (my topic is increasing ADR in patent law, Xavier's has to do with non-traditional couples I think). Erik and Nate are the other two being published, Erik on Eminent Domain ADR and Nate on interest group mediation. So those are the three people I get to bug the crap out of for footnoting, and of course now I get to participate next year as a final backstop editor and an author. Should be an interesting year.

Shipman's class ended today, and all my 1L's have reached the height of cynicism. Most of them think they are screwed about App Ad because all the other kids have written a brief and they have not, and also in general because they got no real help or feedback on the journal competition type assignment (according to them). But many other people have made it out of Shipman's writing class and gotten onto journal and been successful, such as the other two TA's for our class Andy Johnson (main journal, executive editor next year) and Uzo (main journal, articles editor next year). They will be fine trying to get on journal and may have an advantage in that regard having done one of these assignments. Shipman is correct in telling them this is all learn by doing. My journal write-on paper was probably horrible, but I got it figured out at least decently for the note. Same with office memos and briefs. Speaking of briefs...

Is it possible for the Moot Court Governing Board of this school year to be any worse at their jobs? It doesn't seem too much to ask to do your job and do it competently, after all these people ran for the offices and were interviewed etc. I think Aaron is going to write an article series for the Hearsay jokingly telling next year's board how to do their job. Maybe the board should have given Keener a spot on the board for having the guts to tell them the truth to their faces about how terrible they are. Here's a short list of minor to major greivances I have with them.
1. The exact specifics of how Herman works and how teams are chosen for 3L year was not all that clear and the competition rules took multiple reads to figure out.
2. They faux pas'd on the selection round ranking email that told the top 5 2L's where they stood (at least Brian who was 4th and I who was 5th got emails asking for our preference of teams because the original email said we were ranked number 1). That I was pissed about but I was willing to give them a mulligan. just more angry about which team I got stuck on (topic, teammates, Kelley's birthday weekend...need I say more?).
3. They told the 5 of us on teams as 2L's this year to leave the Herman TWEN group and then did a poll on which teams they should keep next year because some had to be cut. Well they did it through TWEN and so did not ask any of the 5 of us who have PRIORITY CHOICE for next year's teams. So my voice was not heard and that among other things led to no IP team for next year.
4. They finally get everything done for this year and so all that's left is to process the team preference forms for next year. How hard can it be to plug those numbers. It's a really simple system...go to the top ranked person (Brodie), look at his sheet, slot him into the top team he wants that's still open. Continue for each person down the list. Seems simple right? Well it's taken them way too long and then finally today we get an email with moot court teams for next year. Problem is, 20 minutes later we get another email saying they double-checked the teams but still there were errors and they have to redo the teams. WTF?

GET IT TOGETHER MOOT COURT BOARD. It's not that much to ask that you do something easy and simple...and for heaven's sakes, get it right. We'll see if my team changes at all, but as it stands right now I'm on what I consider to be one of the 2 most solid moot court teams for next year. One ABA team is Aaron, Brodie, and Tiffany (all-stars) and my National team is Lee (one of the 2L's on a team this year), Tom (top 10 overall in Herman), and me. There are some other good looking teams as well, but of course it's all tenative so this discussion may be moot. Also of interest is Cheggs being on B-Smith's team, that sounds like a match made in heaven. But whatever. So maybe by the end of the semester we'll know what teams we'll be on. It does look like I'll be on a national team for sure, so that's cool. I'll be done with moot court in the fall too which is nice.

Bar fitness interview was this morning. That was about as exciting as watching women's golf on TV. I have a clean record (no speeding or traffic tickets even, but I'm lucky in that category) so we had NOTHING to talk about. They asked me if I had any questions. Hell I did not know I was supposed to come prepared, let alone what the interview was going to be like. So we chatted about the Virginia Tech slaughter and after 10 minutes of that the two attorneys signed off on my competency to be a lawyer and so that's the end of that. They let people with DUI's through this process without too much grilling (so these two said), so you have to do some bad stuff to raise eyebrows when trying to take the bar. One less thing to worry about.

Went to Cincy on Friday and looked at 8 apartments. Found some crazy landlords in the morning. First was the old lady who was half-senile and told lots of stories and had to show me her cats and the 3 baby raccoons she rescued from the city streets. Then was the lady who answered the door with a power drill in hand (working on the house). Then an uber-businessman who buys and sells and rents houses for a living, so he was a slick operator. Went to Joe's for lunch and then to WHE, my firm, to discuss final details with them. In the afternoon saw a couple more stinkers but 3 good apartments. One was like University Village in a big building, had a pool and gas grill and exercise rooms and game rooms for everyone to use...you rent one room in a 2-4 bedroom apartment and they would have matched me with another guy living there for the summer working at a different Cincy law firm. Tempting and all-inclusive with furnishings, but $549 a month is a decent price and not great. Second place was a one and a half room studio from a law student subletting, but she wanted around 500 with few furnishings. The one I chose was another law student sublet in a 3 bedroom apartment off the UC campus a ways. Nice short drive either through the ghetto (Over the ridge) or down an interstate to downtown every day, and the apartment is furnished and cheap for all-inclusive. So I have Cincinnati all worked out and I'm looking forward to getting down there in a couple weeks.

Oh one more note: we received our brief scores from Moot Court competition. We finished 12th out of 32. So the brief far from brought us down. Now Dustin and I really do not know how we got out of the top 16 after beating both of our opponents in oral argument. Probably the judges in the first round misattributing things from Brooklyn to us and vice versa. Gives me hope for next year though as it seems kind of a crapshoot in a way, but you can clearly succeed if your team cares to.

Time to get back to ignoring studies and the such. Have a good week.

The Run Is Over

2007-04-09T18:42:00.000-07:00

Another week flies by, and this puts us 2 weeks and 3 days from final exams. Even though I only have three they seem a little daunting because they are coming quickly and all at once (Friday, Monday, Tuesday). I'm thinking that because I'm not starting work until the following week I may petition to get Tuesday moved back to Thursday...but I'm also thinking I may just suck it up and get them over quickly. Trademark shouldn't be too bad, just like copyright. Evidence I need to work on as I kind of let that class go here recently, and BA is a nightmare for everyone but we'll make it through (just like accounting for lawyers).

Watching 24 right now and the jaw-dropping twist from last week turns out to be lame and not really true as Presdient Palmer sends a fake nuke to get a message across to the terrorist loving arab country. Of course CTU is about as effective as a butterfly net at keeping Fayed in their control so no surprise they managed to let him go again this week. But with Jack on the attack (and just how do you hold onto the undercarraige of a trash truck for miles???) the threat is averted. What a brutal finish. But in rote 24 style, one crisis averted and another starts up as the Chinese are going to use Audrey to get to Jack. Go figure.

Lost was good last week too. It is funny how Sawyer gets a heart and a leadership role this week, just in time for Jack to come home and steal away leadership. At least Sawyer can be Sawyer again. I thought we were going to see a big battle between the others and the Lost, but perhaps this season is not like the first two (which stood alone as the "survivor mystery" season and "the hatch" season). Perhaps this is the grand final story ark at its peak since the others did appear in season 1 to ruin the raft plans of Michael, Sawyer, Jin, and Walt. I hear the Lost writers envisioned the series as reaching a logical ending after 4-5 seasons, so perhaps this series will not drag on into mediocrity. The beginning of this season was pretty poor though, but at least it has gotten better.

Ohio has been lovely this week ever since we came back from Newark. Freezing temps again and snow with little accumulation. It does make for a funny story though watching the Indians cancel an entire 4 game series because there is a FOOT OF SNOW on the field over the weekend. So they are playing this week's series in Milwaukee against the LA Angels. Now that's a hot ticket! Two way out of town teams playing in your stadium...enjoy that Brewers fans. The Reds started 4-2 winning both of their opening week series, so as usual let's get optimistic that I'll have something to watch in Cincinnati this summer (something other than Bengals players getting arrested for a rainbow of felonies).

Well the title of this blog entry refers to bowling (I know, shocker!). The semifinals proved why bowling playoffs are a great thing and a terrible thing at the same time. The great part is that any team can win and "binary elimination" makes for some exciting bowling. The terrible part is that there is little reward for doing well all season. We ran into kryptonite again in Bring Clovis Back and Bill Browne, but at least their team bowled regular average games this time...no 200 game beatings. Kelley was off her game and so was Brodie, but in typical MFR fashion Daniel had the best week of his career and I bowled well also. We lost by 2 pins in the series, winning game 2 by 30 but losing game 1 by 32. It was infuriating for 3 of us because Brodie and Kelley bowled poorly and were blaming themselves while I had a chance to put them away in the tenth frame of the second game (working on a double strike, I went 9-miss which is agonizing). Still, this season was better than all before and we had our chance to make the finals. Maybe in our 3L year we'll be lucky enough to get one more shot. The professors went down in flames to cinderella also, so that sets up a battle of titans:

(16) Bring Clovis Back vs. (14) Pinning the Blame

I'd have to guess PTB completes the cinderella run and bowls above average to slay another opponent. But Bill Browne would like one more title before law school is over :-) To put a wrap on our season, we were 24-9 this season and 22-2 against teams not names Bring Back Clovis (2-7 in three weeks against them). Pretty good. I noticed another statistical fluke that probably rarely happens in this many weeks of bowling. We never went 2-1! 3-0 seven times, 1-2 three times, and 0-3 one time the first week. I could see not going 3-0 or 0-3 in eleven weeks as sweeping is hard, but no 2-1's??? As I'm sure all my readers don't care so much about this statistical anomaly, we'll move on.

The week at school otherwise was pretty uneventful. Finished up Acc-Checking/Final Reading the third issue last week and sent to publisher, the bibliography issue this week. Which means we are almost finally done with Volume 22. JDR Banquet is this week and we'll find out who won staff member of the year (my pick would be Larry if I had one) and which 6 of us will be published next year as student notes. This also determines which 6 (or 5 if I'm published) of you JDR members will get to be bugged by me next year as authors instead of ME's or whatever job you will be doing. Fun fun fun. I am curious though to see if people who really tried hard and cared about note writing get what they deserve (yes Larry and Xavier and whoever else I missed in this category, you deserve to get published). Classes were kind of blah, but our second evidence paper was interesting. Binary elimination of hearsay exceptions, which is silly but March Madness was in season and it did help me and probably many others learn just what the hearsay exceptions were. The third and final writing assignment even more silly as we have to take a movie or book or TV show and use the plot to bring up how evidentiary issues would come up at trial. Not nearly as much educational value but we need a fun assignment right before finals or else people would go BAT-CRAZY (as if they don't already).

The weekend was good, very relaxing in Marietta. Spent all weekend at Kelley's grandparents' house, but did spend Friday night with Sarah and Kelley at Pastor Steve's place. He has this Burmese Mountain Dog who is the most adorable huge dog you've ever seen. Chip had a lot of fun bouncing around his legs and playing with the big guy. We chatted it up over pizza and quality beer (Steve is quite the conissour of dark beers) before playing the Wii that we brought over for the weekend. Steve is quite the character as he is a young divorced pastor who is not afraid to talk straight to you. I'm sure he would put off quite a few more traditional Lutherans with his ways, but the man is young and he has to live you know. He just wouldn't fit in the Missouri Synod (but then other than my Dad, who does?). Easter Sunday at church amuses me...300 people packed in at our church which is double normal. Communion took FOREVER but I finally took communion with my wife for the first time ever (she hardly ever takes it because she plays background music during communion usually and I am hardly ever at church anymore...so you can figure it out). The grandparents sent us home with our usual hefty helpings of leftovers from the Easter feast and another hefty plate of guilt trip (we hate to see you go etc...Kelley's more than used to it though). Another successful weekend of relaxation though.

And finally, let's get to the subject everybody seems so eager to talk about: Brian and the Newark trip. First, let me say that while I do not intend to ever work with Brian again on anything professional or not...I hold no ill will towards him. He has some problems (whatever they may be) that he needs to work out and I hope that someday he does get everything straight. I'm not patient enough (unlike some of my other friends) to deal with him, and I also feel like I'm in a unique position because very few if any of you will spend 3 straight constant days with him with no breaks. So perhaps my view is extreme because extreme things happen when you spend that kind of time in close quarters. If you have ever read the great existential novel No Exit (Huis Clos) by Jean Paul Sartre, you'll have an appreciation for why this kind of thing happens.

In response to some of the comments, I do have a few things to say. First this is my personal blog and I will air whatever I feel like here, you do not need to read it and I do not expect you to (unless you are stalking me in which case you need to find someone more interesting to stalk). That being said, I state the facts as I see them and I will not sugar coat things...but I also refuse to make truly petty and senseless attacks on colleagues. I vented for two and a half hours to create that last lengthy entry and I was perfectly OK with the world after that. You'll understand that I did not want to relive the weekend over and over to my many friends, so I told them to check the blog. Most of them did, and some told their friends. It's law school so word spreads. If you read this entry as offensive, you either (i) do not know Brian well enough, (ii) do not know me well enough, or (iii) don't understand what a vent on a blog is for. Simple as that. I've heard the gamut from "I was offensive and petty" to "I was nice" in my representation of how Brian can be. But that misses the point either way. This blog is a factual recollection of law school that I plan to look back on later. Making what I consider to be one of the worst weekends of my law school career (when it should have been one of the happiest) sound peachy keen is just plain wrong.

Thanks to all you friends and unknowns who support the common sense in the blog. Some of you did get petty and out of control with your comments and I have to say something about that. People think they are invincible and invisible when commenting anonymously on these blogs, so perhaps my only sin in the matter is opening up the door for all of you to make comments that degrade or attack Brian unfairly. But that's your perogative and the attacks on my "ethics" or "professionalism" for the blog entry itself should be directed at the real problem. That being the practice of people not having the balls to say what they truly feel and sign their name to it. I'm not ashamed of what I wrote because it is how I feel and Brian should know that. It is unfair to hide my true feelings from him and talk behind his back...but don't get me wrong I am just as guilty as many other Section 1-2 people from last year in talking about Brian and Pamela. Nevertheless I will tell these people how it is and like one anonymous poster who had a little class eventually after wrongfully personally attacking my wife (nice low move my friend) in a previous comment..."we agree to disagree." Better words could not have been spoken. I do not think Brian is commenting on here, but if he is more power to him.

Responding directly where it needs to be done:
1. "you should be ashamed of yourself." - And so should you for not signing your name to the comment.
2. "stating that a colleague has a mental illness on your diary might be a tantrum worthy of a 3-4 year old" - Number 1, there's a big difference (and you'd know that if you knew me) between having a screw loose and true mental illness. I do think he has problems to work out and I have a lack of words to adequately describe it, but I also in my rage of blogging that day made it clear I do not think mental illness is to be joked about. There's no joke when it comes to Brian. Just cold hard facts. If you find them funny, that's your perogative. Number 2, you need to back down the silly comments if you don't have the balls to sign it. I would actually respect you and would agree to disagree if you were not so cowardly.
3. "BAS and Dave can both seem pompous at times." - Well welcome to law school. Just be happy you did not meet high school Dave, who should've had a ego-trip blog back in the day.
4. "impressed with the implications of a psychology minor" - Hmmm. I almost shut down comments because you people were getting so petty and personal and stupid. It hurt to watch, and again you want to attack my wife...say it to my face or her face.
5. Of course I hold back some opinions I have of law school people and events. Some things should never see the light of day, while others such as last weekend deserve to be spoken. Not only is a moot court competition weekend a once (or twice) in a lifetime opportunity, I gave Brian my apology and he continued to make an issue of things. He pushed me too far so I wouldn't cry too hard for him. In a way he brought whatever I wrote on himself.
6. "rodney king" - nice. I hope you go on all kinds of blogs and make that same comment because I'm certain you will find crazy petty little fights on half the blogs out there today. And who doesn't like a little more Rodney King in their lives?
7. "I can assure you that none of the comments have been from Brian." - Care to share how you have this nugget of knowledge? Are you some god who can pierce the veil of the anonymous tag? If so, you are a god.
8. Furthermore, I am not surprised at the readership. It's law school. I don't know about any dismay other than those of you who don't have the guts to come face to face with me, someone who indeed has the balls to say how I truly feel. I do not care if you do not read my blog or comment on it, as really before this post only 10 of the probably 100 people who read it this week had read it before and only 5 people regularly. That's just fine with me.
9. I can barely respond to the rest of that comment, as it is just so spineless and senseless. Plus the next comment said more eloquently than I ever could how you are wrong about your high and mighty ethics. "I am not going to give you favorable treatment in our contacts beyond Moritz in the legal community." Who the f^%$ do you think you are? You will probably have no professional contact with me outside of this school because I am in such a narrow field that maybe 3% of our graduates will go into. I have no idea what you think your unfavorable views of me will do, but it certainly will not affect my legal career. But whatever. You want to act all high-and-mighty and pretend like you have a say in my life, go ahead.
10. And finally, yes rampant use of alcohol and illegal substances is bad. Now that we have that cleared up...

