http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/ Entries for Steven Shelton Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:15:38 -0500 http://backend.userland.com/rss/ Blogs blog en http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/images/logo.gif http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/ 88 31 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=50 Okay, first things first, because I'm getting lots of email, voicemail, and IMs about this:Yes, a tornado hit Fenton. Yes, it hit our house. And, yes, we're all alive and unhurt. And, no, our house was not damaged and Sher did NOT go into labor. Our house was on the very edge of the tornado. I was actually outside when it hit: I'd run outside as quickly as I could to move our barbecue grill next to the side of the house so it didn't become a missile if something serious did hit, and as I was getting ready to go inside the wind picked up. I looked up and saw rain whipping horizontally in two different directions at once and small pieces of debris above me moving in a big circle. Before you go, "IDIOT!", I didn't know at the time that there was an actual tornado headed our way. The power had gone out a few minutes before, and the last we'd heard there was a tornado in the northern end of the county (we live on the very southern end), which was why the tornado sirens were going off. We'd already gone to the basement and out flashlight was dying, so I went upstairs to find more. That's when I noticed the grill starting to sway a bit with the wind and decided to prevent it from launching.Anyway, when I saw the rotation and the wind, I hightailed it back inside and into the basement where we waited it out. After just a couple of minutes the storm seemed to subside so I went out and saw our neighbors already trying to cut up and move the trees that had fallen across the road. It wasn't until we cleared the trees and had a chance to look around the neighborhood that we realized the extent of the damage. The very edge of the tornado apparently brushed the houses on our block. The house behind us had its windows blown out, the house behind that had chunks of siding torn out and big trees completely uprooted, and the house behind that had the entire roof and part of the walls blown off. The house across the street from that one had a car blown completely through the garage.Currently, the power and telephones are completely out in Fenton. The best estimate for power to be restored is Monday night, so we're staying at my sister-in-law's house in Linden at the moment. So, basically, the storm inconvenienced us. But we're not complaining because we got extremely lucky. Anyway, my thanks to everyone who has emailed, called, and IMed me to make sure we're all okay. We are, and apparently there were no serious injuries in the city (although there was a lot of damage), so everyone say a prayer and thank the deity of your choice for a small miracle. Sat, 25 Aug 2007 17:06:04 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=50 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=49 So this morning, I wake up. Not unusual, since I do that most mornings. But this morning was different. First of all, the radio station to which our alarm is normally tuned (WFUM, the local NPR affiliate, thank you very much) is apparently off the air because all we get is static. Second, I'm choking to death.Okay, not really choking to death, but it feels like it. See, I have really bad sinuses, and as anyone with really bad sinuses can tell you, this condition often causes you to wake up with all kinds of semi-dried sinus drainage clogging the back of your throat. Sometimes--and this is gross, but it's what happens--this semi-dried drainage kind of hangs in the back of your throat until you can clear it out. This causes the kind of choking sensation that's affecting me, so I try to do what you normally have to do to get rid of it: a kind of hard sucking action to draw it out.The results are less than expected. In fact, they're darn-near catastrophic, because now I really am choking to death. As in, can't breathe at all. So I freak out a little and try swallowing a couple of times. It works--I can breathe now--but it hurts and now I've got lots of blood in my throat and I'm gagging. So I run into the bathroom and spit out the blood, expecting to see the dried sinus drainage I thought was clogging my throat. Nothing. Just blood and spit. But the back of my throat is screaming and I can feel something drooping down on the very back of my tongue. By this time, my wife is awake and getting a little scared because she can see I'm having trouble breathing. I briefly tell her what's going on as best I can, and ask her to grab a flashlight. She vanishes and comes back a moment later with the flashlight. "I can't see anything," she says, peering into my throat, "but it's all red and irritated."So I take the flashlight and angle the beam down my throat in the mirror. I don't see what I expect to see, but I do notice that my uvula is huge. It's literally about the size of my thumb and very misshapen. It becomes very clear that this is the source of my problem; my uvula is so swollen that it's literally resting on the back of my tongue and blocking my throat.I point this out to my wife, who immediately asks, "Are you going into anaphylactic shock?" Being allergic to the stings of certain kinds of bees, she is very familiar with anaphylactic shock and instantly recognizes that this is potentially one of the symptoms. "Do I need to call 911?""I don't think so," I tell her. "But why don't you call 'Ask a Nurse' and see what they say?" She hops to it, flipping through the phone book for the number to a local hospital. In the meantime, I jump onto the computer to do an internet search for "swollen uvula" to see if I can come up with anything.As it turns out, my wife strikes out. Hospitals in Michigan no longer do any kind of "Ask a Nurse" program as of January of this year because of the liability. (Damn lawyers!)I, on the other hand, have better luck. The first thing I find is Neill O'Brien's blog about his case of swollen uvula. He noted that he woke up with a dry mouth, probably because he'd been out drinking, and was in the same state of panic in which I found myself when I woke up with this fleshy abnormality this morning. Three things about his blog calm my nerves a bit: First, he says his friend has had this hundreds of times. That being the case, I'm assuming it's not the sort of thing that causes one to suffocate. And, really, how embarassing would that be, to suffocate on your own uvula? You could never tell your friends in the afterlife how you go there. You'd have to make something up, like "I was poisoned" or "I was kidnapped" or "I was beaten to death by a stripper's boobs." Anything other than "I choked to death on my own uvula."Second, he said he drank lots of water and the problem went away within a few hours. What a relief! I've got about a thousand things to do today, most of which involve talking and (oddly enough) breathing. I don't need this today.And, third, he said his post about this problem had generated thousands of hits and hundreds of comments. Again, a relief: I'm not the only one who has never heard of this and who was a little freaked out about it.My curiosity piqued, I did a bit more reading. Turns out, the drinking may have been Neill's problem: according to an article on "associated content", the most common reason for a swollen uvula is dehydration. The wikipedia says the same thing, and notes (correctly) that dehydration may be caused by simple drying of the mouth (which is probably what happened to me) or by consumption of lots of alcohol (which is what Neill says happened the night before his problem). A post from a doctor (or someone purporting to be a doctor) on the AskPhysicians.com site notes that "there is a college fraternity contest where much beer is drunk before going to sleep, then seeing who has the biggest uvula in the morning. There is apparently a relationship between uvula swelling and beer ingestion." Not that this relates to me; I don't drink often, and I wasn't drinking at all last night. More likely, I was sleeping on my back with my mouth gaping open, snoring like a chainsaw (another side effect of my crappy sinuses). This not only causes the uvula to dry out (because of the air passing over it), but also irritates it (because of the way the uvula is battered during snoring) and that combination of factors makes a swollen uvula a very strong possibility.So, if you're encountering this blog entry because you have a swollen uvula and you're a little freaked out, here's what I can tell you:1. Don't panic. (Hey, it's good advice for intergalactice hitchhikers, and it's good advice for people with uvulitis.)2. If you are having severe problems breathing--that is, if you might be going into anaphylactic shock due to a severe allergic reaction--go to the E.R. as soon as humanly possible. Although uvulitis is not itself dangerous, some of the other conditions that can cause a swollen uvula (such as anaphylactic shock) are potentially lethal.3. If the problem seems to be more one of straight-ahead uvulitis and it's more of an annoyance than anything else, then you can try the following remedies: Medicate with ibuprofen (such as Advil) to reduce the swelling. If there is a chance the swelling might be caused by (or lead to) a bacterial infection, gargle some iodized salt water. (This is a good precaution, anyway, as a prophylactic treatment to prevent such infections, which can occur when you have any kind of swelling in your mouth or throat.) Use throat drops and anesthetic sprays to reduce the pain and irritation. Drink a lot of water. I actually had a large latte this morning, and it seemed to help a lot. Don't eat or drink anything containing cream until the condition has passed. Cream can apparently cause mucus to build up in your mouth, and this would make the situation worse. If you think it's a potential allergic reaction (other than the kind that causes anaphylactic shock), take some anti-allergy medication such as Benedryl. (I didn't do this because I don't think it was an allergic reaction, plus Benedryl knocks me out cold.) 4. Try to breathe through your nose. This will not only make breathing easier (since, if your uvula is as swollen as mine, it's difficult to get air past your throat and into your trachea), but will also prevent the uvula from becoming dried out again.5. If you are still having a problem when more than twelve hours have passed, or if the condition becomes noticeably worse, or if you start having serious trouble breathing, contact a doctor immediately.In the meantime, you might do what I've decided to do: get in a good laugh or two about it. I found a great Tom Jones song parody from Mason Resnik called "The Ballad of Mason's Swollen Uvula" that made me smile. (I actually enjoyed the "Delilah" parody posted in one of the comments better.) I also found a bizarre suggestion that there might be a market for swollen uvula fetish porn, an idea for a "swollen uvula support group", and a description of the problem as "gagging on an alien." Funny!And now . . . off to slay the dragons of the day! My friend and business partner, Kathryn, is coming down today so that we can check out office space and furniture. Kathryn and I went to law school together and we've worked on a couple of cases together in our independent solo practices, and we've decided that we would do well to join forces and form our own firm. Ha! It takes some people years to become a senior partner in a law firm. We're both doing it in less than a year! The numbers look really good for this venture, based on what we're currently independently, and by joining forces we should be able to have a much more diversified practice and cut significant costs. It would also give us a little stability, which people in solo practice never have. We're both very excited about it.Also, my friend Alan is coming in from Kansas City to spend a few days at Casa de Shelton. Should be a lot of fun, assuming I get to spend some time with him between work, rehearsals (I'm playing Martin in the Fenton Village Players production of Social Security in mid-October), and business planning.So, dear reader, have a fun-filled, swollen-uvula-free day! Wed, 20 Sep 2006 06:55:37 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=49 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=48 I promised I'd be better about the blog, so here I am. Like anyone cares. Well, obviously, you do because you're reading this. But it's not like I'm breaking earth-shattering news here or writing great works that leave everyone hanging on the edge of their seat, wanting more.Or . . . am I?No, no. Decidedly not.Nevertheless, one of the things I did promise to those two or three people who regularly read this thing because it's about the only way we can keep in touch anymore is that I would be better about putting stuff here. So here goes.The worst part is . . . it's not my fault!In my last post, I bemoaned the problem of not having enough time to breathe. Still true. And for the last two days, I've been getting further and further behind without any chance to get any actual billable work in. And the worst part is . . . it's not my fault!Yesterday: Been working with co-counsel out of town on a case and exchanging docs over the internet via email. This is inherently insecure, of course, so we've been encrypting them using GPG. I, of course, have multiple computers and so I have to install it on each of them. The one that I didn't have it installed on was my main computer (oddly enough; I'd been using my laptop for most of this stuff), and since I was working (or trying to work) on the main computer yesterday, I needed to install it. Usually this is a five-minute task. Unfortunately, it was absolutely refusing to install properly. In the meantime, Kathryn (my co-counsel) kept sending me stuff that I needed to see and it was not forwarding properly to my laptop's email account, so I needed to get it installed. This ended up being about a two-hour task.Then I finally get to work. First, I have a letter I have to write to a defendant againt whom I obtained a judgment but who hasn't paid up yet. I go through my file and can't find the judgement. I suddenly realize that I don't have any memory of actually receiving the judge's order in the mail, so I call the clerks office. Their phones are down, so I have to call around to five different places before I can find someone who can transfer me over to the right person. I finally talk to her, and she remembers me and recalls that for some reason I've been having trouble getting mail from there. She says she'd like to help, but the computers are also down. I finally convince her to grab the case file, and after a few minutes she does. She comes back to the phone, talks to me while she's flipping through, and eventually announces she can't find the order. At this point, I start to get a little nervous: I did obtain a judgment against this guy, right? My brain's not playing tricks, is it? Finally, she says, "Let me try one more place." Lo and behold, she finds it! Total time spent on this: 45 minutes.So now on to what I was actually planning to spend most of my day doing: website work. I've still got roughly 80 websites that I need to do revisions on before I can put this project I've been working on since January to bed. One of them has had some fairly major revisions since the first draft, so I get to work on it. Two hours later, I'm just about done . . . and the thing suddenly crashes. When I try to open the file, I get a message that it's corrupted and can't be fixed. So I open the automatic backup file. Same crap. I spend another thirty to forty minutes trying to restore it, all to no avail. So I have to start over again. That's another 2½ hours of my day just gone.Near the end of the day, I get a call from a defendant in one of my junk fax cases. Gives me some cock and bull story about how I shouldn't have filed suit against him because he had called me after I sent him a demand letter and "the lady" had told him we would send the paperwork to settle. Okay, there are two "ladies" who do work for me from time to time, and only one of them (my wife) ever answers the phone, and she's only done that three or four times. I know who was on each of those calls, and it wasn't this schmoe. He then starts feeding me a line about how this is the first time his company has done this, blah blah blah. It's obvious that this guy has no idea how much evidence I've got against his company; they've been doing this for a long, long time. So I told him we'd still settle for the original amount in our demand letter. He said he'd get back to me today. So far, that hasn't happened.So, okay, that wasn't a waste of time, but it was non-billable time and it took most of an hour.And in between, I had to answer phone calls, type letters, print envelopes . . . none of which was billable. If I could have paid someone to come in and spend an hour doing my printing and such, I probably could have recovered another hour. I so need a secretary.So that was yesterday. Today:Received a letter from the circuit court in Washtenaw County. Actually, it was one of my self-addressed, stamped envelopes and inside were two copies of a motion I had filed in a case. The problem is that they're not signed; these are motions for alternative service of process and issuance of a second Summons and Complaint, and the former has to be submitted 14 days before the judge will sign them. So, when I mailed them in, I included multiple copies (the court charges $1 a page for copies, so I wanted to avoid paying a fortune just to get true copies I could serve on my e'er-evasive defendant) and a letter asking that they be mailed back to me once the judge had signed the order. So I have to call up to the court again. Again, can't get through on the phones and have to call a semi-random extension to find someone who can forward me properly. Finally get through to the court clerk, who says it looks like someone just messed up, but thinks I could talk to the judge's clerk and she might be able to get it worked out. She transfers me over. The judge's clerk has no record of my motion, which is bad since the first Summons and Complaint has expired between the time I filed my motion and today. She sends me back to the main clerk's office (nicely, of course). She digs around and can't find any record that the motion was sent up. So she decides to send it with an explanation that it was timely filed but misplaced in the clerk's office. She also promises to make multiple copies for me once it's signed so I can serve my defendant. Resolved . . . I think. After only an hour.So back to the website. Or so I think. I