You may continue to comment on that old thread if you wish, but it is yesterday's news and nobody has the balls to come out against me in person because they know I was not attacking Brian and I really was in no way unethical or unprofessional. So that's that. Shut the book on Brian. I'm finished with that.

Have a good week, and don't GO CRAZY over outlines and upcoming exams for god's sakes! No reason to have an insanity outbreak.

One final note: our evidence professor has a lot of respect from me. He's buying a round of drinks (alcoholic or non-alcoholic, whatever your pleasure) for whomever wants to join him at the end of our evidence exam. No exam talk allowed. Now that's what I call a good idea, get the people rested up a little bit and get them to take a short break from the rigors of law school exams. Should be good for the mental health of all involved.

Bowling Semifinals and Gibbons Weekend

2007-04-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

Well that was quite a week. Not one of my favorites, but certainly one of the most memorable. Part of that comes from STILL having that damn cough with no other cold symptoms. It is just irritating to have to medicate something like that. But that is the least of my worries.

This week in classes was short and not that notable. Doing some JDR final formats in the meantime and those are no fun...but now I can rip through them. We get to bowling a little late this week and got limited practice, but one of our opponents showed up late with no practice anyway. We are in a bracket style so we played against Bart and Avonte and Jen and who's that other person....oh that's right Christie! And she showed up this time (we beat them in a close 3-0 in the regular season and she did not show up). Kelley was on top of her game, getting a 168 I think game one with another opening turkey in a game. We bowled great the first game and good the second, but neither game was really close as Penal Servitude was not bowling well. Bart was in the 150's with a 175 AVG, Avonte was 30 pins off AVG...that just buried them. Here were the other results:

(16) Bring Clovis Back def. (9) Imwinklereids
(4) MFR Minus Judas def. (5) Penal Servitude
(14) Pinning The Blame def. (11) Jim & The Holograms
(2) Enlightening Strikes def. (10) Elvis Lives

So we have finally broken the string of losses in the Elite eight and will be battling in the Final 4 next Wednesday. Four very good teams remain. Our matchup with Clovis gives us a chance to avenge our two losses to them in the regular season (we are 23-7 in 10 weeks, but 1-5 against them. So 22-2 when not bowling this opponent). Clovis is the only 3L team lef tin the field and they won it last spring. Pinning The Blame is definitely a cinderella in this madness (2L's like us) and will be hard pressed to beat the always tough professor team. Nevertheless, any one of these teams could win it all. I'm personally still looking for my first good week since January, and now would be a great time to get my game back.

Please Bill Browne of Clovis, stop rolling 200 games against us. It really stings :-)

Then it was time for Gibbons, the Seton Hall moot court intramural competition in Newark NJ with Dustin (a 3L) and Brian (a 2L). Now I'll say this once and I'll say it loud and clear so you can understand my position: I was NOT HAPPY to be stuck on this team with a topic I don't care at all for and Brian on my team (hoping for 3L's) as well as having to be away from my wife on her birthday AND missing the Barrister's Ball on her birthday. What a whammy. So that's your background.

I'm also going to put this disclaimer at the top: if you are one of my teammates and you read my blog, I would recommend you stop reading this entry here. I am venting and I'm not going to be pleasant. So take whatever I say with a grain of salt if you must read on, and don't come complaining to me if you don't like what I say in MY PERSONAL BLOG.

Let's start before the competition even began. We probably doomed ourselves with our brief and none of us was too into writing it (Dustin spent 2 days on his part, I spent one long night, and I doubt Brian spent more than a few hours in his "busy schedule" that we all have). Dustin wrote what appears to be a straightforward 4th Amendment part, not going to win any awards but not bad either. My part was OK but I was calling for the Supreme Court to explicitly make a new 8th Amendment test (a bold move in this kind of competition) and our brief was very unique from all the other petitioner briefs thanks to this. But again, not the best written product I could come up with. Brian's part of the brief was a joke. I reformatted all I could and fixed as many typos as possible, but we were like every other team and had a bunch of typos. I don't think that made a difference, but it probably put us at a slight disadvantage since brief scores were half of the prelim round score.

So I get to the airport Thursday and the wife drops me off because she's sweet like that. I got held up at security because some dumbass old white guy needed hand-wanding after failing the metal detector and he was impatient and started screaming at the TSA agent to get him through security. Not a good idea. She screams for a supervisor and I thought they were going to take this guy down as dramatic as this was. But they finally got the line moving and this guy off to the side so the rest of us could get to our gates. This guy ended up on our small plane too, go figure. I do not take elderly white gentlemen with tempers as security threats, so no worries. Dustin just beat me to the gate and Brian showed up right before boarding. Dustin's the kind of guy who wears his suit on the plane so that he only carries a very small suitcase and briefcase. I on the other hand checked a big suitcase and had a backpack because I don't wear anything on the plane I don't want terribly wrinkled and sweat through (planes are a little warm with the close quarters, and yes I turn the air thing on myself the whole flight...one jetstram of air doesn't cut it but it does make it bearable). The school somehow managed to put us all in the same row both directions in a small jet (1 seat on one side, two on the other). I had the loner seat on the way to Newark which was nice because I'm large enough to make it uncomfortable if I have to sit next to a similar person but not uncomfortable if I'm by myself or next to a small person. The descent into Newark was 20 minutes of hell turbulence, and I'm betting more than half the people had their sick bags out whether or not they were using them. I've got the iron stomach but it bothered even me a little after a while. Took a taxi to the Hilton and got all checked in to the rooms. Dustin won the most important lucky battle of the weekend when the school put him in a single room while Brian and I had to put up with each other in a double. There were two big beds though, so that was a big plus. The Hilton was across the street from Seton Hall law and was attached to Newark Penn station, so we did not have to walk more than across the street to get anywhere we wanted to go in Newark.

We decided to walk around though and grab some lunch after we all got settled. Not very much around really but we did find a deli that would do the job. I got a good Italian type sandwich and some surprisingly good buffalo wings while the other gents got sandwiches of some sort and chips. Went back to the hotel where we decided to stay the remainder of the day Thursday. So let the long weekend with Brian begin. I watched some judge shows and ESPN, bought the internet on my computer which we decided to share, and worked on JDR final formatting and planning to schedule my classes for next year all through the afternoon and early evening while Brian took a 3 hour nap. Finally Dustin got hungry so we ordered in some New York style pizza and once it was delivered we decided to eat in Dustin's room and watch the NBA game that was on (Bulls-Pistons). Dustin went to MSU for undergrad and is a big Pistons fan, while Brian is a huge Cavaliers fan and the three teams are fighting closely for the top 2 seeds in the East. I'm a Knicks fan so I was just cynical but they were cheering for different interests. The side salads, garlic bread, and pizza were good but nothing amazing to shout home about. New York style cannot even compare in my opinion to Chicago deep dish anyways. So anyways after talking basketball and our different interests for a while, we somehow got into a discussion of CEO high salaries and labor unions and just generally business in America today. Brian is hard core labor union because his dad is a factory worker at Goodyear in a small town, Dustin is the son of a businessman and small company CEO and is pro business, I am moderate as usual because my family is very blue-collar like Brian but I will be a shareholder someday and will be on the other side. This debate or discussion lasted over 2 hours. I enjoy political or social debate and basically played the role of hard economics (showing why CEO's earning so much is not a huge deal and why labor unions are OK at the same time...shareholders and workers are always in an inevitable struggle over company profits and that will not change. Dustin and Brian just happen to be on opposite sides of the fence. Dustin tried to get to the heart of Brian's argument (which like everything else Brian says...is based completely on conjecture and anecdote instead of actual knowledge or expereince) and at one point Dustin noted that Brian's argument hinged on what their definition of a healthy economy is. Dustin thinks it is money changing hands and commerce and trade at a high level (nobody sitting on their money), while Brian thinks it is a zero unemployment rate. Dustin said that this part of Brian's argument was a lot like communism in that everybody should have a job for a healthy economy. Brian took all kinds of offense because he could not understand what dustin was saying. He bitched about this all weekend and pretty much barely talked to Dustin the reminder of the weekend, only when necessary. "Nobody ever called me a communist before!" Jeez. I heard him talking to his Mom on the phone that night and I'm OK probably just because my grandfather lost his pension to a corrupt factory and my parents are blue collar, but Dustin is just a "privileged never-worked in his life CEO's son." Ugh, if you want to have a for-fun intellectual discussion with Brian about anything but his expertise which is history, don't bother. He will have some biased view and take something you say completely wrong and degrade to personal attacks because he has to be right. He's naive and better than thou in these situations.

Brian self-depreciates A LOT and it really gets irritating. "Oh I am hogging the TV, you take the remote (when I'm clearly not paying attention to the TV and don't care)." "Oh I'm hogging the internet and your computer" (and to be fair he was checking his email for an hour and a half but we were splitting the internet...but don't say that and then keep checking your email for another half hour)." "I shouldn't have spent 3 hours in Dustin's room doing nothing when I haven't even written my argument yet, I just shouldn't have done that." This was getting on my nerves thursday night, but whatever. I talked to Tom on the phone fresh back from his honeymoon and we shared bitching stories to each other (Heather had a minor injury and incident on their way to the Caribbean but she's OK now while I was complaining about this weekend and the Philly trip). And then Kelley of course as well. I just sat out in the hall and avoided the room because I knew Brian would be working on his argument and I did not want to listen to him. I could not answer his questions or help him because I did not know the 4th amendment part of our case very well and that was his argument.

Let me take a sidebar here to complain some more about Brian. When you sign on to be on a moot court team, YOU SACRIFICE A LITTLE FOR THE TEAM. I'm not asking for a lot, but a good faith effort would be nice and we did not get that from him. When we wrote the brief Dustin and I said we will be done on Saturday so Brian could have a weekend to get the rest done and we could review it Monday through Wednesday and send it out because it was due on the Friday. Well Brian kept saying "i don't have time and I'm so busy when I know I'm more busy than him back then." I stayed up ALL NIGHT to meet my deadline so we could stay on schedule and he just put it off until THE DAY BEFORE IT WAS DUE. Then I had to frantically fix what I could because we did not have time for a good review and Brian still had to overnight it to Newark. Maybe our brief was late and that's why we lost, but maybe it wasn't. I e-filed it with the competition director and we had serious issues because Brian had to convert everything to his Wordperfect. SUCK IT UP AND USE MS WORD. You are welcome to use Wordperfect all you want but not when the competition directors tell you they seriously prefer MS Word. Then it's really hard to moot with our coach the week before or moot at all the day before when we had plenty of time to because YOU DON'T HAVE YOUR ARGUMENT PREPARED UNTIL 1 AM THE NIGHT BEFORE THE ACTUAL COMPETITION!!! What the f%^# do you have going on that is so important that you basically sabotage the team by making it impossible for us to ever practice? Honestly...if you are on Brian's team next year get on him early or else you will not be able to practice or fix your brief adequately or anything that is VITAL to succeeding in a moot court competition. Yeah I was not prepared until a week before the competition, but at least I was practicing with Dustin and Professor Berman on our 8th Amendment issue and at least I gave us the opportunity to be prepared as a team. So we went into competition with no idea how Brian would do.

Friday we did not have to rush because competition check in was not until 1:45 and the first round was at 3:15. Got some Subway with Brian then met Dustin and our coach and waited around in Seton Hall forever while every other team showed up and checked in. Nothing at this competition was run very quickly, but oh well. The first round we were against Brooklyn, a couple of tall guys in power suits. Dustin was a little nervous and you could tell but he gave a solid argument overall and dealt with questions well. I then went and I thought I did well (I was the only one of the four who didn't appear flustered or nervous in my opinion and the judges did not say anything to me about that afterwards). The Brooklyn guys both started very strongly and confidently and I originally thought we were getting beat badly. But then the court stopped asking questions to both of them halfway through and both got terribly flustered for the whole second half (not answering the few questions well and not seeming prepared to go into their argument points again). Our coach and the other team thought we blew them away, but the judge comments were a little rough on both teams. The irritating thing was the judges were mis-attributing things that happened to the wrong person (I accidentally "blew through the zero" which means when my time was up I did not ask the court for permission to go on until after they asked their next question, but the judges said Dustin did that...one guy on the other team left 2 minutes on the clock and that was an error attributed by a judge to me). So the judges screwed us a little but still my only real bad comment (other than blowing through the zero) was my demeanor because they did not think I should be smiling. That's how I keep a confident and colloquial tone with the court and I just smile up there. Sorry. We still think we beat Brooklyn regardless.

After another 2 hour wait, it was time for the second and final first round argument against Widener (in Harrisburg PA): Brian and Dustin against two ladies. We blew them away. The first girl got very angry and was practically shouting answers to the judges and both ladies made AWFUL concessions which in real life would have given the case away. The judges were rough this round though as far as questioning and really hit them super-hard though. Brian gave a pretty good argument for not being prepared and I only had 3 complaints. He said I/We a few times but I think everybody was guilty of this from time to time so minor point. He looked down a lot at the beginning but was not reading (clearly he knew what he was saying but just had to look down at his notes to be confident I guess), and this is a big moot no-no. He said he changed his plan when he saw how bad the first girl was but you probably should not stray from whatever plan you have in your first oral argument of the day. The biggest problem with his argument was that with 4 minutes left the court threw him the biggest "softball" (which is moot court lingo for a question that's so easy you just hammer it out of the park and it strengthens your argument) about one of the 2-3 key cases in our argument. Brian kept deflecting the question by going back to his argument instead of directly answering and the court kept asking which made me want to pull my hair out. Nevertheless it was still a pretty decent first argument of the day for him (and I felt like I could not really criticize him because he would self-depreciate so much it would make me sick and he wouldn't get better). Dustin then gave a pretty flawless argument to finish the day. The judges were complementary of both teams (too much so) but gave more credit to Dustin and our team which seemed appropriate considering we slaughtered them in our opinion. Our coach who has done some moot court before thought we were in the top 16 for sure and her husband (also a moot court veteran) agreed, saying our arguments were solid and clearly better than both our opponents.

So Friday night was a banquet at a place called Don Pepe's which was across the street from Seton Hall and the Hilton Hotel. They offered a banquet dinner of seafood dishes and a decent open bar with a DJ playing some music on the tiniest little dance floor (but a couple crazy students got down). Dustin tested the bar's ability to make drinks and I wanted sweet drinks so I drank some Black Russians (yum yum chocolate flavor) while Brian got ONE glass of wine. Remember he is uber-religious and not Lutheran, so this was heavy drinking to him even though we all had 2 full plates of seafood. We were sitting with the team from Wisconsin, so we had a good time talking basketball and Big Ten campuses. As I said, our coaches were guaranteeing we would make it...which of course led me to worry that our brief or something would bring us down. Well finally around 11 they announced the 16 teams moving on to Saturday and surprise...we're not in it. Neither is Brooklyn or Widener. Hmmm. Some of the judges were around and the ones from the second round were more than stunned that we did not make it because they say they watched 3 oral arguments and we were by far the best of the 6 teams they saw. Dustin got perfect scores from them!!! So what happened? Well it was either one of the worst briefs of all time or the judges graded us terribly in the first round. I just don't know and we could not compare to a team that made it since we did not compete against one. Disappointing, but we just said what the heck let's socialize. I actually convinced Brian to loosen up and have a second glass of wine (we would self-depreciate later of course) and go up to a couple of girls sitting off to a side table and talk to them. You don't get good at talking to girls without trying and failing first, so I was happy I got that going. One of the girls even gave him a number (and though it may be fake, it's something more than usual and a start). Dustin and I talked to a couple interesting people from Virginia Law School, a handful of judges, and quite a few students. We ended up hanging out with the Widener ladies and the Virginia guys most of the reminder of the banquet. Bunch of 3L's (Brian and I were two of maybe 4-5 2L's in the room) ready to graduate and get on with their interesting life plans. Nice people though and it was a pleasure.