try to open the spreadsheet on which I do my billing/invoicing for the website work. It's corrupted. I spend another forty-five minutes trying to recover it, all to no avail. So, I grab one from my backup. It's about a week old and doesn't include my hours from yesterday or Monday, but I can remember what they are (since I didn't have very many), so no big. As I am literally making the first change, the phone rings. Client has an emergency matter than needs to be taken care of. Needs me to draft some documents and get them sent out today. I'm happy to do it; no problem. He's a friend, so I agree to do it for half my usual rate. (It's for a good cause, actually, so I don't mind at all.) I spend a few minutes on the phone talking to the right people and type up the document, which I have been told to send via email. No problem, except that a few minutes after I send it, the client calls and says there was no attachment. Bwah? There is on the copy in my "sent" folder. So I re-send it. Get another call: it's there, but it's corrupted. UGH! So I send it AGAIN. This time it seems to work. All of this takes about an hour and a half, but I've already agreed to only charge for an hour (which is actually almost exactly how long it really takes to do the real work). So I lose another half-hour.Then I go to print the letter, and my printer jams. Jams bad. Takes another half-hour to clear it out.Get a call back from the State Bar. I've been having trouble getting on the Criminal Law ListServ. Turns out the reason is that I was never enrolled in the criminal law section of the Bar, despite the form I sent in requesting this be done months ago. So another half-hour wasted trying to straighten this out.So thus far my planned eight hour day, which is supposed to be (for today) one hour of law and seven hours of web design, has turned into an hour of law, 3 or so hours of wasted time, and no website work to speak of yet. Ugh.I did finally get about four hours of website work done. So that's good for today. Doesn't at all make up for the time I lost earlier in the week, or the time I'm going to lose tomorrow when I have to travel to Clinton County to sit in on a pretrial for which I'm not getting paid (long story), but it's something at least.Advertising? Oh,yeah . . . I'm advertising!In the time today in which I was not working on websites or losing time, I actually got two new clients from my newspaper ad that I started running this week. Gotta tell you: I'm impressed. One was a direct result--"I saw your ad and I've kinda got myself into some trouble, so I thought I'd call"--and the other was indirect ("I've been meaning to call you so I can get this done, and when I saw your ad it reminded me to call you"), but I'd say that the ad has already paid for itself.New phoneAnd tonight . . . I get a new cell phone. Can't really afford it, but kinda gotsta do it. I've been using the same cell phone from Kalamazoo since I moved here over a year ago (we renewed the contract for two years right before we decided it was time to start thinking about moving) so it's still on the 269 area code. That's a bummer. Plus, all of our family and friends here are on Verizon--not Sprint, which was what was big on the west side of the state--so we want to move over to Verizon to keep the phone bill down. And today, Sher's phone broke in half. Literally fell apart. So now, off to get a new phone. Ugh. I hate buying a new cell phone. I'm especially going to hate the 4 months of double bills. But, whaddayagonnado? Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:00:56 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=48 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=47 Wow! How long has it been since I posted something on my blog? June-something? Well, it's been crazy. Crazy for me and crazy for the rest of the planet, I guess you could say. So, for those who give a rodent's posterior about anything that might be going on with me, here's the latest:Okay, back in April some time I think I hinted that the law practice was starting to take off. At this point, I think it's taxied to the runway, taken off, and is now cruising at 30,000 feet. You may now move freely about the cabin.Here's what's happened: I started doing some appointed criminal defense work in January. At the time, I was still thinking that what I wanted to do was join a small firm, practice there for three years or so, and then strike off on my own. The idea, of course, was that this would give me a chance to practice with someone more or less looking over my shoulder and when I was comfortable on my own, I could start my solo practice or maybe go into practice with some friends. The problem with this idea was a practical one: very small firms like I wanted to join (I'm talking five or so lawyers) tend to be extremely difficult to get into. You literally have to be related to someone in the firm to get in. And not being related to anyone, or really even knowing anyone on this side of the state, that turned out to be a practically insurmountable barrier. I did have a couple of interviews, and in both cases I was told I was their top pick, but in both cases the firm eventually decided not to hire anyone.I was asked to interview at a few big law firms, and I went. The interviews went well, and I was invited back to second and third (and in once case a fourth) interviews, but there was only one firm that I even really felt good about. The rest all seemed to be in pursuit of the almighty dollar at the expense of any kind of personal life. That's not my thing; I actually love spending time with my family, and getting rich is not something that's really high on my list of priorities. Plus, I didn't go to law school to get rich; I went because I knew there were regular working stiffs like me who were getting screwed on a regular basis because no lawyer would talk to them, and I wanted to change that if I could. So after the second interview, I started asking questions about "What if my kid is sick and I need to leave?" and "What's your policy on pro bono work?" and "Do you ever participate in low-income law clinics?" Suddenly I'd get a lot of, "We don't have time for those kinds of things because we're here to make money" and "We help people enough by taking cases on a contingency basis", usually with more than a hint of defensiveness. And that would be where my interviews with big law firms ended. All of which was fine with me, actually. I already knew I didn't want to work at a big firm; I've got friends who have done that or are currently doing it, and they have nothing but horror stories. The big firm thing? Thanks, but not my cup of tea. One other thing that did attract me was working in a prosecutor's office. The thing is this: I love the practice of criminal law. I'm drawn to criminal defense work because I have a very strong belief in the necessity of a fair trial for every defendant, but I've been very impressed with the prosecutors I've met and the way that they really do care about the civil rights of defendants and about making sure all trials are fair. (Most prosecutors I've met fall into this category. I've met a couple who were out to nail anyone they could, right or wrong, and by any means necessary, but they are the minority by far.) I was actually offered and accepted a job at a prosecutor's office while I was still in law school, but as I think I've already related in an earlier post, the prosecutor quit and his replacement withdrew all of the offers that had previously been made.So, I started looking for jobs in prosecutors offices. Of course, several positions opened up on the west side of the state right after I moved to Genesee County from Kalamazoo. Most of the prosecutors offices are in hiring freezes at the moment, so job openings in these places are rare. Genesee County did have an opening, for which I applied. I got a letter back several weeks later saying that due to budget constraints, they were not going to hire anyone after all but would reconsider that decision sometime around September.So, anyway, there I was: trying to find a position in a small firm, trying not to get sucked into big law firm hell, and in a location where no prosecutors offices were hiring at all. This is when the court appointments started trickling in: first a concealed weapons case, then a UDAA, then a couple of drug cases, and so on. As I started handling these cases, I got to know some attorneys and discovered that I really didn't need to be in a law firm to get the kind of advice and hand-holding that I felt I needed. There are plenty of attorneys who are more than happy to help out and to give any help they can. For all the crap we take in this profession, it turns out that most of us (especially criminal defense lawyers) are actually very nice.So the public defender cases started to come in. Then I started getting referrals from my clients in these cases. (As it turns out, people who are arrested for drug offenses tend to know other people who use drugs, and those people tend to get arrested and ask around for the names of lawyers.) So now I was doing court-appointed and retained criminal defense. In the meantime, I'd also started pursuing junk fax cases for a few clients. (This is kind of a personal thing for me; I hate junk faxes. Hate them. Mostly because they used to war dial my phone at 3 a.m. looking for fax machines. Plus, from a practical standpoint, these are such easy cases and they are so pervasive a problem that I could easily make a good living doing nothing but these cases if I wanted.) Well, these clients ended up having other issues--usually contract disputes, with a couple of property law issues thrown in--so they retained me to handle these cases. In one case, a guy I sued for a client ended up calling me and asking me to handle some matters for him (which I was happy to do once I'd gotten the appropriate waivers from my client to make sure there were no conflicts of interest). Then friends of mine from law school who went to work at specialty firms started sending me referrals for cases that their firms didn't handle: criminal law, family law, employment law, and so on. Then non-law-school-friends started calling me about legal matters, and that led to more cases.Around March, I got involved in a local community theatre group, the Fenton Village Players, and landed a role in their performance of Neil Simon's The Good Doctor. People in the cast and crew found out I was an attorney and started referring their friends to me. Then people who came to the shows saw in the cast bios that I was an attorney and started asking for my card after the show. I've gotten at least five cases just from being in that show.So since January, I've handled something like 45 cases and I'm receiving referrals almost daily now. Somewhere along the way I realized that I didn't need to look for a place to start practicing law; I was already doing it. So I have now plunged headlong into the solo practice of law. I got a phone line for the practice, I set up a website (which is still something of a work in progress, to be honest, but it does the trick), got my Lexis subscription, and my advertising campaign starts this weekend.My main concern at this point is that I'm getting busy enough that I need to hire a secretary, but I'm not yet making enough money to hire a secretary. I'm hoping the advertising will solve that problem and bring in enough new clients to push me over the edge where I can really afford to bring on some staff and make things more efficient. (For instance, there's no reason I should spend half my time printing envelopes, typing standard letters, and transcribing my case notes into my case management database.)So that's the law half of my life. Before I was a lawyer I was a website hosting/design and desktop publishing guy. That business started exploding for me around mid-December, and I am in the midst of designing 100+ websites for part of a large contract that started in January, with several other projects also in the mix. I ended up having to contract a friend of mine to do some of the work for me due to my schedule. In the process, I discovered that he not only does very good work, but also has the ability to do things that are far beyond my abilities, such as creation of sophisticated web applications. I was debating on whether to really promote the design business, or to just let it become a part-time vocation that mostly allowed me to service my existing customers. Being able to bring this guy on has convinced me that what I should really do is promote the business and hire some staff, so this weekend marks the beginning of local advertising for this business as well. With a little luck, I'll be able to increase the volume to the point where I can hire staff to do most of the production work and I can fade back into a mostly managerial role to concentrate on the law practice.And, in the midst of all of that, I've had to try to find time to breathe. I try to pencil in a couple of inhalations around 9:35 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and schedule a couple minutes to exhale on Friday afternoons. Of course, those appointments end up getting moved around, too.The long and short of it is: all of this has made it very difficult for me to keep up with the blog. But I'll try to do better. Sat, 12 Aug 2006 18:23:38 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=47 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=46 Long time, no blog. That whole pesky "life" thing, you know? Annoying.Okay, so here's what's going on, with added bits of randomness thrown in just to spice it up:SAMBA Proves It: I Have No RhythmRemember a while back I talked about having problems with my linux box? As a refresher, I have an old P3 machine onto which I threw Slackware to use as a file server. Had trouble installing the packages, but eventually got it working, and then I threw on the latest version of KDE and it killed my box. I basically started over--reinstalled Slackware--and got it working fabulously. Worked flawlessly as a file server for several weeks. Well, my other computers (over the years I've accumlated several, a couple of which are still useful enough to use regularly) were starting to run low on hard drive space, so I got a new hard drive, swapped out hard drives to have more space on all of my boxes, and put a new 40 GB hard drive into my linux box so my file server would have enough hard drive space to actually serve a decent number of files.Guess what? That broke Slackware, too. Couldn't get it to work AT ALL.That ended up being kind of the final straw for me. I had a copy of Mandriva, so I threw it on. Once I figured out that Mandriva doesn't like to use any disk partition that it didn't create, the installation went flawlessly. I could even install packages from within KDE and Gnome. Unfortunately, though, I've run into two problems:1. I can't get the sound to work. ALSACONF doesn't seem to be installed by default, and I can't seem to find a legit download of it anywhere. Not a big deal, but I'd like to have the sound work just, well, because I would.2. I can't get SAMBA to work. This is kind of a problem, because the point of this is to make the box be a file server, after all. SAMBA worked just fine almost immediately under Slackware, so I'm not sure where I'm running into issues here. My best guess is that it's something to do with the way Mandriva handles security. SAMBA launches just fine, sees other computers on the network, is able to access those computers and copy files from them, and is able to be seen on the network. Unfortunately, it asks for a username/password every time a Windows box tries to connect to it, and no matter what username/password combo I use, I can't get in. I've tried creating users for each Windows box and using their usernames and passwords. I've tried forcing users into an account/group with full access to everything. Nothing works. One person has now recommended that I start over (yet again) with SUSE, and another has recommended that I do it all over with Ubuntu. I'd really just like to have my box work as it is without reinstalling one more time and having to go through that whole mess yet again. UUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!Meanwhile, I'm looking at making one of my laptops a linux box. It's a fairly recent HP lappie with a Windows install that seems to be rather corrupted, and HP shipped the wrong recovery disks with it, so I can't just reinstall. (They also want to charge me $300 to replace the disks; I could fight them on that and win, but I really don't want to go to the trouble.) I just need to verify that the hardware is compatible, and I think I'm going to do it. (This particular lappie runs very slow on Windows, but when I boot it with Knoppix it seems to run fabulously, so I think that's a pretty good indicator that it will run great under linux.)Power of AttorneyThe law practice has been keeping busy. Wrapped up several criminal cases just in time to pick up about ten more. At least three of them are likely to go all the way to a trial, I think. And I'm probably going to win. They've all got some pretty good facts. And when it comes right down to it, a trial is really about the facts. I don't care how good of a lawyer you are; if you don't have good facts, you're not going to win. Had an interesting experience yesterday. I was scheduled for a trial on a junk fax case, and it ended up being more like a two-hour pretrial. The judge, who I'd never met before, really impressed me. Seems very smart, very engaged in the case, open-minded on the issues, and interested in what the attorneys have to say. I wish most judges were like that, but so far I've learned that that's not always the case. He hadn't anticipated some of the thornier issues surrounding this case (TCPA cases look very simple on the surface, but they present a lot of unique legal issues), so we spent most of the time arguing over administrative law, statutory construction, and agency theory issues. I now have to get a brief in for my motion to preclude the defendant's defense (that there's a "common carrier" exclusion to the ban on junk faxes, which is not that case . . . or at least, wasn't the case when the fax in question was sent), and I'm really looking forward to drafting it. This is the kind of law I live for: complex legal theory that I can argue all day long. I love this stuff! I've been having quite a bit of success on these cases lately. Still haven't lost one, which really isn't surprising when you think about it: like I said, good facts make the case. That's why I always go in with good facts, or I don't go in. And for some reason, that seems to surprise defendants; they seem to think I'm bluffing on these cases or that I won't take the time to really pursue or prep for them because