It was kind of a win-win situation though because we may have gotten the better of the deal not having to wake up for a 9 AM octofinal argument, instead getting an all-expenses paid day to spend in New York City. Brian and I went into the city while Dustin spent all day with his family who lives in Hoboken NJ. I'd never spent any time in NY other than taxi-cabbing through Manhattan on the way to and from our honeymoon cruise, and Brian had never been in New Jersey let alone NY. We'll call Saturday Mr. Smith goes to New York. I was a little nervous because I did not really know what I was doing, but I had a map of Manhattan and the subway system with us and we figured out the NJ train system which got us into Manhattan quickly. We started by going down to battery park and saw the Statue of Liberty from Manhattan (which is far away but oh well). Then we walked up through financial district to Ground Zero which we walked all the way around. It's finally looking like they are done setting a foundation and will be building the Freedom Tower soon (supposed to be done in 4 years). Still it's just creepy with this gigantic hole in the city. Also saw the neat little church right by the site that somehow survived the WTC collapse despite being 250 years old and grabbed some actual NYC pizza (huge pieces of thin crust delight). Hopped the subway back up north to Central Park and spent a couple hours there walking, people watching, and viewing a lot of rollerblading and ice skating. Saw the infamous Trump building as well, and the man has some primo real estate right there at the corner of Central Park. Hiked back out of Central Park in the late afternoon and subway-ed down to Times Square then. Wow that place is ridiculous. I could spend days just shopping at all the good stores in the area, let alone do touristy type things. We went in Virgin Megastore and a couple sports apparel stores. Finally it was about 5:30 and we wanted to track down a sports bar to watch the OSU game. Dave and Busters was not too busy (just like Gameworks for you Columbus people) and we got a table right in front of a couple plasma TV's). Had a nice steak dinner because we had plenty of school compensation per diem to spend and a couple beers. The game was awesome as the Buckeyes always seemed pretty much in control despite Greg ODen hitting the bench with 2 fouls in the first 3 minutes of the game. Big ol Roy Hibbert just isn't that good and for some inexplicable reason Georgetown forgot about Jeff Green. Whatever. Lots of Georgetown people in the bar and they were loud and boisterous so we got little loud and boisterous to give equal time. Rushed back through subway and train to the hotel after our game and made it back in time to see about half of the first half of Florida-UCLA. Then we just crashed in front of the game and eventually went to bed. I turned down the TV when Brian went to bed and he was like "no no don't turn it down I like to hear a little TV in the background." Then 20 minutes later Sportscenter finally came on when I was getting ready to pack and so I upped the volume almost unnoticeably so I could hear over my packing because I had it down so low. "NO NO NO We cannot have that TV loud like that Dave, we're getting up in 6 and a half hours and we cannot sleep with that." WTF? I was making more noise packing anyways than the TV ever was and I made especially sure to make some noise packing the remainder of my stuff before going to bed. You want to be an ass, I can be an ass.

The two things other than the self depreciating which continued all day Saturday while he followed me... ("I really got ripped off on that disposable camera" when he paid 10 or 12 dollars for a camera in a tourist trap city...I thought it wasn't that bad a deal) ("I'm spending so much money I shouldn't on this trip" when he spent 70-80 dollars all day and 50 of that was on food he is getting reimbursed for entirely, the remainder being souvenirs and subway/train fare which could not have cost more than 25-30 dollars).

1. Copious amounts of bitching about NYC. "I would never be able to live here. Everything is overpriced. There's nothing green in this city. I hate putting my hands on anything or touching anyone, especially on the Subway because everything is just so dirty. That subway car smelled like someone died in it. People stand too close to you. Street Peddlers need to get out of your face. I don't understand why anyone would come to Times Square for New Year's or on a business day when it is too overcrowded. Etc. Etc. Etc." All damn day.

2. If the self-depreciation was not bad enough, Brian annoyed the shit out of me even more Saturday and Sunday by doing something that I think indicates he's got something a little off in the brain. I kept saying things that I knew about certain aspects of New York City or kep making observations and then 2-5 minutes later he would say it back to me like he was telling me something I did not already know. The first couple of times this happens I'm like whatever but it happened probably 15-20 times throughout the day Saturday. I'll give you a couple examples. We were watching ice skaters in Central Park and Brian does not know much about Zambonis and hockey (which I follow somewhat). So I told him how an outdoor ice rink stays frozen in the warmer days and that hockey is more interesting in person than on TV. 4 minutes later he says "you know Dave I bet hockey games are a lot more interesting in person" and then parroted back some other things I'd said about hockey. Another example is when we were in Times Square and I was looking for MTV because that's the only building I could not see right away. I told him let's walk up the street here and MTV should be somewhere up there where they tape TRL. We walk up half a block and run right into MTV basically at which point Brain says "Hey there's that MTV building. You know they tape that total request live show there?" One more for posterity: Brian kept bitching about spending money (when we did not spend much at all) and so on and I kept telling him every time he brought it up that all the food was covered so we did not spend that much. Sunday we are standing at the airport waiting on baggage to arrive and he turns to me and says "you know Dave I did not really spend that much because I'll be able to get 50 dollars back from the school for yesterday and subway/train fares and souvenirs were not that much."

I say this delicately because I do not think it is right to make fun of people with legitimate mental conditions (other than the stereotypical things comedians make fun of). I really cannot help but think there's some screw loose when you parrot back facts to me like you are telling me something profound or something you knew already when I'm the only person with you and I told you said facts a few minutes ago. I don't know what it is but it just does not seem right. If something truly is wrong I cannot say anything to him because he would probably think I was attacking him and nothing would come of it. I don't really care too much but man did it irritate the everloving shit out of me Saturday.

So now we come to Sunday, and Brian messed up the clock in the room somehow (it kept time just fine the previous 2 nights) and it was an hour early and so woke us up at 6:25 AM. So we go back to sleep because we have until 8 (or since Brian has to pack he was getting up earlier than 8). Around 8 my phone alarm goes off and I get up and turn the TV on loudly. Brian is not moving. So I yell at him to get up if we want to make the 8:30 shuttle and he gets going (grumpily) and somehow gets everything packed up frantically. He ends up forgetting a binder with competition info in it which he complains about Sunday despite only losing a $1 binder and a Hilton Hotels pen he wanted to keep. So whatever, should have packed carefully the night before. In the shuttle ride to the airport we get to talking about basketball a little bit and then career services...and then Brian just snaps. "Why do you two always have to be so disagreeable...I'm so sick of listening to you two put me down and disagree with everything that comes out of my mouth for 4 days." WHAT THE F%$#?!?!? The only disagreements I had with him were when Dustin and him had a big falling out over the stupid Thursday night labor/CEO chat (I took the common sense economics view that CEO's giving up a 10 million dollar salary is irrelevant to workers because if distributed to workers it would only net about $1000 a year (a dinky raise) for each worker. He just lumped me in with Dustin and snapped. The most recent disagreement (and the only other big one) was over career services because Dustin thinks OSU career services can help people sometimes because they did help him and he transferred from Capital where career services is even worse. Brian was randomly bitching about how OSU must hate their students because only 3 firms come to OSU for on campus interviewing in the spring and he had to do his job searching all by himself etc. I said I'm not happy the one callback out of 8 that I got an offer from was OCI instead of Loyola Patent Law Program (because I feel like it gives me a lot less right to complain about what I consider to be an inadequate career services office, especially with respect to IP people). So how exactly am I disagreeing with him? Because I don't think spring OCI matters because all these firms have all their people and they only want the top people anyways? Whatever.

So at the airport Brian bitches about another minor delay (handicapped person this time) when we got to the front of the security checkpoint line, then we got into the terminal with over an hour to spare. Brian kept saying "this airport better have some good places to eat, some real warm breakfast food." So we meet up with Dustin and Brian says this again, but Dustin points out that there was a grill place right beside our gate and nothing else in our small leg of the terminal. THEY HAD BREAKFAST SANDWICHES AND HASH BROWNS AND ORANGE JUICE etc at this cafe, although they were also starting to prep lunch Dustin said (Cheesesteaks and fries). Brian said "I don't want any damn cheesesteak" and storms off to another leg of the terminal. OK whatever, I went and got a Ceasar salad and some fries for myself and sat with Dustin chatting up the basketball some more and the competition and what we each did with our free day Saturday. So Brian comes back like a half hour later with a McDonald's bag and cup. As he's walking up I say "hey you found civilization" jokingly and Dustin says "what did you get from McD's?" Brian snaps back "a Big Mac, obviously because everyone gets those with ORANGE JUICE!" At this point I was so sick of them that I just mouthed off that "yeah of course we get Big Macs with OJ" and Dustin backed off, saying "man I cannot see through the bag and I did not see you had OJ." He ate his egg mcmuffin and hash browns and then stormed off again. Could've got what was probably a better version of the same thing 30 seconds away but whatever. I seriously considered going to the ticket counter and make them give me the $300 travel voucher to fly later in the day because they overbooked and this was their offer. As it turns out I really should have because I knew Brian and I were sitting next to each other.

On the plane Dustin and I just sat with Brian between us and we both put in headphones and listened to our MP3's. What made it so unbearable was that we sat in the plane seats for 40 minutes because the plane had engine trouble and they had to check it out before we left while we were trapped in our tiny plane. So it became an indetemrinably long 2.5 hours in that seat next to Brian. Then when the plane finally got to gate in Columbus Brian does that asshole thing where he jumps up out of the seat and rushes past 4-5 rows of people to get off the plane faster. Whatever. Dustin and I waited our turn and then he had to wait for his small bag planeside so I said my goodbyes to him there (it was easier without Brian anyways) and then went to baggage claim. Brian was giving me a ride home and so I don't know why he decided to rush to baggage claim without me but whatever. So we get to his car and we go to my place, which seemed to take forever because he bitched me out some more for being disagreeable. We made nice (which means I apologized for whatever offended him and then he bitched some more) and finally we got to my place. I thanked him for the ride, went inside my apartment, and screamed in frustration. How can someone be so narrow-minded and backwards yet claims to be offended because you disagree with him when he is wrong. I don't go out of my way to be mean and I have lots of friends at law school (he may be the only person who truly dislikes me nad it is just inexplicable because even if I don't see eye to eye with someone I am so easy going and laid back it usually does not matter). I just cannot explain it.

I'm so happy that we cannot be on the same team next year. Good riddance sir. you were a terrible teammate and a pretty terrible person all weekend and yet I was just going to let it go and not say much in my blog. But you snap at me like a psycho and I'm going to vent. That's how it goes.

So apparently moot court preference forms for next year's teams went out late last week I hear and I also hear the IP team got nixed. I'm going to fight my ass off to get it back because I'm certain there are many other competitions that do not have 2 people first picking it over national team and ABA (the prestigious teams). IP does. The coach Professor Lee wants to coach the team again and we want to do it, so I'm fighting for it. But even if that does not work out, next year will be SO MUCH BETTER than this year. An all expenses paid trip to spend 4 straight days and 3 nights in a hotel room with Brian...hoo-ray thanks for the kick in the nuts Moritz. It's my fault for giving the worst oral argument of my life selection round night in January, and I cannot believe I still made a team...but oh well. I've got a new friend in Dustin for sure.

Scheduling is this week. I've got contingencies and all that and guarantee I will have no Thursday and Friday classes all of next year. This should give me plenty of time to study for and pass the patent bar and the PMBR (professional responsibility exam we all have to pass) as well as follow my extracurricular pursuits such as bowling, JDR executive editor, and moot court. I love law school schedules...

Well I guess that was another book-length entry, but I needed to vent and you probably enjoy when I do. so have a good week and we'll see you sometime soon!

Spring Break

2007-03-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

Well the week after Selection Sunday was terribly busy. Let's get a recap!

Early in the week I pored over brackets and lounged around...NOT! As usual I made my first impression picks before I heard all the pundits talking for 3 days about the bracket and those picks are up on southerncollegesports.com. (Of course that bracket is doing far better than the 2 I pored over Wednesday night, proves impulse better than over-thinking things). Also as expected, Kelley is doing far better than any of my brackets, and if the "chalk" keeps winning for her then she has a big shot at winning big money in the law school pool. More on that later.

I finished up a couple last final reads for Issue 3, and I think the JDR year is about over. I also had the joy of getting car insurance...yay! But now we are covered for anothe 3 or 6 months...and it is much cheaper for me than insuring myself without Kelley. Also in the mail this week was an official state notice requiring me to prove I had insurance on March 12. My insurance changed companies six months from my birthday on 3/15. If I do not send them a copy of my old Progressive insurance card (now with Nationwide), my license or my truck registration gets suspended. Now I'm not one to throw away paperwork, so all I have to do is go to Kinko's and make a copy. But still, is this "random verification" process necessary when people get busted all the time for no insurance when they are pulled over? More needless paperwork and a waste of my time. Thanks to you Ohio, thanks to you.

We are currently 2 weeks behind on Lost (which we will be able to catch online as usual) and we missed this week's 24 for the first time ever. I hope to find it online somewhere as I do not want to read the summary alone. I have to see if Charles Logan died in person damnit! What a beautiful episode 2 weeks ago, even if they brought back the AWFUL Logan family background noise from Season 5...it sounds like a violin screeching quietly in the background, makes me want to scream. I really think this season is finally looking up, but last week's episode might have been a stinker. Anyone know where I can find 24? Lost on the other hand may be good or may be terrible. At least the storyline is going somewhere with Kate, Locke, and Sayid tromping through the woods to get Jack back. We shall see.

The end of last week was strange, as I guess I was not really done with the semester rush until spring break. I worked endlessly and late nights all that week on my JDR Note final draft and grading final ME exams. I got all the work done around 5 PM Friday and sent grades in and dropped off the JDR Note (8 copies of 36 page paper equals way too much money printing the stupid paper). I actually think I have a decent chance to get published because my footnotes are much better than most on journal (I'm guessing but final reads make you a little good at FN'ing) and I have a great topic. It is recent, it is relevant, and JDR has shown a tendency to publish articles on patent law in the past. No big deal if it is not, but after all that effort it would be nice. Guess we'll see in 3 weeks at the JDR banquet. Exams were blah as usual, but it's money.

One final note before spring break began. The March Madness of law school bowling had its Sweet 16 last week, and here's how it all played out:
(1) Pin Pals LOST TO (16) Bring Clovis Back [Bill Browne's team, 5-1 against us this season]
(2) Enlightening Strikes [professors] DEF. (15) The Kittens [Brandon Middleton et al]
(3) She Said She Was 18 [Spangler's team] LOST TO (14) Pinning the Blame [Will Collins, Derek Heyman, etc]
(4) MFR Minus Judas [US!] DEF (13) Alley Cats [Krystle Myers and 3L girls]
(5) Penal Servitude [Bart, Avonte, Christie] DEF (12) Team 13
(6) Split Happens LOST TO (11) Jim and the Holograms
(7) Bubb Rubb Law LOST TO (10) Elvis Lives
(8) Motion to Strike LOST TO (9) Imwinklereids [Larry Lanham et al]

This leaves us with an interesting mix of teams. The (2) seed is the professors, always a strong bet. Our division has three teams left after losing Spangler's team to random upset as is the norm in law school bowling playoffs. The champions of the league since we joined law school have been:
1. 1L autumn: Life in the Slow Lane - Shariq, Rich, etc. from our 1L class (2008).
2. 1L spring: Bring Clovis Back - Bill Browne from the 2007 class.
3. 2L autumn: She Said She Was 18 - Phil Spangler's team from class of 2008.
So our class seems pretty dominant in bowling and we again have quite a few contenders to keep the crown. The class of 2008 will make it 3 for 4 if any of the following teams win: MFR Minus Judas, Penal Servitude, Imwinkelreids, Pinning The Blame. That's half the teams left. I like our chances.

We personally bowled a good game and a mediocre game, but we won both games by about 30. Daniel carried us with a 110 game one, so props to him for carrying us to the Elite 8. The bowling playoffs are usually re-seeded every round, so we should be playing against (14) Pinning the Blame, Derek and Will Collins' team. If they keep the original bracket then we will bowl against (5) Penal Servitude, Bart/Avonte/Christie's team. I'm hoping for the former as I do not think Will and Derek will have another amazing week (they needed it to knock out Spangler's team last week). At least if we bowl against our division rival, Bart's average is up to 175 now which is his realistic average...the first time we played them he had a 140 average. Always tough to play the good teams, so looking to avoid the professors and Penal Servitude as long as possible.

We always lose in the Elite 8 though, so maybe all this jibber-jabber is irrelevant. I still think the class of 2008 is taking aboth title though. We dominate bowling.

Finally, spring break arrives and I have nothing law school related to do! Hoo-ray! But still absurdly busy until today. Friday night was Tom and Heather's wedding rehersal. Heather refused to walk down the aisle or take part in the rehersal because he aunt told her it was bad luck, so Tom was saying his vows to Craig's girlfriend instead (Craig is Heather's brother). Very weird and her aunt must be psycho because nobody at the rehersal including the pastor had ever heard of such a thing. IT'S A DAMN REHERSAL...which by definition means YOU GET UP THERE AND WALK THROUGH IT. What a farce. Kelley and I were running 5 minutes late due to traffic because they started at 6 PM across town, and Tom called 4 times during the 20 minute trip to find out where we were. Jeez, LOL! We got through the rehersal and dinner was at Don Pablo's. Kelley and I had never been there before and it's pretty good Mexican eats. Any time you get a fully paid meal (margaritas and all) from someone else it's a good time. My only complaint was at the beginning. We were the first carload there and the hostess directs us into the party room where we are having the rehersal dinner. Everything is set up so we get ready to sit down and a couple of servers come in and shoo us out of the room because "it's not ready yet." So everyone else shows up and we are all jammed into the waiting area for 15 minutes...and for what you ask? To put salsa and chips on the table. That's it. It took them 15 minutes to do that one thing because everything else was set to go. Why in the world it was so important to shoo us into a cramped waiting room for 15 minutes to do something all other mexican restaurants do after you get to the table....it just baffles me.