it's not worth the trouble for me to collect $500 or $1,500 or whatever the amount is (which usually isn't a whole lot). That's a stupid approach to take, anyway, because I take what I do seriously and I prepare for every case, no matter how small, as if it were capital case. It's a responsibility thing.Besides that, look, here's the thing: I take these junk fax cases because I've had enough. I'm tired of these thieves--because, let's call junk faxing what it is: theft--taking other people's property and reaping huge profits as a result. I'm tired of being awakened at 2 a.m. by someone trying to send me a junk fax. I'm tired of replacing my toner and paper because they've used it all up. I'm tired of missing faxes I actually WANT because the machine was clogged with this unwanted crap that I had to pay to receive. I've had enough. And I want it to stop. So if you send me a junk fax, or you send one of my clients a junk fax, I will sue you. And you will lose. And you will fork over a chunk of your ill-gained money to me so that I can sue other junk faxers until eventually people get the idea that this is illegal and wrong and a nuisance and maybe, just maybe, they'll stop doing it.What's funny is that I've had three defendants now try to play the "it's all about the money" card: "you're just pursuing these cases for the money." Two have even attempted (or pretended to attempt) to settle by donating money to charity, and one offered to settle by putting a consent agreement on the record that simply listed his consideration as promising not to junk fax anymore (which, if he did, would make him liable for contempt of court). When I refused those offers (which were, of course, not even serious offers), these defendants tried to assert my rejection as proof that this is "about the money." Two responses to that:1. Even if was about the money . . . so what? You steal other people's property to make money. Just like you, I have to make a living. You make yours stealing from people. I make mine enforcing the law. There's nothing wrong with that at all. If there were, cops and prosecutors would work for free.2. If this was "all about the money", I wouldn't be pursuing these cases. I make far, far more as both a website designer and an attorney than most of these cases pay. I charge $50/hour as a web designer, and $125/hour as a lawyer. Business has been good for both of my occupations lately. I typically spend twenty or more hours on each one of these junk fax cases and end up getting paid somewhere between $250 and $1,500 for that work. In other words, I usually lose money by pursuing these cases; the money I do recover just cushions the blow. But they still try it. Well, you know, cry me a river if you want, but until this crap stops, I'm not going away. The World Cup, Baby!I'm not much of a sports fan, but I gotta say I am all about soccer. And the World Cup? So much better than the lame old Super Bowl! (I'm gonna get in trouble for saying that, I know, but there ya be.) Now, if only we could get a famous pop singer to bare her breasts, it would be perfect.More Theatre StuffThe Fenton Village Players recently held more auditions; this time the play is Once Upon a Mattress. I decided not to audition for that one (the last play was a lot of work and I needed a break), but I am going to be auditioning for the play they're presenting this fall: Social Security. Eventually, I'm hoping to finish the play I'm writing (Midlife Crisis, a comedy about the end of the world) and convince them to put that one on. PoliticsNo indictment against Rove? You gotta be kidding me! He really is a sith, isn't he? "These are not the White House aides you're looking for . . . " (Okay, true fans of Star Wars will get that. For the rest of you: I did mention I'm a geek, right?) Wed, 14 Jun 2006 07:46:41 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=46 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=45 So here's the deal: I'm fed up "to here" with the tactics that right-wingers seem to think are acceptable in getting their way. Cases in point:The NSA creating a database of the phone records of all Americans. As reported yesterday by USA Today, the NSA has amassed a vast database of the phone calls made by tens of millions of Americans--virtually everyone who is a customer of AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth--to "create a database of every call ever made" within the United States. The data was apparently provided under some kind of contractual deal with the three companies. Only Qwest declined to participate in the program. Now, look, these phone records contain important data. If anyone ever wants a copy of these records, they have to obtain a court order. I should know; I try to obtain telephone records all the time as part of my job as an attorney. In fact, what I'm usually after is just the name of the person or company that owns a given telephone number (something far less intrusive than the number of calls I made, who I made them to, when I made them, how long I was on the phone, and so on), and for that I have to use a subpoena. So, basically, if you made a phone call within the last four years, Big Brother knows about it. This includes all of your phone calls to your Aunt Marsha, your doctor's office, your mistress, medical centers, phone sex lines, the offices of political parties, the anonymous abortion hotline, your lawyer, your bookie, your AA sponsor, and anyone and everyone you talked with.But "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all [of the Bush administraiton's] activities"? What definition of "privacy" are they using? How is obtaining a record of every single law-abiding American's phone records not an invasion of each of those American's privacy rights?Of course, George II doesn't think there is such a thing as a "right to privacy" because the words "right to privacy" never appear in black and white. He doesn't think there is such a thing as an unenumerated, fundamental right, or that the interplay of the enumerated rights creates necessary implied rights, or that the very concept of democracy requires privacy protections. (See, that's the difference between liberals and conservatives: liberals think everyone should have the right to do anything they want unless the government has a compelling reason to curb that behaviour, and conservatives think nobody should be allowed to do anything unless the government specifically grants that right.)So, bottom line, if you don't think Americans have any privacy rights, nothing you do would invade the "privacy of ordinary Americans", and you can "fiercely protect" them pretty easily because they don't exist. Fooey.And while 63% of Americans apparently support the program as they currently understand it, the public (as usual) isn't looking beyond the surface to consider the implications. I wonder what would happen to those poll numbers if you reminded them of these four things:1. The Bush administration has a track record of releasing secret--even highly classified--information to smear its political opponents and adversaries. (Witness the Valerie Plaime incident.)2. Several media reports have found that hard drives containing highly classified material--including the same kind of data that the NSA is now collecting--on the black market in Afghanistan and other countries.3. We have no idea who will be in charge of the government in the future, or who will have access to that data (including potential hackers), and what they might want to do with it.4. The government's "do not fly" list has erroneously blacklisted hundreds of Americans who did nothing wrong, so God only knows what mistakes they might make in mining the telephone data they've collected.I've spoken with a couple of people who contacted AT&T, and both of them said that the AT&T rep said "If you aren't doing anything wrong, this won't affect you."Won't affect you? The government now has very detailed, very private, potentially embarassing information on you that is out of your control. But it won't affect you?This is a problem, people! A big one! Unfortunately, I am under contract with AT&T right now for another six months. But based on this incident (and various others, including a recent spat over my DSL service and the way the company has treated more than one of my clients), I'll be switching my internet service back to cable and my telephone service to Vonage or another VOIP system at my very first opportunity.The Bush administration covering up other illegal spying. The Department of Justice has been told it can't investigate whether other NSA programs on domestic spying were illegal because the Bush administration won't give the investigators--lawyers who already work within the Justice Department, and who should easily have the credentials to have top secret access to virtually everything--the necessary security clearance. Huh? The NSA can't deny anyone that kind of access. These are both executive branch offices. The office of the President can grant the clearance at the snap of a finger.Bush administration using the "states secret" privilege to block civil suits for egregious abuse of people's rights. Consider the case of Khalid al-Masri: al-Masri is a German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped by CIA in Macedonia, flown to Afghanistan and tortured for information on terrorist activity. Then--oops!--the CIA found out they had the wrong guy, so they dumped him on the top of a hill in Albania. Everyone knows the story is true; the Bush administration even admits it. But now the Bush administration doesn't want to pay for its mistake.See, Mr. al-Masri lost a lot in the five months he was detained and tortured. Not only was he subjected to physical pain and humiliation, his family was without income for nearly half a year. In fact, upon returning to Germany, he discovered that his family had been forced to move back to Lebanon. They thought he had simply abandoned them. So he decided to do what anyone whose rights have been violated should do if the violator won't make him whole: he filed a lawsuit, seeking compensation.And now, the government wants to claim the "states secret" privilege to have his suit dismissed and prevent him from recovering anything for his loss. This isn't an isolated incident; in 2004, the government pulled a similar stunt when Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator, sued under the whistleblower's act (she was fired for complaining that national security may have been compromised by shoddy practices in the translation section), and said it will do the same thing in the Electronic Frontier Foundation case (which involves basically the same NSA telephone data program mentioned earlier).If America is supposed to be a country of laws, and we are (as George II says constantly) under the "rule of law", is there any reason the government should be above the law? Especially in cases like these, where people have really suffered and had substantial, quantifiable losses?It's just wrong. Completely wrong. This is the kind of thing that happens in countries where we have despots, not democracy.Threats of physical violence to silence critics. This Sunday's episode of 60 Minutes will feature an interview with country music stars The Dixie Chicks, in which they talk about death threats they received after being critical of the Bush administration. Now, I grew up listening to country music, I worked in country radio for many years, and one of my best friends is a country singer, but as anyone who knows me will tell you, I am no fan of country music. I've never really been able to explain why eloquently, but I think Martie Maguire sums it up nicely in the interview: "Since country music's turned into this redneck theme, it's become kind of a negative thing in my mind, where I didn't think it was negative before. I think for a while, a lot of artists were doing a lot of great things . . . that were broadening the audience so that country was cool. So it makes me sad that it's kind of reverted back to a place that I'm not that proud of. And this is coming from a true country fan. I can't listen to the radio right now."I think it's this "redneck mentality" that she describes that really turns me off to the genre: we're right, you're wrong, and we have the right to threaten, intimidate, or phyiscally harm anyone who is different from us. As Maguire points out, this went away for awhile, and that was a period of time in which I was almost ready to admit that I liked some of the music. (Between you and me, there were quite a few songs I did like.) But since the whole Iraq thing, the "redneck mentality" seems to have crept back in.Attempts to use public schools to preach religion . . . again. CBS news reports that Georgia has just passed a law requiring the state's department of education to create a curriculum for the study of the Bible in public schools. I have no problem with the intellectual study of the Bible as a historic and literary documents in public schools. Heck, I have no problem with the study of the Bible as a religious text in private parochial schools. But the program seems to be, as was the Dover school board creationism fiasco, a vehicle being used by right-wingers to sneak religious instruction into the official curriculum of public schools. In other words, using tax money to establish an official version religious viewpoint as the accepted or official viewpoint, and promote that religious viewpoint at taxpayer expense.The funny thing is, even the right-wingers can't agree on which right-wing view is the "correct" Christian view. So if even they can't agree on who's right, why should we be forced to adhere to their views?And the list goes on and on and on and on. Call me crazy (many have), but is this freedom? Freedom to be monitored, tortured, told what to believe, and threatened if we have the unmitigated gall to not play along? If terrorists "hate us because of our freedoms" as George II claims, is this his solution: get rid of the freedoms so they won't hate us anymore?The "Law Thing" (Okay, Several "Law Things")Four of the five people I know who took the February Bar Exam passed; the fifth missed by three points. I feel very badly for the fifth person, because she is very bright and knows the law and would be as good a lawyer as anyone else I know. She's planning to appeal, and I'm going to help her. Hopefully there will be some good news on that later.In the meantime, my friend Kathryn, who was one of my friends who passed the Bar, has asked me to be her sponsor. (In Michigan, anyone who wants to be admitted to the State Bar--and thus be a licensed attorney--has to have an attorney in good standing sponsor him/her.) What an honor! It should be a lot of fun.Meanwhile, I am noticing a trend among people who end up on the wrong side of lawsuits I've filed: they all want to claim they were never served. Never mind the fact that I have their signature on a postal receipt, or a recording of the service or two credible witnesses (if it was done by personal service), or other evidence that they did receive the documents. It seems that what a lot of people want to do is pretend they never got the thing, and when they get defaulted, claim they never knew about it. How often does this work? Never.And yet they still try. What's up with that?I Hate Buying a New CarMy wife is stuck in a horrible lease for her car. She's about 20,000 miles over what she's supposed to have at the end of her lease with two years to go, and she has to drive an hour to and from work each day, plus all the time she spends on the road since she's doing outside advertising sales. So we go to the Chevy dealer in Fenton and find a used Buick Rendezvous. We check it out, and it looks nice. We sit down and work out a deal with the salesweasel. Then, after we've settled on the price, we find out the car has double the miles it said on the sticker. "Oh, it's a clerical error," he says. It's still a good deal, even with the higher miles, so we let it go (albeit hesitantly, knowing that this was probably planned all along to get more money). My wife gets a call the next day saying, "We're all set, we've got your payment to the $330 where you wanted it. You can pick it up on Saturday." So far, so good, right? Yeah, except for the call the next day saying, "Oh, we made a mistake, and the payment is going to be a little higher than we thought. It's going to be $440. But you still like the car, right?"So now I have to look into the Michigan Consumer Protection Act and see if we have a cause of action. Ugh. That bugs me.And, the thing is, her car is really in great shape. It's my car that's got over 115,000 miles on it and needs to be replaced. And it's going to be paid off within the next month or two. But I have law school loans kicking back in and there's no way I can afford to pay those and a car loan, especially since there don't seem to be any reasonable cars available that would have a payment of under $300 these days.Eh. But enough whining. I've got a nice house, a new barbecue grill (which is sweeeeeet!), a car that runs, a decent income, a great family . . . life is actually pretty good at the moment. So, Happy Mothers Day to my mom (and, of course, my wife) and all the other moms out there. And just remember when you call your mom to wish her a Happy Mother's Day: the NSA will know you're doing it. Fri, 12 May 2006 08:57:47 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=45 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=44 It's been a long time since I wrote anything in this blog. The craziness of life has pretty much sapped all of my free time: between the website design work, the law practice, what seems to be a perpetual need to do housework, and the infatiguable four-year-old it seems I have no time to sit down and breathe, let alone write anything anyone would be remotely interested in reading. But this morning I've got a break, so here are some semi-random, semi-coherent thoughts on life, the practice of law, website spammers, and maybe a little more:I hate blog spammers. I've spent a great deal of time this last month or so fighting alongside SYSOP to get rid of all of the blog spam and prevent more of it. As a result, we've had to delete all of the trackbacks in the blogs (including the actual useful ones, which sucks), IP ban what amounts to most of an entire domain range (which may be preventing many legit visitors from coming to this site), restrict posting of comments to registered users, and perform a couple of other tasks designed to circumvent spam. We tried just making users have their comments need approval before they could be posted, but that didn't work; although nobody could see them but the administrators, there were still hundreds of spam comments showing up daily in the bucket, making it impossible to