Friday night the groomsmen staying at my place played Castle Risk and watched NCAA basketball. I was knocked out by Shep in an interesting gambit and then inexplicably Chris Owen handed Tom the game by suicide attacking Shep down right before Tom's turn so that Tom could take them both out easily. Craziness. The next morning each of them showered and got ready before we all headed out to the Mariott where the whole thing was held. We got into our tuxedos while I listened to the OSU-Xavier game on my personal radio (we had no TV and the closest one was in the hotel bar). OSU was doing terrible and I kept giving the guys updates. They finally call us for pictures right in the last 3-4 minutes of the OSU game, which was irritating because that's when the OSU comeback happened. I had the earbud in right up until I had to take it out to take pictures (which by the way happened while Xavier was at the free throw line trying to ice the game after Oden's hard foul with 10 seconds left). I just presumed we were done but I put the earbud back into my ear just in time to hear the call of the ridiculous 3 to send it to overtime after Xavier choked on the free throw. The pictures wrapped up and all the guys went to the bar to watch overtime (which OSU dominated). Then it was back into wedding mode as it was about half an hour to showtime. No big surprises in the wedding and reception, except that now that I've met Allison (Heather and Craig's sister who was maid of honor and is pregnant w/o boyfriend)...she is such a trip :-) Their families are pretty redneck, so some relative showed up in a Hoodie and jeans and apparently this was dressed up to him. Whatever. I just like Tom did not give the best toast ever and was surprisingly a little nervous because the DJ decided to do the toast RIGHT AFTER WE SAT DOWN after coming in the room for the reception. So much for thinking it over a little bit. Oh well. The DJ was the worst wedding DJ I've ever met, and the photographer was a joke. Thankfully Kelley wore multiple hats during the day to save the day: photographer (I'm guessing she gets more good shots than the photographer), musician (played piano for ceremony), seamstress (Chris's tux had pants legs about 4 inches different from each other and she fixed that last minute), and Dr. Phil (she talked to Connie who was about the dump Chris and his stuff on the street and apparently saved their relationship somehow). Amazing work Kelley, amazing work. I hope they have a LONG RELAXING honeymoon because they need it.

Kelley hosted two of her piano lesson families for a recital at our apartment Sunday afternoon. Busy times preparing for and cleaning afterwards (as well as entertaining the three young boys by playing Wii Sports with them while the "adults" chatted upstairs). So we finally get on the road to Philadelphia at 8:30, 2 and a half hours later than plan. I only made it to about 1 AM and somewhere in Pennsylvania before I had to give up the wheel to Sarah. A few uncomfortable hours of sleep/non-sleep later, we arrive in Philly. Monday we packed up a lot of the smaller stuff in her 1 bedroom apartment and went out to IKEA and an Irish Pub for dinner. IKEA is a great store, we need one in C-bus. We had set the TV to tape 24, but the odd daylight savings time switch wrecked that plan and we missed it as said above. Sadness! Tuesday we picked up the Uhaul downtown, had to drive to another Uhaul place to pick up a dolly we did not want or need, and then back to the apartment. We loaded the major furniture and got all that done by around 3. We then went downtown to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Nice to see these things live and the place where the US Supreme Court first began doing "justice" 200 years ago. We then grabbed a Cheesesteak from Jim's (famous place in Philly) and it wasn't bad with a good Cheese Whiz instead of crappy swiss/provolone. We for some unthinkable reason walked all the way back to Sarah's apartment, stopping in the middle of the University of Penn and Drexel U area to get Auntie Anne's pretzels. Based on city blocks, I think we walked 5 miles. So Sore! Wednesday we woek up early, got the Uhaul packed up the rest of the way, and finally hit the road around 3. We stopped for gas at the last exit before the Penn turnpike and decided to eat in the biggest mall I've seen since the Mall of America (this is the King of Prussia mall). We had to walk to the other end of the mall which does not sound like much but it was like a mile from one end to the other. We could've went to the Lone Star steakhouse outside the mall and wasted less time. But oh well. So we get on the road again around 6 and do not get into Columbus till around 1 AM. I was pretty beat after driving the Uhaul and 3 days of moving/walking long distances. Kelley gets rewarded with 3 full days of work Thursday-Saturday, so I helped Sarah unload the Uhaul and get all the major furniture where it is going in the apartment. We really are stretching to fit a third person in, but it's a good thing financially. I just hate moving (who doesn't) but at least it gave me something to do for 4 days of spring break not-law related.

Met with the moot court team last night. We will probably do OK, but I'm not too confident. Hoping that if we make Saturday's playoffs (16 teams out of 32), we lose early enough to wander into a sports bar somewhere in time to see the OSU game, that is if they make the Final 4. You have to wonder after winning 2 games in a row we had no business winning (Xavier in OT after being down by 9 with 4 minutes left, Tennessee last night after bring down by 20 at halftime). Of course our Elite 8 opponent also was lucky to win last night against the "home" team Texas A&M in San Antonio. I'm happy we don't have to play the Aggies, but Memphis is pretty much exactly like OSU with a little less talent (both 33-3, both of us on 20+ game winning streaks). Saturday at 4:40 PM should be interesting!

If we do not make Saturday playoffs next week in NYC at all, I think we are going to Ground Zero and maybe something else in the city. I just want to see OSU play in the Final 4 if at all possible, as that does not happen very often.

So a short week this week as we leave Thursday for Seton Hall U and the competition. We'll see if I manage to update sometime before then. If not, have a good week and GO BUCKS!

Happy Selection Sunday!

2007-03-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

Well I promised some of my 3 readers that I would blog last Wednesday to catch up, but sigh...having time to dick off was just too much to resist. But now that I'm back to doing some work, I now have time to blog :-)

I'll get to basketball in a minute, but let's cover the important changes from February and early March. School was so damn busy, between JDR note draft #2; doing final reads (training myself for Executive Editor next year); regular class loads; two seminar papers and a presentation on one of them; our first Evidence paper; Moot Court Brief; Tom's bachelor party; taxes and financial aid BS; and of course the fun activity of pushing my truck out during snowstorms! Literally four weeks of craziness, hell even Valentine's Day was in that mess (but that seems so long ago now).

Well let's cover it all in quick style: classes have been good, although I really pay little attention in Evidence right now. Simmons is entertaining but reading his slides after class is just as effective as Oesterle's class. Oesterle has been ripping them up the past few weeks and one memorable moment that stand sout more than the others was him slamming PILF the day before their big Auction. He refuses to go to the PILF auction and support that organization because PILF funds scholarships for public interest student workers, and almost invariably one or two of these people every summer works for the ACLU. Oesterle is opposed in every way to the ACLU and avoids association with them at all costs, so I give him credit for sticking to his guns. It pisses the PILF people off though because they cannot handle one dissenter, bunch of damn liberals. Anyways I have many good friends running PILF this year and they broke serious records at the auction this year, raising over $50,000 (last year was around $30,000 and their goal was a lofty 40K...but they blew thatr away). Good for them. State Con Law is good when we meet (snow on two straight Tuesdays has us playing catch up) and I've done my two papers for that class as of this week. I'll find out how I did on the second paper this week and I should have a good read on how I did in the class then. Got a 94 on the first one, so I'm pretty confident even though my second topic and paper were not quite as good as the first in my opinion. Also got a 10 out of 10 on our first evidence paper, which proves that patent law goes a long way in law school (any time I write about it in a non-patent law context I seem to do well). Maybe that trend will hold for JDR publishing. I don't really care about it as I have what I need out of journal (executive editor position), but it would be sweet to be published on top of all that...and it would make all that work on the Note worth the time. Speaking of, that is this week's big challenge. Final Notes are due Friday morning. Between that, grading Mech E. final exams, and "Bracketology" I'll be plenty busy this week going into spring break.

Taxes and FAFSA and Financial Aid in 2 nights was a blast. An absolute blast. But it was well-worth it to get the $2000+ refunds from the feds and state. Finally will have a little nest egg or rainy-day fund again, which makes me infinitely happy. I cannot wait not just for this summer but after school when we can start paying bills with non-loan money. Ugh to law school finances. But this was a momentous year for two reasons. 1. This is the last of 7 FAFSA's I have to file, and I'll probably miss the March 1 rush next year. 2. I did our taxes by myself instead of taking them to a professional, and it's not too bad...but then again I did do pretty well last semester in personal Federal Income Tax class. Enough money...just hope to make the ends meet for another handful of months.

JDR stuff has been in the background until this week. I've gotten incredibly quick at final reads and would be ridiculously fast at acc-checks now. Good thing too, as that's my primary job next year. The Note will be picked up one final time, as it has been ignored largely since the second draft went in. The patent law reform symposium a couple weeks back gave me a lot more ammunition for the paper, and hopefully will put it over the 35 page minimum. I hate page minimums on things like this, as they serve no purpose other than academic credit requirements (and do we seriously need 35 pages to get one ungraded credit?)

Moving to more recent things, Tom's bachelor party was last weekend. There are some days (like New Year's Eve with the pickup from the airport and Wii-mote thing) when he can be so self-centered and other days when he's the guy you'd want beside you at war. He's been so busy at work because they of course dislike the time he has to take off for wedding stuff, and it was nice to see him relax. After a last minute audible from my place to Dan's place (which originally had me pissed because Tom would not talk to me and was changing things 3 days before the party), everything went smoothly surpirsingly. Highlights: The Lube Tube is 3.5 L of beer and Tom and I can indeed drink one with enough Wings to soak it up, who waits two hours to go bowling honestly, and wow am I happy we audibled to Dan's. It allowed Tom to have his kind of last dance (he was a college partier whereas I was not), so we could do beer pong or vodka pong and heavy drinking in the campus area. The real reason I'm happy we audibled: Chris Owen cannot hold his liquor. So we took care of him the remainder of the evening, but it was fun before all that. Villa and Burton proved it's not quite a bachelor's world every time by busting Tom out of poker first and me third...then it was easy for them to pick off the rest of the field inculding Shep, the only other respectable player at the table. Overall a very good time, and my only minor complaint was having to take all the beer home that Tom did not drink. I'll enjoy the beer, but it will take FOREVER for me to get through it. Maybe I should host another poker party...I've got people at law school bugging me to before we get busy with finals, so perhaps.

Moot Court brief was this week, even though it shouldn't have been. I stayed up most of the night the night before Tom's bachelor party getting my part done so Brian had a week to put it together and do his part (Dustin also stayed up most of that night doing his half of the argument so I wasn't alone). Brian apparently is the busiest person ever which I do not believe because law school keeps you busy but careful planning does wonders for your time. Anyways, he did not get his few pages done until the day before it was due in NJ. Then I had to fix all the formatting, and in wordperfect no less because apparently he's too good for MS Word. Whatever. He overnight Fedex-ed it to NJ on Thursday so hopefully it made it on time so we do not lose major points. We'll practice a handful of times in the latter half of spring break and the week of the competition, then it's off to NJ! Should be a good time, even though I'm still pissed about it coming at the expense of spending Kelley's b-day with her at the Barrister's Ball. Oh well.

That brings us up to now, and there is one more thing to cover before NCAA. We now have a roommate, Kelley's maid of honor Sarah has moved in. She went to college in Boston and wanted to settle in Columbus but jobs forced her to Philadelphia instead. That job went sour 2 weeks ago though so she is moving in with us and getting a job in Columbus. This also gives Kelley someone to stay with during the summer when I'm in Cincy and Chip a new friend. Well friend if they ever get along (the cat has established his dominance over scardy-dog already). It'll be a little crowded but I'm happy to have some help with the bills temporarily.

So now at long last we are caught up. And today is Selection Sunday. I cannot help but give a little insight from all the basketball I watched this season.

1. Women's basketball: You know your sport is in trouble when the most exciting story is a split between the Tennessee coaches doing stupid things at each other's games (Bruce Pearl the men's coach painted hairy chest and all pulled a frat boy at a women's game, then Pat Summit topped that by topping a cheerleader pyramid at a men's game), or the LSU coach (90-14 in three seasons) being forced to resign after the school finds out about an "inappropriate" relationship with a former player. For those that cannot read between the lines, yes that means lesbian sex. So that's all in women's basketball. My big insight: don't pick the Buckeyes to go far as injuries have decimated us. We barely got by Penn State in the tournament and got HAMMERED by Purdue.

2. Big Conference Tournaments: I've taken in my fair share of these this week and now I'm watching the final four games of the season today. The Pac-10 tournament finished yesterday afternoon with 4-seed Oregon slamming 3-seed USC like a rag doll. Oregon looks impressive, but what do we make of the top 3 teams of this overrated league? UCLA just drops random games and does not look like the best team in the country (but who does?), everyone seems so high on Washington State but what exactly have they done recently, and USC is just not that talented. You want a sleeper out of the Pac-10? Oregon or Arizona.

The Big East also finished up last night with Georgetown crushing Pittsburgh. Both teams played epic semifinals against Notre Dame and Louisville, and it is nice to see a conference tournament go to form. Unfortunately it appears with all the upsets in minor conference tournaments that WVU is definitely out, but no Pittsnogle means no tournament victories even if they made it. The Big East is hands-down the most impressive league, but that happens when you have 16 teams. Syracuse is going to be a popular sleeper in this league, but I'm liking how Louisville and Notre Dame finished. Also Georgetown like last year is a beast to face. They are one of the 2 teams I do not want the Buckeyes to face at all this year (Florida is the other). Note that in last year's tournament, Ohio State lost to Georgetown in the second round who lost to Florida in the Sweet 16. What a ridiculously powerful bracket last year, and could be a final four bracket this year. Pick Georgetown. Be successful. Go with the legacy: John Thompson III, Patrick Ewing Jr., another 7'2" dominant center. I really hope the buckeyes could play this team for a title...it would be such a good matchup.

Today's got four major conference finals. The ACC has a cinderella story, as NC State the 10 seed has run the gauntlet of Duke (yes a 7-seed Duke, don't pick them in the tournament), the 2-seed Virginia Tech, and the 3-seed Virginia. Now they get UNC, the 1 seed in the final. I'm guessing UNC still wants that one seed in the East and will play tough against a tired Wolfpack team. No real surprises out of this conference, as everyone's so mediocre. UNC could go far, but after that who knows. I guess if I have to pick a sleeper I'll take Maryland, who uncerimoniously got dumped in the first round somehow.

The SEC has been the haves and the have-nots by division this season, with 5 possible bids for east teams (Florida, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, and maybe Georgia) and none for the West. But the west has made a statement in the tournament, putting three of the four teams in the semifinals. There's an outside shot one of these teams (Arkansas, Miss St, Ole Miss, LSU) would get an at-large, but I think Arkansas has to win if any teams are to go in today. Unfortunately The Gators have regained championship form and look sharp again. Funny how Florida holds national titles in football and basketball and they are facing Arkansas just like in the football SEC title game. Arkansas = Gator Bait. Sleeper from this conference is definitely Vanderbilt. Kentucky is underrated as well but they are so inconsistent and young. Go with Vandy, black and gold is in style.

The Big XII is a joke. Thankfully no terrible teams such as OK State are in the final, and Kansas vs. Texas is a great final. Kansas has been very good recently and may actually represent the conference well (they always underachieve though, so don't put them in the final four). Texas has Kevin Durant who just can go off and win games by himself. Texas A&M is a quality team, but I hope they are in OSU's bracket as they are nothing special after you stop Acie Law III. If the conference gets in both Texas Tech AND Kansas State that is a joke. This conference should be lucky to get four bids the way they played. Sleeper: I guess Texas Tech as they are the only under the radar team, but I just don't feel good about any team from the Big Roman Numerals this season.

And finally my passion. The Big Ten has actually went to form in the tournament (how rare) and there has only been one upset all tournament (Illinois over Indiana in overtime). OSU and Wisconsin play round three today and I am so pumped about that because the first two have been classics. The way Oden and Conley are playing, I want OSU to send a definitive message to the country that they are for real by beating the Badgers again today more convincingly than a last second shot one-point win at home. I will be super irked if Wisconsin wins and OSU drops to a 2-seed because OSU is CLEARLY one of the top 4 teams in the country either way. I don't know how you can put Wisconsin up to a 1 even with a win today because without injured Brian Butch they are not the same dominant team. They are good, but not a one-seed. The Big Ten has interest at the top (OSU and Wisconsin fighting for the most open 1-seeds in the tournament perhaps forever with UNC, Florida, UCLA, Kansas, and to a lesser extent Georgetown), quality locks in the middle (Michigan State and Indiana), and a couple of teams sweating on the bubble today (Purdue and Illinois). Illinois is just not good this year, so if they get in over Purdue I will flip a gasket. Purdue is playing so well right now and would be a nice sleeper pick in the tournament assuming they make it. Makes for a very entertaining 3 hours today with the OSU-WISC game followed by the selection show. Go Bucks!