find the legit ones. So, if you want to comment, you have to register now. This mentality of the spammers--that there's nothing wrong with stealing from other people (because that's what they are doing; we paid for the server and all of the design work, and we're willing to sell advertising on the site)--is the same one that inspires people to send junk faxes. Although I can't sue the spammers (thanks, Congress! *grumble*) I can sue the junk faxers, and am doing so with great success. If anyone wants to know why, now they know. And speaking of suing junk faxers . . . Ooo law law! The law practice thing is getting fun. I'm handling several criminal defense cases at the moment, have already handled several others, and am currently involved in a number of cases ranging from family law (which I said I would never do, but here I am) to junk fax pursuit to contract disputes and some other stuff, too. So far, I have yet to lose a case. I know that's going to change eventually, but since most of what I'm doing is junk fax cases and those are pretty darn easy to win (once you track down the perps), the record is pretty good thus far. In fact, I entered a default for $12,000 and change yesterday against a junk faxer from Texas. Since I do most junk fax cases on a 50% contingency, that's $6,000 for me once we collect. Not a bad deal.Speaking of lawsuits, I'm pretty sure this is a compliment: I sued a guy and his company for a client a few weeks back, and after the defendant tried to wiggle his way out only to discover that I wasn't going to let that happen, he settled the case. About a week later I get a call from the defendant wanting me to be his lawyer on several matters completely unrelated to the case on which we had sued him. When the other side goes, "Dude, I should have him as my lawyer!", I think that's a good thing.In the meantime, I've started working on the website for my practice. (It's hard to get the time to do so in any great chunks due to existing website design and legal clientele, but I'm making progress.) The idea behind the site is that it won't just be for me, since there are far too many areas of law in which to practice for me to be able to handle everything. Rather, it's going to be a resource for people who want to learn more about the law, law students, my fellow attorneys, and others, but it will also have my information there, as well. I'm going to invite other attorneys to write articles for the site to promote their practice, with link to their sites. It's far, far, far from done, but you can look at a preview of it if you want. How bizarre is this? In November, I blogged about the worst way I've ever lost a job: I showed up for the first day to discover the building had burned down and the guy who was hiring me had been killed in the fire. Well, here's the latest: according to a local TV station, the guy set the fire himself. Another station reports that he did it to destroy his files because he was about to lose his law license for a second time. If this is true, all I can say is that the guy was a genius. Pure genius. Doing it by design. The web design work has taken off lately, and I'm actually considering hiring an assistant. I've got roughly 100 sites on the block to either create from scratch or greatly modify, so that's keeping me pretty darn busy. Nevertheless, I'm still flat broke. How in the world do I work so many hours at a decent wage and still not have any money? It's not like I'm living a lavish lifestyle or blowing my money on crazy, stupid things. Just the basic bills--mortgage, phone/internet, cell phone, gas/electric, water, car (which is almost paid off!), insurance, daycare, and cable--are killing me. I don't get it.Tax relief. At least the "poor man's saving account" is going to help me out some. My tax refund for this year is going to be the biggest it's ever been, and should be enough to pay off all of the pending bills and then some. Huzzah!It's good to be the dad. Zach (my son) had his fourth birthday a couple weeks ago, and he is the coolest four-year-old ever. Friendly, polite, smart, affectionate, talkative . . . you just can't beat it! I took him to the dentist the other day and he was perfect. Did everything the dentist and assistant told him to do without any flinching, argument, or anything. It was amazing; I kept wondering who the little boy in the dentist chair was and where my kid was. Now that it's summer, we can go outside and play some more. One of my favorite things to do with him is ride bikes, and we spend several hours on almost every afternoon riding around after I pick him up from daycare. Ah, sometimes, it's good to be the dad!Here we go again . . . So the Bush administration wants to drop nukes on Iran. And, you know, I mean, sure. Why not? We've done about everything else humanly possible to piss off the rest of the planet. Why not just go all the way and drop nukes on a third-world country while we're at it? There's no better way for us to lose what few friends we have left. And since George II has decided that we're going to be the lone wolf cowboy country, it's really become necessary at this point to get rid of all of our friends. (After all, how can you be a "lone wolf" if you have friends and allies?) Genius. Pure genius.Rumsfeld has to go. Seriously. The guy is a menace, he's been a menace from Day One, and he just gets more and more crazy. Go, Rummy, and take Bush with ya! Sat, 15 Apr 2006 06:44:40 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=44 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=42 I know, I know . . . I've been neglecting the blog. Well, to be honest, that's largely because I've been helping in the effort to get rid of all of the trackback and comment spam that's been blasting this site (and almost every other site that carries blogs), and I thought it would be counterproductive to just add more threads to keep track of until we had it under control. I think that point has been reached, however (for a while, at least), so I'm back.I know that I usually yammer on about politic and law and sometimes science education, but today I'd like to be a little more light-hearted (although there is a lot to talk about, from the Senate Democrats' apparent lack of blackbone to the Republicans making at least a show of demanding George II disclose his contacts with Jack Abramoff): the theatre.As it turns out, you will all have a chance to see me, if you wish, in the first half of March, and all you have to do is take a little trip out to Fenton, Michigan and buy some tickets. I'll be playing the role of "the writer" (i.e., Anton Chekhov) in the Fenton Village Players performance of Neil Simon's The Good Doctor. The show will run for two weeks starting on March 3, with performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. and afternoon shows on both Sundays at 2 p.m. Opening night will be Thursday, March 2 with a special dinner theatre show: dinner starts at 6:15 with a 7:30 curtain call. All performances will be at the Fenton Community Center in Fenton, Michigan.If you want more information (including show times and ticket prices), just hop on over to the Fenton Village Players website. Mon, 30 Jan 2006 08:29:29 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=42 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=41 Well, the Alito hearings have opened today. The first day will bring nothing worth talking about; the Senators will all stake out their predictable positions--the Republicans claiming that anything negative said about the guy is someow an affront to the "dignity" of the process, and the Democrats warning Alito that if he doesn't answer his questions with candor that they'll vote against him (which most will probably do anyway)--and Alito will try to present himself as a reasonable moderate who is shocked--SHOCKED--that anyone could oppose him.So, in that vein, let's review what we know about Scalito:- He saw no problem with requiring a woman to inform her husband if she wanted to get an abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, claiming that this did not violate her expectation of privacy. I don't know about you, but I'd be a bit offended if someone said I had to get a note from my wife to have surgery. And let's not forget that it would be pretty strange for a woman to do something as radical as obtain an abortion without consulting her husband unless there was a real reason, such as domestic abuse, for her to avoid this kind of conversation.- He said, in as many words, that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion” in 1985. The Republicans are trying to spin this, of course, claiming that "he was a government lawyer working for a President who wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Nonetheless, unlike many other lawyers working in the Solicitor General's office, he urged the government NOT to mount ‘a frontal assault on Roe v. Wade,’ but, instead, to adopt a more moderate course to ‘nudge the Court toward the principles in Justice O'Connor's’ opinions." Well, that's true of one of Scalito's writing on this subject. It doesn't pass muster, though, when you realize that on a job application to become deputy assistant to Attorney General Ed Meese (that same year) he wrote those same words--“the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion”--going out of his way to note “I personally believe very strongly” that this is the case. Naturally, there's spin for that, too: bear witness to Sen. Sam "If Harriet Miers thinks Roe is settled law I'll vote against her" Brownback on the ABC program This Week: "Things do change, and positions change. He’s advocating for a position in a conservative administration at that time. Now he’s going on the Supreme Court of the United States if approved by the United States Senate. And these are different jobs altogether, and they have different parameters with them all together. And he’s not going to answer questions about how he’s going to rule on a Roe-type case, and he shouldn’t." So Sam's spin is that his personal views change depending on who he wants to hire him, and that this is a good thing? Even the spin doesn't seem very favorable. - He proudly touted his membership in the "Concerned Alumini of Princeton" when applying for a job in the Reagan administration. This was a John-Birch-Societyesque organization largely devoted to opposing the presence of women and minority students at Princeton. Of course, now he claims he doesn't remember being a member. But he remembered it clearly enough to highlight it in his job application when he wanted to work for the Reagan administration. Folks, if I joined a group that was opposed to someone going to my school on the basis of their gender or ethnicity, I think I'd remember it. Wouldn't you? - He apparently doesn't really think anyone should be able to sue to enforce anti-trust legislation. This is not too surprising, considering that conservatives tend to support the free market to the extent that everyone is free to shop only at their market.- He thinks that saying an employment candidate is the "best candidate for the job" is a complete bar to race discrimination suits, even if one of the qualifications decided on by the employer was "no blacks."- Scalito agreed that it was perfectly fine for police to strip-search a woman and her ten-year-old daughter when executing a warrant that allowed for the search of a man's person and home. Alito (who was, thank God, dissenting) wrote that this was the "'commonsense and realistic' reading of the warrant", even though the police who filled out the warrant "did not note in the box in question that the warrant authorized a search of all occupants of the premises." Of course, there's a right-wing spin to this too: "to lessen the outrage, you should know that the search was done privately, in an upstairs bathroom, by a female police officer, brought in to the drug raid for just that purpose." Oh, well, then, that makes everything alright, doesn't it? I mean, who cares if the police actually had established probable cause to strip-search a 10-year-old girl as long as they did it in private. So if you want to know how I feel about the Alito nomination, you can probably guess: the guy should not be on the Court, and the Democrats would be perfectly justified in filibustering this one. He's got to go.Nevertheless, he probably will be confirmed unless there's enough attention paid to him by the mainstream of America. And, just to be sure, Republican evangelicals are "blessing" the seats where the people involved in the hearings will sit, because, after all, they may not be on God's side, but the Republicans are sure as hell going to make sure that God is on their side. Makes me curious as to whether all that oil means there will be a big wet spot on Scalito's ass when he stands up from the hearing seat. Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:37:23 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=41 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=40 Well, the holidays are over. Oops; I mean "the exclusively Christian celebration" for those who are convinced there's a "War on Christmas" going on. So, here's a recap.We ended up reading the Christmas story. Nobody liked it. I didn't care.My wife got me a sweet Christmas present: an Audiovox STS1199 5-disc DVD changer home theatre surround sound system. At least, we thought it was a sweet present. Until I plugged it in. The thing generated this horrible electrical humming sound, and when I tried to run anything through the A/V input I only got sound through the front center speaker. When I say a horrible humming sound, I mean hideously horrible. It was loud enough that when we tried to put in a CD to play some music softly in the background, we literally couldn't hear the music for the hum. "Crap," I thought to myself. "I got a defective one." So I called the Target store where the missus got the thing every day until they told me they had one in stock, and I took it back to swap for a replacement. Plugged the replacement in and got the exact same problem. So, I decided to see if I could find a solution on the internet. Didn't find a solution, but I did find the product page for it at Target.com where there were (I kid you not) 14 reviews of this model, all of which said the exact same thing: horrible humming noise, no sound from A/V input except from the front center speaker, and no way to fix it. In short, the Audiovox DVD changers are absolutely worthless and should be avoided at all costs.So, I decided to return the thing and get something else. I've been really, really wanting a DVD recorder for quite a while. For one, I have enough VHS tapes to fill two closets, and DVDs are much smaller and easier to store. For another, the VCR built into the TV we have in our bedroom is slowly but surely dying. And, of course, there's the whole VCR-is-outdated-technology thing; my understanding is that the tapes aren't even going to be sold much longer. As it happens, they had a DVD recorder at Target for a decent price: the Trutech TT1620 DVD recorder for around $100. I picked it up and trotted home with it.Let me say this: this recorder is not perfect, but it's definitely not bad. I'm actually pretty impressed by what I got for the price. In addition to DVDs, the thing plays CDs, MP3s, MPEG video, and (most) Windows media files. For the most part, it seems to work really well.But there are some glitches. According to the documentation, you can record at six different quality levels, with the higher quality taking more disk space. In reality, it only has four functional quality levels; the bottom two are too horrible to even consider using. In fact, they don't even work reliably: I tape a Monty Python special using the "SLP" setting, which allows 6 hours of video to be recorded on a single DVD and which the documentation says is the same quality as videotape. I don't know what videotape they're using, but I have videos I recorded on ow quality videotape in 1985 that look better than this did. Not only that, but halfway through the show, the video inexplicably starts running in fast forward while the audio stays at the normal speed. This makes anything past this point unwatchable. This problem happened consistently with every show I taped at that quality level. I never even tried the lowest quality setting. The "EP" setting (which allows for four hours, and which the documentation claims is "better than videotape") is about the same quality as low-quality videotape but is watchable and seems to work. The three highest quality settings work more or less flawlessly.Not all DVDs from the thing want to work in all DVD players. I can't get any of them to play back reliably on my Orbitron surround sound system, but that may be because it's an Orbitron surround sound system, which is a cheap system that is working less reliably each day. Video recorded in the three highest quality modes seems to work on most, though.The programmable recording schedule works pretty much like a VCR. And that's disappointing. The number of programmable slots is limited to something like 8. Why? This has been a major pet peeve of mine on all of my VCRs and now on this. Why should I be limited to scheduling 8 recordings? That's just silliness. And you can only program things 30 days in advance. One more thing: there's apparently a bug in the software. On December 31, I programmed the thing to record Battlestar Galactica on Friday, January 6. No big, right? Except that the stupid thing assumed that since I was in 2005 when I was programming the VCR, I meant January 6, 2005 (which was exactly 359 days in the past), and there was no way to adjust the year. Annoying. The programming also doesn't allow you to set a title for the recording; it automatically assigns the date/time of the recording as the title on the DVD menu. It would be nice to allow users to include the title in the schedule.But, overall, I have to say I like the thing. The quality is much better than video tape (if you stick to the top three quality levels), it automatically inserts chapters, it has a commercial skip feature, and the DVDs are portable from one place to another. And the DVD-RWs are actually cheaper, more reliable, and easier to store than VHS tapes.So that was Christmas. On New Year's Eve, I played in an 18-hour LAN party at a local internet café. Yeah, I'm a geek. So what?And then today, it was back to work: finishing up web sites for one client, getting ready to start some more for another (a huge project that will probably provide enough income for me to live off of for a good six months), meeting potential legal clients, and so on. Ah, the holidays. And only 358 days to go until they're back! Tue, 03 Jan 2006 19:06:34 -0500 http://www.gloaming.us/gloaming/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=40