So now it's time to fill out the brackets. I'll probably report in with some analysis once I see the brackets and ge tto think about them a while.

One more thing before I forget: bowling finally moves into the playoffs this week, the Sweet 16 of our March Madness this Wednesday. Our team has made the Elite 8 twice but lost both times and did not make the playoffs (17th place) once, so hopefully things go well. We split our division crown with Spangler's team just like last semester at 17-7. They beat the 1L team we lost to in the Quarters on their way to winning the whole thing last semester. Also qualifying from our division are Bill Browne's team (who gave us 5 of our 7 losses) and Bart's team (best bowler in the league hands down). Happy to have a chance in the random thing known as our law school bowling playoffs.

Until later in the week (hopefully), good luck filling out those brackets that will inevitably be busted by Middle (Insert random state name) State Vocational College. No George Mason which is disappointing because people always repeat pick cinderellas and that never happens. Too bad, we'll have to gain points elsewhere. Doesn't matter as my wife will inevitably have a better bracket than me. And she'll be beat by the chick who picks by color. Or Dominick Brook, who won last year's law school pool after somehow picking Florida and UCLA in the final despite knowing nothing about basketball. How infintely frustrating and beautiful. Won't you "bracketology" with me?

Have a great week.

Already Week 5?

2007-02-05T16:17:00.000-08:00

Wow...before you know it I will actually have to think about finals or something. And then the summer. But it's hard to think about the summer when it hurts to walk outside. Nice arctic weather we are having, and even I must complain. We've got to get back into the 20's during the day. On the bright side, I did not see any beggers on high street today. If you are out in this weather you deserve money.

Oesterle's class today was great to kick off the week of classes. He described why the double-tax system the US imposes on corporations and their investors is just plain nuts. After taking tax myself, I have to say he is correct. If you want to tax the wealthy it would be much simpler to just do it directly on personal income taxes with obsenely high marginal rates for the top income brackets. He then opened the floor for people to challenge him and defend the US system. The kid who always asks a question said with our budgetary concerns we shouldn't be dropping taxes and Oesterle deflected this easily. Then some "tree-hugging, dolphin-loving, Oesterle-hating" liberal student asks if this all means he is against the progressive income tax system entirely, which is a not-so-nice barbed question trying to make Oesterle out as a crazy conservative. Well I was surprised with the tact of Oesterle's answer, but this was definitely a highlight. He left us as usual with a moral of life...

If you can sum up a political argument on a placard or sign (cutting taxes on the rich is wrong) and the other side (Oesterle in the double tax scenario) has to spend 3 paragraphs explaning why the other side is wrong, the sign always wins. Plain and simple.

Bowling last week went very well, as we were in a three way tie for first in the division at 6-3 and had both of those teams on our schedule for the next 2 weeks. We dispatched the first team (Bart's team, or Avonte's team, or Jen's team depending on your point of view) by 11 the first game and 10 the second. Christie did not show up, and that penalizes you 10 pins a game. Could've made a big difference, so thank you Ms. Bolsen :-)

The other team tied with us went 2-1 last week, so the standings in our eight team division should have us at 9-3, our opponents this week at 8-4, Judas's (Abbie's) team at 7-5, and everyone else at 6-6 or worse. If we manage to 3-0 or 2-1 this week, I think the division lead will be insurmountable and we'll be a lock for the playoffs for the third time out of four. Now of course we'll probably lose in the playoffs, but at least we keep making it somehow. I'm bowling terrible during our win streak also, dropped AVG all the way to 135. Yuck. At least I will carry the team if I turn it around soon. I'm pretty sure I figured out the problem Friday night bowling for fun with Kelley. I was really heaving the strike ball down the lanes and it finally caught up to me as I grew very inconsistent. I figured out that I should be rolling the strike ball slowly in order to be consistent and get my spin to grip a little bit more, but I should keep throwing the spare ball with a lot of force to keep it on-line. We'll see if this works out.

School appears to be firing up this week. We get the topic for Crim Pro Moot Court this week, and then that will be hanging around until the end of March. Writing both of my seminar papers in the next month or so, finishing my note, and classes heating up as well. Fun times. Speaking of school, I think I will know Wednesday or perhaps even tomorrow night what position I have received on the JDR board for next year. If it's notable, I'll blog.

Stay warm Columbus. Or at least stay classy.

Global Warming

2007-01-31T13:21:00.000-08:00

Global Warming is the biggest sham in scientific history. That being said (and nuclear power should also be the power of the future if we care about the environment...creating a solar panel makes far more waste than running a nuclear plant for years), U Weekly ran a nice article on global warming today that made me laugh. So here you go.
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People sure can be an ungrateful, snotty bunch of crybabies. Mother Nature opened her loving arms and offered us a reprieve from the bitterly frigid temperatures that normally drape Ohio in the winter, and the best people could do was complain about global warming. Thanks to whiny, tree-hugging, dolphin-f*ucking liberals, Mother Nature recanted her gift and brought back the nut-freezing climate that us Ohioans were just starting to forget. Piss on Al Gore and his herd of hippy followers. Christ, can’t you people ever be happy?
It was a beautifully mild day in early January. The temperature was 57 degrees. I had just gotten home from a brisk run when I flicked on the television. CNN ran a story about the unseasonably mild weather and had a bunch of nerdy (probably virgin) scientists insisting that global warming was going to be the end of the world. They were talking some crap about glaciers melting, sea levels rising, animals being killed off and ecosystems being ruined. I call bulls**t.
Ever since, news reports can’t shut their mouths about the dangers of global warming. Most of these “scientists” seemed to think that the greenhouse gases that us humans have emitted over the last 50 years has somehow caused the temperature of the world to rise a few measly degrees. What a bunch of dicks.
I’m no genius. I don’t hold a doctorate, master’s, or even a bachelor’s. But I do have a Ph.D is common-f**king-sense. Allow me to explain.
The earth is old. Real old. Around 4.5 billion years to be exact. The earth is also huge – I won’t bother you with the details of just how big it is, but you get the idea. Aside from being really old and really big, the earth is also one of the most complex and ridiculously complicated systems known to man. Leave it to us humans to think that we can destroy something that has survived for 4.5 billion years and sustained meaningful life for the better part of 230 million years in just 50 years. People (especially Americans) have a terrible habit of over stating their importance to, well, everything.
Let’s try an exercise in analogy; it’ll go a long way to discredit the entire scientific community regarding global warming. I may win the Nobel Prize in scientific achievement for this:
If the earth is 4.5 billion years old than that means that 50 years is around .00000001% of the current age of the earth. If the Earth were a 18 year-old adult, that would equate (by my calculations, which are very likely wrong) to just a few seconds - or, about the time it takes to fart.
In my day I have let rip some of the most heinous, insidious, foul and otherwise un-Godly farts that anyone could possibly fathom. I have filled my bowels with countless gallons of beer and Jack Daniels, I have made hundreds of trips to Taco Bell at 3am and I have eaten enough junk food to single handedly keep Hostess in business. But I have never ripped a fart so bad that I simply stop functioning and died. Not yet, anyway.
You see, global warming is like a fart. It isn’t very pleasant, it’s very uncomfortable for the people around you and everyone will be looking to blame someone - but it isn’t that bad. And eventually, with time, you won’t think anything of it...until the next one. And unfortunately there are always people that want to make a bigger deal out of it than it is.
To be sure, the temperature is rising. But since scientists can, as of yet, only find correlation and not causation, I think its safe to assume that any rise in temperature is likely caused by events that took place long before most of us were even here. Changing the landscape of the most complicated physical system known to man probably takes longer than what amounts to a few seconds.
So maybe if Al Gore and the rest of his parishioners apologize and ask real nice, Mother Nature will bring back those comfortably warm temperatures and forgive us for being snot-nosed, whiny ingrates.

2007-01-27T21:04:00.000-08:00

Ahh yes, a very relaxing weekend. Just me and the Wii. Good times.

I am writing because of two developments of the late week. First was bowling. We did not have our best week ever, but we went 3-0 and now sit at 6-3 going into a critical battle for first with Bart's team. They dropped 2 of 3 this week and will be 6-3 when we face off. Should be good times. Kelley and I went bowling Friday night too and we did not do great. Very average.

I'm keeping a running tab of Oesterle...we started with the Barrister's Ball and alcohol problems. Thursday he left us with this thought. You cannot blog and be successful at a law firm. If you want to be an academic then who cares about blogging, but a firm will read your blog and they will fire you for breaching attorney-client confidentiality (or the risk of it). If you're blogging now, you better stop immediately.

Hmmm...well on that note I'll leave you until next time.

What a week

2007-01-24T16:27:00.000-08:00

No updates due to the incredibly busy week around here. But tonight is bowling night and that means relaxation (and essentially the weekend) are here. Last week we had our Evidence Class Presentation worth 5% of the grade and it was such a joke. I spent 5 minues reviewing the rule at issue and then got grilled by other students acting as judges for 5 minutes on my case. It did bring what will be the highlight of my semester as far as talking in class goes.

Judge: Why should we exclude this gruesome picture from evidence?
Me: Because the risk of unfair prejudice substantially outweighs .... and there were three doctors as well as the burn victim on the stand giving expert testimony on the burns at trial.
Judge: Would you disagree with the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words?" What would you say to that?
Me: I'd say there were probably more than one thousand words of testimony between the four witnesses.

Let me condense it for you: if you bring the smart-ass question shit in a class presentation, I'm not afraid to swing back at you. Gave the class a laugh anyways.

The classes are interesting. State Con Law is a nice weekly discussion, and writing two papers in there should be easy. Business Associations and Evidence are hard to pay attention in because a lot of the class info is straightforward if you did the readings and looked at the class slides before class. Professor Oesterle is a blast in class though, quite the personality. Today the Oesterle words of wisdom: "I'm never going to another Barrister's Ball because all I will see is students getting drunk. The practice of law is stressful and some handle it better than others. If you have an alcohol problem now, it will get worse in practice. If you get drunk in front of your professors, you have an alcohol problem people. Simple as that. So I'm not going to any more Barrister's Balls." Trademark of course I was on call the second week of class, but no hardballs from Professor Lee...I think I've dropped his expectations of getting something intelligent out of me other than in an exam setting.

We recovered in bowling last week, getting 3-0 and back in the division hunt again. We'll see how we do tonight, but the current averages after two weeks are 142 (me, but I sandbagged of course), 128 (Brodie), 123 (Kelley), 76 (Daniel). Kelley's AVG is a bit high for now but Brodie and Daniel are well below usual so we should be OK. Encounters with Abbie the Judas have been interesting this week at the law school. Somehow Daniel always finds a way to make it interesting, and of course I incite them even more. We have a great division, all the best teams except for the professor team.

I think the town is finally getting over the football Buckeyes and are realizing what a great season the basketBucks are having. 16-3 and rolling right now with the only losses on the road to 3 top 5 teams in the country. Should be a great February and March.

Well getting on this week as my blogging time is limited. There were three things occupying my extra time in the early week, those being Ebay sales, the final Acc-Check for Journal, and Mediations Competition. The Ebay sales are mostly in hand tonight as I spent 5 hours catching up the 160 auctions that sold out of 180. Made a nice cool $750 on the cards, so up to $1080 so far with many more cards to sell. This helps pay for the splurges of Xmas, that being the Wii and the new digital camera. Ebay is kind of a pain, but I love the open marketplace and could easily see myself in another dimension opening a business that sells other people's crap on Ebay.

The final Acc-Check was ignored mostly. Symposium last week and the goings on of this week let me spend about 10 hours on it total. I did not do a very great job, but I did a good read through and such...so I shouldn't be in trouble over it. Erik Stock ran unopposed for next year's Editor in Chief, which went directly to my plan if I want a good managing board position. I applied for Executive Editor, Chief Managing Editor, and Articles Editor positions...we'll see what I end up with. The symposium was boring as balls, but we had to go so oh well. One student note and one bib assignment away from done with JDR for this school year. Unfortunately the note will take some serious time in the next month and a half.

Mediations competition had 8 teams of two, and you sat in a mediation in front of judges who judged how well you stick to the negotiation strategy you set and how well you worked together as attorney and client (you switched roles on the second night). The two fact patterns were fun to do, a family probate dispute and a gay guy discriminatory firing. All the all-stars of the negotiations competition from the fall were in there (Erik Stock, Cat Woltering, Andrew Richey, etc), so the field was tough. Richey and I thought we played the game well but our judges were terrible both nights and so alas, we did not make the final four tonight. The top two go to Regionals and get 500 dollars bar/bri money, so hey it was worth a shot (and we did have a lot of fun despite the late evenings).

24 this week set up the season nicely, and wow Jack is back. I love that the squirrely little guy who was behind it all (other than President Nixon, I mean Logan) last season is Jack's brother and is involved again this season. I'm still holding out for a Cuthbert comeback, as there is still more to develop (as in they could kill Jack's daughter too).

Quote of the week from Chloe: "why do people I work with keep dieing?" here's your sign.

On that note, it's bowling time. Woot.

Oh and two more notes. The team I am on for Moot Court is Criminal Procedure. We are meeting tomorrow to discuss travel arrangements. The bad news: it's in Newark NJ on the weekend of Barrister's Ball (also Kelley's birthday). Wonderful. So much for celebrating her Bday there. I instead get to spend that weekend with Brian Smith and some 3L. Oh well. C'est la vie....I wouldn't want to be doing Herman instead.

My grades this semester are ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. I know I got the top grade in App Ad even though I do not know the numerical score yet (damn you Beazley come off them). This week I got my first ever 100 in Tax class, so another top grade. The 97 from Shippy and 92 in Copyright were nice also...so only Patent Law can screw up a beautiful semester. Wonderful how that all worked out.

The 24 Premiere

2007-01-15T19:08:00.000-08:00

Well a good weekend comes to a close. Put up all my extended cards on Ebay yesterday, took about 4 hours and I have 180 auctions running. That's crazy as I though 56 was a lot to keep me busy last summer. I'll probably wait until this summer to finish off the money cards, perhaps around Origins or shortly after. I might take the stuff to Origins and see what I can get, especially for the bulk. I know Villa sold his bulk online on Ebay, but I probably have 4 times as much as he had when he sold. Eh, it's just cardboard. But cardboard that will make some money for poker and other fun endeavors. I was pleasantly surprised by raking in around $300 for my limited collection of standard cards last summer...we'll see how this goes.

Does anyone else find it odd that the President chooses now to send in more forces? 21,000 more troops in Iraq? Are we installing a draft again? OK the last one was kidding, but seriously why was this not done 2-3 years ago? I always thought Kerry was a kook and had the president pulled the troops entirely now we would've been better off with Kerry, but thankfully the President did not do this. I just hope this means he has a real plan with realistic goals and a realistic endpoint. Even if moderately successful, Bush has ruined any legacy he had other than finishing his father's business (getting rid of Saddam). Both Bush presidencies taken down by Iraq, what a cute quagmire. While I think as a conservative that Senator McCain would be the best choice to succeed Bush in 2008 (and John Edwards would be acceptable), it appears the nation is really going to get behind Barack Obama. Could you have a worse name to try and break the white male president trend in this country though? I have trouble truly believing McCain or any other republican candidate has a chance in 2008 after watching a true swing state go so democrat in 2006 (Ohio). Ohio is a perfect model for the country as it has a little bit of everything except maybe a high concentration of the very liberal or far left. Ohio has gone ridiculously blue and I really do not see that changing in 2 years absent some governor or high state official misconduct (thanks Bob Taft, real classy career), and as Ohio basically never votes on the whole for a presidential loser...watch the democratic primary season carefully.

Can you imagine with Iowa going first in the primary season as always...who do they choose? Obama and Clinton are so unpopular there, but they know that Iowa is crucial to setting the rest of primary season. Will Edwards strike gold because Iowa fits his profile? Very very interesting, and almost makes me wish I were a registered democrat in Iowa. But not really. I'd rather my vote count in a general election.

Well 24 has premiered now, and the "shocking turn of events" was indeed pretty shocking. Another long running main character Curtis is killed and by Jack's hand no less. Of course then Jack wants to quit...but nothing motivates Jack like a nuclear weapon going off in LA. I'm happy they are finally letting some big bad stuff happen to the public, as I know America could not be so lucky so many times in a row if 24 were realistic. The stakes have been raised and even though they went back to the old standby of nuclear weapons, 24 doesn't feel right without a good big nuclear threat. Still going to be hard to match Season 5, with a Nixon-like president deceiving everyone and tons of long running main characters getting the axe (Tony, Michelle, Edgar, David Palmer). I do like that the writers are not shying away from a legitimate scary topic, that being the war of terrorism coming to America. Even with 2 more seasons of 24 after this one agreed to, I think we may be seeing the best days of 24 right now.

One final note from the premiere: I am always amazed the actors they bring in season to season (last year they had Sean Astin better known as Samwise Gamgee playing Lynn McGill, Jean Smart playing Martha Logan, and the guy who plays Desmond on Lost as a critical British MI6 agent), and this season I was happy to see Alexander Siddig playing Asad. Siddig used to be known as Siddig El Fadil when he played Dr. Bashir on Deep Sapce Nine, and I am always thrilled to see the good actors from Star Trek series get good roles elsewhere. Siddig also was good in the movie Syriana last year. We'll see if there are any more big actors coming in this season.

Well if you did not tune in to the 24 premiere the last 2 nights...Fox in their money making mind will give you a reprieve if you wish to catch up. The first 4 episodes are on sale in DVD tomorrow, to which I say HA! Fox might as well give up and webcast the episodes for a limited time after they run the first time...ABC is already doing this and they are the only other network with shows close to as good as Fox's lineup. It was so nice not having to tape Lost but just loading it up later on ABC.com. I hope Fox follows suit, as it would be wonderful to catch House or 24 if we ever missed it.

In the end, if you are not watching 24...you should be. There's nothing else even close to as good on TV Monday nights. Should I watch American Idol this season? I mean every other Fox show I've watched turns out to be good (Prison Break, House, 24, and Standoff as well as Trading Spouses), so maybe I'll finally give the old Idol a chance. I did like Survivor after all, and it has to be better than that.

Back to school tomorrow. Suck. Talk to you all later.

The Update...Halfway Home

2007-01-13T18:12:00.000-08:00

Halfway home...halfway through law school at large and halfway through this second year. Hard to believe but at the same point I am so ready to start making money instead of taking out loans. I'm sure work will not be great or anything, but it should be better than school. Regardless, let's get caught up from November.

The OSU-UM game was amazing. That's all there is to it. My first game in 2001 was fantastic beating UM up in Ann Arbor unexpectedly, but this was so much better with the national championship game and an outright Big Ten title on the line. Nobody would have guessed the offensive explosion that happened, but the game was really not as close as a field goal. It felt exactly like the Iowa road game being there in person (a little uncomfortable at times, but always felt like we had the upper hand)...the main difference was against Iowa we did not lose the turnover battle 0-3. I pretty much crowned us right then and there, as I am pretty sure had we played playoff games the next 3 weeks or the title game itself we would have easily rolled on to victory. Unfortunately, we had a 51 day wait...

School was so busy the last weeks of November and early December, between finals coming up and one last 2006 JDR assignment and other stuff. We lost in the first round of the bowling playoffs, which were only 8 teams instead of the usual 16. Still making the top 2 in a division of 8 was something. Abbie deserted the team and we've been jokingly calling her Judas ever since. Well at least I'm joking :-) Nevertheless, we added Kelley to the team and will go on as MFR Minus Judas.

Did nothing amazing for Thanksgiving. Onto exams all of a sudden, but Guy and Everson joined me for a tax study group 5-6 times before the exam. We all probably killed that exam as I think I busted the multiple choice only missing 1-2 in all likelihood and we had an answer written for the policy question the night before the exam. So that one went well. As exam season went on, my preparation (and how I felt walking out of the exam) got worse and worse. It's hard to care too much about anything law school with a job in my back pocket, but I still cannot blow it off in case the job doesn't work out. My look on law school is definitely more relaxed than most everyone around me (as Guy reminds me of every time I see him). You cannot take anything too seriously in law school or else it woul drive you crazy. Bad enough as it is.

So Fed Tax went very well as I said. Patent Law was absurdly straightforward, so hopefully Mescher keeps his word about not grading on a curve. If he curves it is hard to tell where I will end up as everyone I know thought that one was easy. Copyright Law took me too much time and I do not think I fully fleshed out the issues in the big essay enough, but the exam was not hard. Accounting For Lawyers was a very hard exam. It wa smore of a Business Associations plus Tax plus Accounting exam, and I rocked the tax and accounting parts but not the BA. Everyone did poorly in there though, so another crapshoot just like Property was (and that was my highest grade last year). Although you have to compete against 3L's this year, they don't care even more than we don't care and it's nice not being in my section anymore which was brutal. We'll see how the grades come out, as they should start popping up soon. I'm actually surprised some aren't up already. Guess they wanted us to have a nice 3 day weekend.

Speaking of grades, I have to bitch about this. This year Moritz switched wholesale from a 7 point scale to a 10 point scale. There will be the same distribution or curve of A's, B's, and C's, but the numerical grades on the whole just get lower. So an 80 was a very low C (essentially bottom of the class) last year and this year it is a B- (above 25 percent of the class). So now we have two completely different grading systems and will have to explain how a 91 first year was a B but a 91 second or third year is an A (minus). What bullshit. Why could we not grandfather this in? I'm all about a 10 point scale to clarify how you did and spread the distribution to separate people in the class better...but not after one year of a 7 point scale which gets averaged against 2L and 3L grades. It's just dumb.

First semester of 1L I did not know what to expect, but second semester I was right on with my grade predictions. Based on how I felt about these exams, I would have to guess Tax will be a mid-high A, Patent will be a low-mid A, Copyright will be a middle B, and Accounting could be anywhere but I'll guess A-/B+. Hopefully I'll keep the no-C streak going. I cannot guess Appellate Advocacy (although I thought I was definitely in the top 1-2 out of my 14 person adjunct section after getting my final draft back and my good oral argument critique) because I already know. That's another topic though.

The next to last week of school we had a meeting explaining the Herman Competition to us, which is basically our school's big Moot Court competition (and we all know if there's one ting employers say they value other than grades, it's law journal and moot court). The top 5 in every app ad section get to participate if they want, but the first week of class there are open arguments for anyone else to try and get in the competition. There's also a selection round the first week for the top student in each app ad section to compete for 4 spots on Moritz's intramural traveling moot court teams. Well I got the top grade in my section and had to reprep my argument from app ad for the second day of school. It was Professor Beazley (who I knew from Legal Writing's oral argument was a tough judge) and Professor Tokaji (who teaches 14th Amendment and whose pet case of 2006 was our Seattle Schools equal protection case), so I knew I was in for some tough questions. Time flies when you answer questions the whole time, and I really never brought the good facts of the case out. In fact I never looked down as I was always engaging the two judges in answering or listening to questions. Maybe technically my oral argument was fine but I felt terrible because substantively I did the worst I have done ever in an oral argument. Nevertheless, I unexpectedly got an email Thursday night saying I got first out of all the arguers Tuesday night. This means I got my choice of traveling team spot and I do not have to compete in Herman. That is SO NICE! I also get second choice for whatever traveling team I want for 3L year (behind the one winner of Herman out of the I'm guessing 60-80 competitors). I've got plenty of time, but I'm torn between doing one of the big national teams next year or IP. For this year, I get to be on the Constitutional Law team. I really cannot believe all of this, but I'm happy I won the appellate advocacy race as it turns out.

Christmas break was very relaxing and I needed that. We did 3 quick days in Marietta area with all the family and no big blow ups happened (although we did get the guilt trip from everyone in some respect when we left). Got back up to Columbus and spent an uneventful Christmas together with Kelley. The big gifts we got (counting the post-loan money purchases) were bowling balls for each other, a Nintendo Wii for me, and a NICE digital camera for her. I'm so happy to have a pretty spare ball to go with my old standby purple Jaguar ball I've had isnce high school, and the few times in December we bowled I did very well. It's a Cincinnati Reds Vis-A-Ball if you want to look it up. After all, I'm going to be living in Cincy and that's the only pro team I like there. Kelley got a black and red ball that smells like cherries (yes it's supposed to smell like that). Her game has been rather inconsistent as she gets used to a slightly heavier ball and a better ball than her old Wal-Mart 10 pounder. I'm sure it will do wonders in the long run for her game as the Jaguar ball did for me in high school. The Nintendo Wii was bought in December because Tom talked me into staying out all night with him when the second big release of them happened. After driving for an hour and a half around Columbus, we found one store on the SW side of town which did not have a shitton of people waiting outside. It was a long cold night, but we had a 24 hour Kroger and a good group of 5 other people to wait with. The Wii itself should have kept the code name Revolution, because that's what it is. EVERY SINGLE PERSON (counting grandparents and people who hate video games) who has tried the Wii loves playing it, and I really think Nintendo may have a chance of not only competing with the Xbox 360 and PS3...but perhaps beat them in sales. It was crazy to think that before the system came out, but the control system is so much more entertaining and intuitive than the button pushers we grew up with. I have Wii Sports, Madden 07, and Zelda Twilight Princess and all are breathtaking. In the next 3 months we have already pre-bought Wario Ware Smooth Moves, Wii Play, and Mario Party 8. It will be a great year to have this system as it is still in short supply and everyone I know loves to play it. The digital camera is absurdly nice, like 10 megapixels and changeable lenses and it's really a dream of Kelley's. I'm so happy that she is excited to bowl with us and her new bowling ball, take awesome pictures, and play the new Nintendo with me. All purchases were well worth it.

The remainder of Xmas break, we finally got out wedding thank yous because I was so sick of them and Kelley obviously was not of a mind to do them ever. I also got my extended card collection ready for Ebay (probably this weekend), prepped for Extended season with the guys, ignored my JDR note, worked with Shipman, and wrote 4 articles for SCS bowl season. Enough to keep me plenty busy. Got the final two assignments done for Shipman and will now be his legal writing TA, which means I will be helping 7 young 1L's learn how to write like a lawyer. Hooray. We also had the first extended PTQ of the season, and since I'm only going to 3 by my plan...I intend to enjoy every one. I played the right deck which was very popular in Cleveland but went 2-2 disappointgly running into 3 mirror matches. 4 people running the deck (including our teammate Dan) made the top 8, so that made it a little more disappointing. Couldn't be too upset as Burton and Tom did terrible with me and I had other things to do in Cleveland actually. We got together with Thomas and Lisa finally and went out to a great dinner and heavenly ice cream and good times with our Wii. The place we got dinner brews its own beer and has a deal where you pay 100-120 dollars and get 70 big bottles of your own creation to drink and keep. We'll have to try that. We hope to go on a nice weekend trip with them this summer.

The other big thing over break was our new year's party, which did not really happen as planned. Tom and Heather cancelled at the last minute after being too tired flying back from Germany (whatever, I expected this one), Shep and Marissa cancelled because Marissa got throw-up sick the day of, and Lisa and Thomas cancelled because Thomas spent that whole weekend in the hospital. Very frustrating, but we still had Zach and Sarah as well as Brodie and Sarah Miller over. Made too much food for all of us, but I just had to have no-bake cookies, chex mix, and cucumber sandwiches. Played poker (which since I suck in real life now apparently, I lost again), blackjack, roulette, Wii, and Rage. Not as good as if we had 10-12, but still a fun time.

The first week back was HECTIC. Not only did class start up again, but Monday night was the championship game party at Villa's, Tuesday night was Herman selection argument and watching House with Tom and Heather and Burton and Leah's place, Wednesday was bowling, and my first draft of my JDR note had to be completely written in 2 days (15 pages minimum). Yuck. The championship party was fun, but watching the game was not. It really has been a bad week in Columbus as the Blue Jackets have lost 4 in a row, the basketball Buckeyes barely went 1-1, and the football team got thoroughly embarrassed by Florida just like they did in basketball a month ago. I've only seen a Jim Tressel team get embarrassed once in my life and I had the displeasure of attending that game live (30 point loss at Iowa in 2004), so I was very happy we did not pay big money to get tickets to Glendale. Not only did Florida hold the best offense in the country to 85 yards total, Jim Tressel got out-coached and looked silly out there. It has been a long week and will be a long offseason because the Buckeyes are not bringing back conference title talent, let alone national title talent. I'm not nearly as depressed and upset as everyone else in town seems to be, but it's not like I'm going to forget this one anytime soon (going to Iowa was so satisfying this year because it sort of erased the 2004 memories). Bye bye Troy Smith, Ted Ginn Jr, Anthony Gonzalez, Antonio Pittman, and my personal favorite senior Quinn Pitcock. On the bright side, Michigan and Notre Dame got their butts whipped too in BCS bowl games and Iowa almost beat heavily favored Texas...so that makes me happy. And we did win a 7th Heisman Trophy and our 5th Michigan game in 6 seasons and a 2nd straight Big Ten title.

I swear I'm going to make a T-shirt that on the front says "MICHIGAN, Rose Bowl Greatness 2004, 2005, 2007..." and on the back shows the scores of those three games and says "...Three-Straight Ass Whoopins!" Honestly Michigan, can you please stop embarrasing the conference in the Rose Bowl?

House is seriously one of the best shows on television right now. And come to think of it, TV seems better than it has been in recent years, especially on Fox. Standoff, the Office, American Idol, Survivor, etc. is all watchable. My three shows are Lost, 24, and House. House has had an amazing story in this season and it will be interesting to see where they go with the second half of the season with a new major storyline. Lost is having a great third season as well, and the wait until mid-February for new episodes is excruciating. 24 finally comes back tomorrow night for Season 6, and if you have not watched 24 before please please please tune in this weekend (8-10 Sunday and Monday). Kelley and I watched the beginning of season 5 last MLK day weekend and never looked back as we bought all the previous seasons on DVD and watched them to catch up over the summer. The writing and suspense is very good, definitely one of the best shows on television.

First week of bowling was not great, but not a complete loss. Our division is all I could ask for, as we have a good 3L team that always does well (Bring Back Clovis), Brian Smith's team, Abbie's new team, and Bart/Christie's team. We bowled against Clovis for the first week and thank God we got that out of the way as they beat the everloving shit out of us. We went 0-3 also because they beat us consistently (by 27 the first game after handicap and by 26 the second game, by 150 pins scratch both games). The 2 out of 3 seasons we made the playoffs, we started 2-7 both times though so it's OK. And our handicaps are set nice and low compared to where I expect the team will be. I amazingly did not mark the first eight frames (possibly the longest streak of futility I have had in years) and had a 68 through 8...but then I got a spare in the ninth and 29 in the tenth to finish strong at 117. I had it going in the second game getting a 175 fairly easily. I like that I recovered the bad start, but I hope this week is not a sign of going back to inconcsistency. I am so much better when my scores are consistent. Nevertheless, the averages we carry will help as they are a little lower than last season.

ME: 146 average, 154 last season
BRODIE: 129 average, 133 last season (and 140 last year)
KELLEY: 100 average, 110 last season when she subbed for us
DANIEL: 77 average, 94 last season.

With a 16 team playoff again, I think we can get in since we have our tough week out of the way. Thank God bowling is back :-)

The JDR note (note is such an inappropriate word for a 25-30 page scholarly paper, but when compared to the 100 page behemoths professors and experts write for JDR and we edit...I guess note is OK) should not have been ignored as longas I did, but all my friends were in the same boat. I don't care for my journal...I mean I'm happy to be a part of such a great journal but I really don't care about ADR itself. Having to write a lengthy paper about ADR is murder...I don't want to research and I don't want to write. But I somehow came up with a nice 11 pages fully footnoted and 4 pages of BS I'll have to rewrite and redevelop for the next draft. At least I got it in on time. It would be nice to get published after all this work, but I don't care if it doesn't happen. I wonder if I will be as cynical about moot court next year as I am about journal, but writing briefs and doing oral arguments is a whole hell of a lot more fun than acc-checking, preparing bibliographies, and writing scholarly articles. So I'm guessing no.

The new classes seem better than last semester. In retrospect last semester turned out poorly as Accounting was a waste (Shipman can only teach BA in my opinion), Patent was terrible to sit through (professor was awful), Copyright's rules were irritating, and Tax was awful. Other than Lee the professors were not good last semester. All my professors this semester seem much better. Oesterle is the only full-time conservative professor in the law school, and BA should be good with him. Evidence has very entertaining cases and Simmons is engaging. Trademark with Lee should be as good or better than Copyright was. State Consitutional Law seminar seems awesome too and I'll be done with the writing and presentation for that class by beginning of March (Judge Sutton is a nice change from normal professors too). My three bigger classes all have what I call powerpoint professors, which makes taking notes so much easier. I have enjoyed Civ Pro with Fairman, Legislation with Colker, and Copyright with Lee so much more than I would have had they not been powerpoint professors. Should be a good semester, even if the classes are not tailored for me [Accounting and Tax are full of math, Copyright and Patent are my beloved IP].

So between four classes, moot court traveling team, JDR, and extracurriculars I will be very busy this semester. March will be a good month as the 9-10 weekend I'll be in DC doing national moot court competition, the March 3 weekend is Tom's bachelor party, March 17 weekend is Tom and Heather's wedding (which Kelley is playing piano for and I am best man), and March 31 is Kelley's birthday and law school prom, the Barrister's Ball. AND March Madness! What a fantastic month!

Well I've updated my blog now. I know some of you thought Moritz Trek was dead, but hopefully it is not. And hopefully I at least get on here weekly to update the musings of law school. One final note of interest from the first week of school...

So there was this douchy guy who wasn't in my 1L section but was in my App Ad...let's just say he was an interesting character. His name was Adam. We come back to school in January, and now this person's name is Alice. Yeah...so now all of us in law school get to experience a co-worker getting a sex change first hand. Knowing the gossip of law school, it only took about half a day for word to get around. I hear from my good buddy Joe Siefert who asked Alice about this situation that the state of Ohio does not recognize sex changes. So she will always be Adam according to them. Just another "backwards" thing in this state that republican people like me think is OK despite being a little 1900. I figure what the hell though, you want to cut the junk off and bring out the feminine side of yourself, it's your life. By far, the most entertaining thing from the first week back. 1 down, 14 to go.

Welcome 2007

2007-01-04T19:16:00.000-08:00

I will update on all the Christmas and finals stuff that kept me from blogging for weeks sometime later, but anyways just had to start 2007 by posting the nastiest story I have ever heard from a college football fan. After all, it is bowl season!

Link is here with discussion: http://mb25.scout.com/fthehivefrm1.showMessage?topicID=65970.topic

Since 1974 (thanks Dad!) I have attended Georgia Tech football games as a fan, student, and then alumni. Over the years, I have witnessed odd behavior at college football events. Until New Year's Day 2007, the event that stood out most was when the Georgia Tech student section covered the Notre Dame Team with raw fish in the late 70's.After the Gator Bowl? Wow. Just wow.I always carry my camera to Georgia Tech football games. We were fortunate and had seats on the lower level, two seats away from the Georgia Tech Band section. At the end of the second quarter, the band was in position on the field, leaving their section empty. I walked to the bottom of the band section to get some panorama shots of the stadium and then returned to my seat. I noticed a West Virginia fan standing in the middle of the Georgia Tech Band seating area, with his pants around his knees. As this is unusual, I pointed the walking stereotype to my fiance', a Virginia Tech alumni. She had been preparing me for the encounters with West Virginia fans and this individual only supported her prior observations.Then things got ugly.The WVU fan then dropped his drawers and defecated on one of the Georgia Tech band section seats.I turned the camera on and snapped the below series of pictures...picasaweb.google.com/THWU...andSection The Georgia Tech fans around us saw the incident and were also speechless.My first stop was to one of the Georgia Tech Band members remaining in the section. I introduced myself as a Georgia Tech alumni and apologized to him for what I had to say next. The story was repeated with accompanying pictures. The band member was in shock and then thanked me for looking out for the band. He went to find a member of the stadium facilities managment staff. I went to find a law enforcement officer.The Police Officer was in disbelief that behavior such as this would actually occur. The officer requested that the WVU fan walk up to the portal to discuss the incident. Walking up the stairs was a little too much for the WVU fan as he apparently had imbibed quite a large quantity of alcohol. Falling UP the stairs twice did not help his cause with the officer...We could hear the WVU fan screaming, 'y'all ain't got no proof I did nothin!' repeatedly as the officer questioned him on the 'leavings' in the seat. The officer motioned for me to bring my camera over and show the pictures to the WVU fan. Well, two things happened as he saw the images. One, he stopped protesting. Two, he vomited down the front of his shirt (always a classy move).The officer took the individual into custody and requested that I provide the images to the police command station. None of the officers in the command station could belive my story until I displayed the images. The WVU fan was arrested and removed from the stadium."I went to the Gator Bowl and all I got was arrested!"picasaweb.google.com/THWU...andSectionFor what it's worth, the rest of the WVU fans treated us with respect. It was a great game.

Well I'll be damned. A Mountaineer fan drunk off his kilter and so drunk he does something disgusting and stupid in the name of competition. Who'd a thunk it?

The best week ever

2006-11-17T13:48:00.000-08:00

Let me start by linking you to www.southerncollegesports.com where my article "Go Blue! Go Bucks! The Game Finally Arrives" is up and running on the big game.

This is one of the best weeks. Got my candidate to be a lawyer application into the Ohio Supreme Court on Monday, appellate advocacy ended for me Monday as well when Oral Argument happened. I think I had a worse oral argument than our practice argument, but I only got one minor criticism (saying "you know" when answering a question from the court). The group of 14 people in my App Ad section are very good, but I think from the comments I have gotten on my brief and my oral argument that I have a legitimate shot at the top grad ein the section. This would qualify me to try to get on a traveling Moot Court team this year, and I'd like to give it a shot. Nevertheless, I will be doing the Herman competition for moot court next semester (to get on a traveling team for my 3L year)...this sounds much more exciting than Journal crap.

Also this week: the debut of a new James Bond movie and a new James! I like Sean Connery and all, but I grew up with Pierce Brosnan as Bond and I will have trouble adjusting to the new guy. The critics reviews are 95% positive though, and that's amazing...this movie should be great.

The latest battle of the Console Wars is officially on this weekend, as Playstation III is out today and Nintendo Wii is out Sunday to combat last year's Xbox 360. I'm a longtime Ninetndo fan, having the original NES and getting the SNES and N64 on their release dates. I waited to buy a Gamecube (why pay so much when prices go down) and finally branched out and bought an Xbox in the last wave of consoles. I like having it as a DVD player but not the $30 you have to pay for the remote for the Xbox to enable that feature. Money grubbing Microsoft. I cannot wait to buy a Wii, as I think the new remote and motion sensitive controls are the best innovation in video games in a long time (all due respects to 3D life-like graphics and wireless controllers). I might get one before next summer because they are so affordable.

I have been thinking of which second console I would buy, and I think without a doubt the PS3. I kind of hated Sony for combatting and winning market share from Nintendo back in the day, but I have to give them credit for bringing out good systems and the best set of games. I really have no interest in Xbox 360 other than Halo 3, and I can find friends to play with. I am switching second allegiance to Sony and Microsoft be damned. If the PS3 goes down in price (not likely thanks to Blue Ray players installed) before summertime, I may consider getting one next summer when I have a little fun money and a lot of time alone in a Cincinnati apartment. You can only play so much Magic Online and online poker lol.

And the best part of the week: OSU Michigan. The Game. Campus is crazy and has been since Thursday evening...and I am so happy this is a home game so I can see it on the cheap. This is the first time both teams have come in #1 and #2, first time in 30 years both team undefeated...and the national championship and a Big Ten outright title on the line. With the passing of Bo Schembechler today (here's hoping he and Woody are kicking back and watching the game tomorrow from heaven, they both deserve it after their great lives), Michigan has so much more to play for. I think the line is ridiculous at OSU -7, as the Wolverines are definitely the same team or slightly better overall than the Buckeyes. The only thing sweeter than this game is seeing this game when everything is on the line. I cannot wait for 22 hours to pass by and see this battle of titans.

Please please please let the Buckeyes win...please please please let there not be riots :-)

November

2006-11-01T11:20:00.000-08:00

Ahh, the fall foliage has mostly blown away and now it will finally get cold. November also brings the best college football games, and at long last perhaps an Ohio State game worth watching (and considering I've seen every minute of the past 5 games in person...I'm expert enough to say that the last 5 weeks has been a bore-fest). It's been fun actually blowing out Big Ten rivals, but let's see how the buckeyes perform with a berth in the national title game and an outirght Big Ten title on the line against hated rival UM. Speaking of football, Ohio U is winning their division in the MAC now and I'm happy the Bobcats are finally worth cheering for.

I was all ready to write a blog article yesterday about how Halloween and October passes me by and I still have no job offers after 3 months (the Loyola Patent interview program was August 3-4). But then, a Halloween treat in my inbox. Wood Herron and Evans from Cincinnati gave me a job offer for next summer.

HALLELUJAH! (Happy dance and much rejoicing in the background)

If you had asked me before I went to the 8 firms which one I would cut first this would have been the one based solely on location...but a job is a job and this firm is the biggest IP boutique in Ohio so that makes me happy. Summer salary is higher than all non-Chicago and non-Dallas places too, so I'm more than likey accepting the job offer (plus being only 2 hours away this summer is convenient for its own reasons). I did notify the remaining three firms that they have one week to offer me a job, so Harness Dickey (Detroit), Leydig Voit and Mayer (Chicago), and Greenebaum Doll (Louisville)...you are on the clock. It is so satisfying knowing that I have a job next summer and I will be doing IP work and I will be officially done worrying about jobs in 6 days. Now I'll have even more time to focus on school, whatever that means.

Let's review quickly what I think of the firms left in the pool today:
1. Wood Herron and Evans in Cincinnati: The plus is I have a job offer (just kidding), but seriously they do pay better than the others and it's close enough for next summer and I get to see Reds games...the downside is still long-term location but that's not such a big deal anymore.
2. Harness Dickey in Detroit: I think these guys have the best overall summer experience to offer and really have a good IP firm going, but living a half hour north of Detroit sucks. The people were really nice though, and it seemed like I could fit. I do not know the pay for these guys.
3. Greenebaum in Lousiville: This was probably my best job interview after Fish in Dallas, but the one thing that scares me from this firm is that it is GP. I really favor IP boutiques now, and so this factor is crucial even though Louisville is one of the nicest cities I've been to.
4. Leydig Voit in Chicago: well let's see, they are in Chicago. That's about it (they are IP as well). The firm was not the greatest, their recruiting seems out of order, they did not confirm my interview until the day before, they did not get a hotel reservation until I was driving to Chicago the day of, and they were condescending on the phone when I told them they have a week to make a choice as of yesterday...hmmm, much as I love Chicago this has not gone well for this firm so far.

Bowling is going fantastic, and it has been a great season. Daniel and Brodie are crazy, and we do a nice job as a team of freaking out the competition or getting in their head with our antics. Everything from the Dr. Mario Virus dance for three strikes in a row to our mascot the creepy garden gnome to the weekly theme and outfits Brodie and Daniel (and sometimes I) wear...we wreck the competition. Everyone except for Brodie has a much higher average than last year, and we just keep on rolling. I finally made the bowling sheet for the first time last week for 2nd high average in the league at 153, so now we are taking over the sheet as well (Abbie's 187 is holding up nicely as a top game...187 = killed the other team = murder cop code = mens fucking rea). We started the season 1-6 but have ripped off 11 straight and stand at 12-6. I think we will be in first place tonight when the sheet is passed around the bowling alley, so all we have to do is hold serve this evening and we will be division champs. To hell with the playoffs...division champs would be sweet. Can you tell it's bowling night...?

I've successfully put off Appellate Advocacy now and I have 5 days to comeplete my brief. Thankfully all I have to do is minor repairs and mostly grammar, spell checks, and cite checks. One quick oral argument in 2-3 weeks and then that hassle is over. Just in time to start worrying about my 4 exams.

The Schottenstein Center here on campus has been jumping this week. Saturday night was a Daily Show cast and Jon Stewart event for the students at OSU, Sunday Barenaked Ladies played, and Monday Red Hot Chili Peppers played. That's the best three straight days ever at that crappy arena probably. Kelley and I went to see Jon Stewart, and it was a nice funny evening. They showed clips from previous shows, the highlight of which had to be when they followed around a Cleveland area reporter who is known for investigative reporting in a clip called "You Jackin It?" This reporter caught a college kid jacking off in a public library, and then proceeded to hound him and his family for weeks about it on the local news. Not to be trumped, the Daily Show hounded this real life reporter and libraries in the area seeing if they could find more people "Jackin It." Stewart and the gang are taping this week's shows on campus so they can be in the middle of the most important swing state during these midterm elections. Should be good times.

I'm playing a little online poker (down a little again since I talked to you last, but I'm sure the luck will turn around) and some Magic online now...it's nice to have time to play those games and not feel like I'm putting off something (other than App Ad). Also, if anybody has a copy of Mario Party 6 and a gamecue microphone they wish to sell...message me. I don't want to buy the game new and MP7 is good but would be better with a mic (and I think MP 6 which my old roommates have has better mini-games).

Shipman cancelled class today, hope he's doing alright. Especially since that's my primary job for next semester and my best reference until after this summer's employment. This is a good week, as last night we went out to celebrate my job offer, tonight is bowling, Thursday Dell is coming to fix my computer in my house (new motherboard and touchpad among other small things), Thursday night I'm watching Saw III with Tom and Heather and then the WVU-UL football game, and Friday night we are hosting poker and Thomas and Lisa will be down to stay the evening as well. Time for a little payback for Mr. Applebaum :-)

Anyways, class is about to start and I'm sure I've caught everyone up and all they want to know (and more than they ever wanted to know) and my life. To sum it all up...I GOT A JOB. WOO-HOO!

Time!

2006-10-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

I did not realize how much time I really had until I stopped going on these callback interviews. Wow do I actually have time to read, go to class, and work on app ad without going crazy? Yes!

The real reason I'm writing this short update. Call the presses, you don't have to worry about me moving across the country. The dream job wrote me a letter, just like every other firm that has given me a final response thus far (that's fancy talk for no offers). So I'm not moving to Dallas. Speaking of Dallas, I am watching the end of a joke on MNF as the Cowboys inexplicably are not playing their starting QB...thanks Cowboys, right when I picked you Parcells goes crazy.

But back to the matter at hand. With the "dream job" out of the pool, I still have five firms I have not heard back from, and I know somewhere out there a job offer will drop in my lap. So firms (if you are reading blogs and facebook profiles like the National Jurist says), the door is wide open for all of you.

If none of those work out, Dom and Everson and I are opening our own law firm. Moving the ildhell out of Ohio and opening our own law firm. Everson, Brook, Fitzgerald, and Geiger. Has a nice ring to it (we are renting Geiger's name as the anchor, but he might join up too). Then we can build a firm and make law students sweat while waiting for rejection letters from us.

And one more thing, I'm cheering for the Cardinals in the World Series...but I've never seen so much ado about nothing last night when Detroit pitcher Kenny rogers had some dirt on his pitching hand in the first inning. The announcers went crazy thinking pine tar, they discussed it, Rogers washed his hand, and then proceeded to give up 1 hit in the next 7 innings (the tigers won easily 3-0 to tie the series). It was obviously not cheating, and why would this veteran try in the World Series where everything is scrutinized...what a joke. Let's all focus on some guy's dirty hands instead of the great effort Detroit put up and the fact that this series looks like it could go 7 games and be very competitive like the NLCS. This just in: I have a little dirt under my fingernail on my right hand (throwing hand)...STOP THE PRESSES, I might be blogging with pine tar under my fingernails.

Have a good week, I'll be busy doing something. I did win $47 in 7 minutes on ultimatebet tonight and got right back offline. Happy to be back where I was 2 months ago before my big slip.

Playing Four Corners of Ohio

2006-10-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

The latter half of my fall break was spent playing four corners with the state of Ohio. Let me explain.

Callback number 7 (Wood Herron Evans) was on Thursday in Cincinnati OH (CORNER ONE, the SW corner). The firm is a good sized boutique, rare in Ohio for sure. The personalities were interesting, and I got to meet a good mix of attorneys. I do not know if I want to end up in that city, but the firm was nice and I on this day realize I really want to work for a boutique or a firm that was a boutique but added a corporate practice just to keep up. So the Louisville firm has a serious knock in it now, but oh well. I drove down in the morning and drove back in the afternoon, was alone with Chip the new dog since Kelley was at choir until late and brought Zach up to our apartment to watch the dog over the weekend. A decent trip, and we will see what they will say.

Woke up dark and early (5:00 AM) on Friday to drive to Troy MI, a suburb north of Detroit for Callback #8 (Harness Dickey). I drove through Toledo OH, the NW and CORNER TWO of Ohio. This is another nice IP boutique, and they seem a little more uptight or professional than all the other firms I have visited. Even being 20 miles from downtown Detroit, the location is not the best. At least there is no BS commute into a high0rise of a big city though, so that’s a big plus. This firm sits in the middle of all my other firms I would not put at number 1, but I would accept a job offer from (and would be happy if they were my only offer). This firm seems a lot more dedicated toward a good summer experience, and I like that the firm goes out to lunch together every Friday.

Kelley got lost in northern suburbs shopping, so we went to the hotel and checked in at the Drury. Nice hotels, lots of extras like free bar drinks every evening and free popcorn and pop all afternoon and evening. We chilled in the hot tub and pool for an hour, then caught up on a little sleep before going out for the evening. We shopped for warm clothes and alcohol for tailgating the next day, went out to dinner at Outback, saw the area in general, then went down to Greektown Casino in downtown Detroit for a nightcap. We had never been to a real casino, so this was new for us. Table games are so expensive, so going to have to wait until I make bigger bucks to play in these casinos. The slots were plentiful and fun though, and we did play one table game I just had to try (War). What a simple silly game, but mildly entertaining anyways.

Saturday morning we started slowly and got on the road for East Lansing, about a 90-minute drive up the road. We get there and manage to find a parking garage not too busy (we just beat the rush). We bundle up, get our coke and rum ready, and go walking around to find the Buckeye Bob tailgate. Took us about a mile of walking some in the wrong direction and a hour, but we find the tailgate right when the fries and steak are coming off the burners…so yummy stuff not missed. Good sized group of us there, and Kelley and I downed a half bottle (BIG BOTTLE) of Bacardi and coke together in the course of an hour there and an hour back at the car. Finally stumble into the game around halftime, sit in the MSU band section while they are on the field, get kicked out up to our upper deck seats for the second half. A little chilly up there due to wind, but not crowded because a lot of MSU fans left at halftime since they were already down 24-0. I personally needed to get plastered in the middle of the law school term after being done with interviews and so on, so I am not sorry about missing what must have been a boring first half (barring Teddy’s punt return for TD). OSU goes on to win, I go on to get sober, and we hit the road for home again. We drove through Cleveland OH (The NE CORNER, or CORNER #3) on the way to Marietta.

Sunday I woke up around noon right before Kelley got home from church and watched TV with her stepfather for a while. We chilled in Marietta for a while (CORNER 4, the SE CORNER) on Sunday, then finally went back up to Columbus to do some grocery shopping and let Zach finally go home. Chip was happy to see us, and we were happy to see him except for him tearing up the blinds in our room. The end of a long but good relaxing weekend and fall break, and while I was not quite ready to go back to class…Monday calls.

The first day back in class was not too shabby. Shipman has had good lectures and good reading assignments…starting to feel like accounting is a good class. I’m totally just reading the nutshell guide and outlining the course at the end of the semester based on that and the HW problems. Tax was rather boring, but patent law was actually engaging for the first time since the first week of class (because we were doing sample exam or patent bar questions on the unit we just finished). Went out with Dan after class and caught up on fall break stuff (and there was some serious stuff). Seems like the job search for everybody other than Jonathan and I has slowed down and not many people are walking around with offers. I know I have the most callbacks to hear from in my group of friends, so I would hope my optimism that I will get 2-3 offers is not misplaced. Think I’m calling Dallas this afternoon to see if they held their meeting and to see where I stand since it has been quite some time. Going out to dinner at Quaker Steak tonight with brother-in-law and fiancée this evening, as it is wing night.

The ACC-Check does not look so bad this time around, a little shorter. Time to get back to that and perhaps revising my AA brief for oral argument season.
Oh one more note while I am thinking about it. I for the first time in six years, completely disagree with the President and I am very unhappy with his actions. Not about the war or anything like that, but the port security bill he signed into law last Friday which tries to kill online gambling for US citizens by blocking bank and credit card transfers from US banks to gambling websites. Now I know my site has already in place a work-around (UltimateBet), but how long before some goon in the US Attorney General’s office goes after these big boys? I have enough money on there that I do not have to reload anytime soon and so I should be able to keep playing casually…but sneaking this overbroad and ridiculous legislation in a security bill republicans in Congress and the President are forced to pass politically is WRONG. I have no problem if the government wants to regulate these online casinos like the offline ones, as I am one of millions of players willing to pay reasonable taxes on deposits…but to try and quash them completely is an impediment to freedom in this country. I know some of my readers will completely disagree with me here, but most of my readers will be happy to see me finally upset with Prez W over something.

In Chicago and Waiting

2006-10-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting in my hotel's lobby on a super-comfy sofa enjoying free wi-fi (when you charge $250 a night, charging for wi-fi is in my opinion undignified). Decided to not go out around downtown last night, just ordered in room service which was not as good as the price had hopefully suggested. At least I ordered a lot so I could be picky and choosy instead of starving. Enjoying this brief respite from even thinking about law school, well except for when interviewers ask about it of course. Next week I'll have to start again on appellate advocacy so I am not scrambling before final submissions the first week of November.

You might ask why I am sitting here blogging at 1:18 in the afternoon (12:18 local time)? Because check-out was noon and my interview starts at 1:30 with McDonnell Boehnen a few blocks from here. Better to sit here with free wi-fi than look like a terrorist with my big garment bag just sitting around a corporate office building lobby or showing up to the interview too early. Let's review this crazy interview season...

35 first interviews at Loyola Patent Program and OSU OCI August 3-September 14.
52 unsolicited letters to chicago and texas firms.
8 callback interviews thus far (#6 today, #7 Thursday, #8 Friday).
16 rejection letters from first interviews...and 12 firms have not responded yet amazingly.
1 rejection letter from callback interviews.
0 offers.
I believe this is where Mastercard would say "Priceless."

Fish and Richardson in Dallas TX - (Loyola Patent Program) Callback was 9/1, no response.
Maginot Moore and Beck in Indianapolis IN - (OCI) Callback 9/6, no response.
Brinks Hofer Gilson and Lione in Chicago IL - (Loyola Patent) Callback 9/22, quick rejection letter.
Leydig Voit and Mayer in Chicago IL - (Loyola Patent) Callback 9/29, no response.
Greenebaum Doll in Louisville KY - (OCI) Callback 10/6, no response.
McDonnell Boehnen in Chicago IL - (Letter!) Callback 10/9
Wood Herron Evans in Cincinnati, OH - (OCI) Callback 10/12
Harness Dickey in Detroit, MI - (Loyola Patent) Callback 10/13

Seven fishing lines still in the lake, perhaps there will be more added but hopefully I can catch a fish or two in the next couple weeks. I fully expected to hear from the first three firms on the list this week, but Brinks went above and beyond by letting me know last week they did not want me :-) At the time I was having trouble deciding whether I would take that offer or another top one on my list, so that clears the order up a bit.

The Greenebaum interview impressed me, and I really like Louisville if I choose to settle in a smaller city. South enough to not be awful weather for 6 months, on the Ohio River, nice driving distance to Columbus, Cincy, Indy, Chicago, and Nashville. If I had to make a snap judgment or list of firm preference right now, they would be number 2...but further consideration will be merited if I get multiple offers.

The OSU-BGSU game was one of the more boring contests I've witnessed at Ohio Stadium, and it marked my 30th OSU game overall. On a stretch of 5 straight weekends with the Iowa trip and MSU trip, so looking forward to seeing the Bucks defend their number 1 ranking this month and getting ready long-term for the showdown with Michigan for the Big Ten title and a likely berth in the BCS title game. As last week proved though, undefeateds are falling quickly (13 last week, 4 of them lost so 9 left). OSU has to avoid the upset bug...

I forgot to mention this last week because I was too busy rushing home and finishing the brief for app ad and then going to bowling, but I witnessed a squirrel on Chittenden Wednesday that made me about roll off the sidewalk laughing. This squirrel was going hardcore on a piece of pepperoni pizza left by drunk undergrads in the grass, and I for some reason found this sight so funny. Since when do squirrels go for Papa John's? The way it was tearing into the pizza kind of reminded me of quite a few 1L's and undergrad students I know :-P

So Zach (my brother in law) is home finally this week from the Air Force after being forced out due to a kidney stone. Now he is back spending tons of time with fiancee Sarah in his room at his Mom's house. My father-in-law, grandparents-in-law, mother-in-law, stepfather-in-law, and wife are all supportive but all of them do not seem to completely trust Sarah. I kind of feel the same way, and I am definitely worried Zach will do something dumb now that he's home like get married really soon or have a kid. He needs to continue with his life plan and go to school somewhere...as maturity (which I'm sure he got some in basic training) comes from life in college and depending on yourself and not living at home. Kelley and Bruce (and I) are a little pissed Zach's mom lets them hang out all day in Zach's room until 3 AM alone, whereas Kelley was not allowed to be in her room with guys at all. Well I just hope he makes good decisions, as he is definitely a smart guy and has more computer skills than I ever care to have. The only thing that keeps me from saying stuff to him is that I HATED the crap I got from family about my own wedding, so I don't want to be that guy. Things have seemed to work out great for me, so hopefully the same to him.

I got measured for my tux for Tom and Heather's wedding the other day, which got me to thinking...what the hell am I going to say as the Best Man toast? Tom had his moments when I though his speech would be a disaster, but he pulled it all together and I loved it. I just hope I can do the same...and I am totally looking forward to the honor. Wish we could get out and play tennis before it freezes over, but with all these interviews it probably will not happen till next week. I'll hope for sunshine, even if we have to play in sweats.

Went to Chi Alpha this week, nice to see the old gang and the new people. Pastor Jim just had his second kid, so big news there. Saw Pastor Jeff and grabbed coffee with him randomly earlier that day as well, so that was nice. With Zach coming back and going to contemporary Lutheran services now...we both might be able to influence the worship and music committee or whoever runs this shebang that changes need to be made. You cannot make everyone happy and the contemporary service IS a big improvement over the regular liturgical worship, but the darn service is still confined by liturgy (on the powerpoint slides mind you). If they want to draw in new members and non-Lutherans to see attendance actually grow, they need to change it up a little bit. I'm not saying exactly like Zach's basic training contemporary church service or my Chi Alpha services, but make it a lot more like those and start over instead of basing it strictly on liturgy. I do not know why I should care just like why should I care about who wins elections in Ohio when I'm moving out of state in two years...but something makes me want to stand up to the hardcore Lutherans and tell them to be open-minded. Just like when I "stole" communion from the not open-table Missouri Synod Lutheran church my father attends...but that's another story for another time.

For some reason, after rushing to finish the app ad brief and not revising it at all, I looked it over Thursday morning and was proud of it. I know it will be ripped apart by my adjunct professor, but for a few days I can be proud of my work.

Well it is time to go hail a cab and get on with this interview. More fun on this trip other than having this mid-day wait was having to re-schedule my flight tonight since I thought the interview was in the morning and so I set up the 5:30 flight out of town. It's now the 7:30 flight because there is NO WAY you can have an interview at 1:30 and make it to O'Hare by 4:30. Just impossible. Especially if I bring home Giordano's ;-)

Have a good week, I may be on here more as the week off progresses.

Iowa Weekend

2006-10-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

Left after appellate advocacy on Thursday for Chicago. Stopped at half price books and got some new ones to read finally, keep the wife happy :-) Did reading on the way out. Got there late at night and went out to Hard Rock Cafe for some dinner and a new bear for my collection. It was a concert night, so no tables for dinner means we moved on. Red Lobster closed, Rainforest Cafe closed...not going to McDonald's on the firm dime. We then turn the corner and see Melting Pot, the fondue restaurant from home that got us hooked on fondue (we have two pots of our own and fondue all the time now). Well, since the firm is paying...might as well make it like a second honeymoon and get the dinner there while enjoying the $300 a night hotel room downtown. The interview was OK, but this firm probably will not beat Brinks in Chicago if both give offers, but it is a perfectly good firm as well.

Spent the rest of the day at Navy Pier, doing the big Ferris Wheel. Nice view of Chicago if you ever go. After dinner at Giordano's, off to Iowa.

Iowa game was fantastic, as the Buckeyes are starting to play like the dominant team in college football. We shall see if they make it undefeated to Michigan which they certainly should. 44 point favorites against BG this week (the Buckeyes have covered all 5 spreads against them this year), and that is unbelivable. I think I was at the biggest blowout in the Jim Tressel era and that was a 43 point win over San Jose State 50-7. I'm seriously tempted to take the Falcons plus 44...it's a near certainty even with OSU dominance. We will back it off if we get up by 28.

Anyways, Iowa fans lived up to their reputation as the nicest in the Big Ten. Mostly. A lot of fans went out of their way to greet Kelley and I and welcome us to Iowa or wish us a safe trip back or have fun at the game. A few drunken idiots (all students) as usual before the game. Of course the assholes who made fun of Kelley for her weight really ruined it for her as we were walking back to the car. One carful of fans ruining all the outstanding work of the other Iowa fans, who were gracious even in defeat. I did not care if they drop to personal attacks because words don't mean anything to me in that instance, but she cried all the way back to the car and I wish I did not have to worry about passing the bar (no incidents of law allowed)...I totally wanted to go run my key across their Escalade and throw a punch or two to shut up the assholes. For me it was a perfectly fine trip but for her this probably ruined a great day. Went to dinner at Perkins with Dad and Patti afterwards, had our good adult chat without the siblings around.

I forgot to mention we got to see Samantha and Cassandra play volleyball and smash some competition Saturday morning. I feel so lucky to have seen one of CJ's soccer games, these volleyball games, and other extracurriculars...as Dad did not get to see mine and I know how much it probably means to them to have me there at least once in a great while. I enjoy seeing them play as well of course.

Sunday we played a little MP7 with the kids before having to hit the road for Ohio. Got home late and passed out so I could wake up in time to go to lunch with Everson today. Got all my reading done through the first classes after fall break, so all my attention tomorrow and Wednesday will be on app ad draft two. Lunch with Everson was nice...hard to not lose track of friends with my awkward school schedule (everybody else is leaving while I am in my first or second class of the day). We are both looking for our first offers, and it is nice to bounce interview stories off each other. He's off to another this week so Kelley will get to bowl which is good because she has the itch to bowl again (I was planning to go on fall break if nothing else) and will get to sub most likely. Looking forward to that as that marks the end of app ad till after break and the end of law school really till after fall break.

So until then...I write. But then I will binge on all things not law school, including time with Kelley and time with things like Lost...Xbox...Gamecube....and whatever else tickles my fancy.

A midweek entry

2006-09-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

Hey, why not two entries in a week! Put my article up on SCS just now, looks decent but not my usual ramble. This one is more like last season's articles, and I do not know if that is good or not. All I know is I am PUMPED for the Iowa game. Cannot wait for Saturday.

I really wrote to speak of my day. This was a bad day, despite no reading and getting to start my day with tennis. First Kirkland and Ellis calls, says they are SO SORRY because they sent the wrong letter to me and I actually do not have a callback. As if that unprofessional behavior did not get it going (and that is really what got in my craw as the day went on), the other phone calls of the day set it off. Fish from Dallas called back, and it turned out to be a good call as they are meeting October 10 to make final decisions so I will know for sure in 2 weeks. It is nice to know finally when that will be, but still I wait for my first offer. Then Leydig (my callback for Friday) FINALLY got a fourth attorney for me to interview with Friday and confirmed my interview at 5 PM today. I'm leaving for Chicago tomorrow at 11 AM and I get confirmation of the interview at 5 PM the day before I leave. Considering they had 3 and a half weeks from when we tenatively scheduled the callback...I find their conduct unacceptable. You cannot make someone wait until the day before they have to leave to set up the interview! I mean I am happy I have a callback, but they are behind Brinks and Fish based solely on how they have acted thus far. And so much for not making last minute travel plans...I do not have a hotel reservation for tomorrow night. Well I am pissed, but I'll call them tomorrow morning and they better answer the phone so we can work this all out before we hit the road.

I do not know what pisses me off more: Kirkland being unprofessional or Leydig being such a pain. If only I had an offer...

On the bright side it was bowling night, and we were bowling against Applebaum's team. Aaron has been talking trash all week and so have we. The team theme this week (we're crazy) was Holy Rollers so Daniel and Brodie dressed up in suits and acted like crazy southern baptist preachers. I had on my Halloween costume, Roman Catholic Cardinal. Abbie totally should have dressed like a rabbi, but she did have the MFR shirt on. Well anyways Aaron and I were focused on beating each other individually as the best players on the team...and he beat me by 2 first game 162-160...more painful was our team losing by 2 pins as well. 1-6 on the season. Then game two I took off my outfit so we had two baptist preachers and the more subdued members of the team in MFR shirts...well we got revenge for game 1. I bowled a little worse (but still beat Aaron 146-143 and the one pin win over two games means I've got bragging rights) but Abbie totally carried the team getting her first ever turkey of her life and 7 marks in 7 frames (2-9) to go get a 187. GO ABBIE! 96 pins over average, and like I said she carried the team as won the second by a dominating 97 pins and the series by 95. We are only 3-6, but we are bowling so much better. I do not know if Abbie can keep it up (or me, having the third or fourth highest AVG in the league)...but Daniel has been consistent and Brodie has been bad so he could easily carry us the rest of the way. Bowling totally turned the day around, and I get to keep my 153 average another week.

One final thought: Is it scary I bowl better in a cardinal dress where I have to bowl with backwards spin than when I bowl a normal game in normal clothes? Yeah I thought so too.