Bad Glacier

If an antitrust suit was ever filed against Westlaw, exhibit number one should be a screenshot of Westlaw’s user interface. So ugly!  So confusing!  So hard to navigate!  The world has never seen more convincing proof of monopoly power.

This would never happen, though. No lawyer would want to bring the case, on the off chance that “technical difficulties” will erase all the Lexis/Westlaw material related to antitrust law; she’d be reduced to doing her research with… [shudder] …books. Oh, the horror!

The pre-grade nervousness is spreading. Judging by the people I’ve talked to recently, the entire 1L class has done nothing other than go to firm receptions, attend classes, and worry about grades for the past week or so (for the record, I have no qualms about generalizing from a small group of people to the entire 560-some class–this is a blog, after all–logic is optional!).

Everyone is pretty sure that professors were supposed to submit them to the registrar on Friday. But what about the possibility of extensions for busy professors? And what about the real question: when will the grades be posted online? Rumors are flying, but no one seems to know for sure. Will grades show up in 2-3 days, like they supposedly did last year? Will they come out next Friday at noon? Valentine’s Day was mentioned, but someone else heard that grades won’t come out until the day after, in deference to couples. (If this is true, what is worse: that the administration put off posting grades so as to not ruin Valentine’s Day, or that we all think this would be an eminently sensible idea?)

I’m trying not to worry and doing a fairly good job of it. I know I could have done better on my exams, and I’m annoyed at myself accordingly. But once they’re turned in, there’s nothing more you can do. Grades, on the other hand, were never in my control. I tell myself that I’m expecting average grades–maybe one slightly above average and another somewhat below–but if I were honest I’d admit that I’m hoping for something better, even though I feel guilty because that means pushing someone else down the curve.

Grades aren’t important.  They aren’t indicative of your intelligence or of your worth as a person.  They’re just a symbol corresponding to a range of scores on a three-(or eight-)hour slice of time in January.  They won’t significantly harm your future or impair your career options.  I know all of this, but I’m not sure I fully believe it.  I’m even less sure everyone else believes it.

Carey Cuprisen, a 3L at Michigan, posted his first-semester grades a couple years ago.  I wish I could be that awesome.  I can’t think of a better way to say, “grades don’t matter.”  But I can’t.  Not even if I get good grades.  Especially not if I get good grades.  Or bad grades, or average grades.

It’s too bad.  It would be fun to stir things up as much as Carey did.

Courtesy of Girlfriend: (article)
Howard Stern moved his show to Sirius Satellite Radio to get away from the FCC’s regulations.  Now, his show is being pirated.  Who does Sirius whine to?  The FCC, of course.

On the “eh”-to-”ROFLMAO” scale of internet entertainment value, I figure this rates as a “ha”: moderately amusing.

Thanks to ambimb for updating me to the new version of WordPress.  The back-end interface is a big improvement–customizable, much nicer looking, and more useful.  Unfortunately, my old theme is incompatible with the update.  I won’t have time to cobble together a new one until this weekend at the earliest, so until then you’re stuck with the boring default.

Anyways, I’m back.  Whee!

I don’t want to go out on a limb or anything, but based on this video clip, I would venture to guess that there is even a little animosity between the two.

I’m not a fan of O’Reilly’s show, but as good as Olbermann’s smackdown was, the pettiness of the whole thing bothers me. I feel like the maturity level of cable news shows should remain at least a few steps above that of the average seventh-grader. I know, I know, this hasn’t been the case for years. That’s why I get my news from blogs! (Not really. Well, not all of it, anyway. Hey, shut up!).

Also: kids nowadays play their music too loud. Where’s my walker?

As of midnight tonight, the badglacier.com domain name will once again be up for grabs. I had big plans for the domain when I first registered it, but I never really put them into action and truthfully, I’m kind of bored with the name. Currently, it’s only being used for email forwarding and to bounce people to my blawgcoop.com address here. Therefore, this year’s $8 will go towards buying me more Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch ice cream, a pint of which I inhaled this afternoon. In the battle for Josh’s heart, ice cream beats useless technology any day.

I’d been thinking this would be a good occasion to shut down the blog as well–put it out of the misery it has been suffering through for the past few months. It’s been almost a year, and I have apparently ran out of things to talk about. Since classes started, I’ve felt much more self-conscious about posting. I don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy. I’ve been self-censoring a lot, and ever since November or so, I’ve had too much going on to post much, anyway. In a way, it’s nice to not have to come up with intelligent and/or witty posts on a semi-regular basis. Now I’m out of the habit; I no longer ask, “Is it bloggable?” about everything in my life. I should probably

But I can’t bring myself to close up shop just yet. I still might have more to say, and I want to have a place ready for it. So here’s the deal. I’m taking the pressure off myself. Expect light posting while I figure out where I want to take things.

Take-home message: In the future, use badglacier@gmail.com to get ahold of me. My old address will not work any more.

First semester is over. I’m happy. I’m also very, very tired. It’s break now; we get ten whole days of rest and relaxation before the cycle begins again.

My impressions of law school exams:

They’re rough. I’ve had bad exams before, but never a set of them that so thoroughly kicked my ass from start to finish. At the end of the semester, I felt the most comfortable with Criminal Law and less so with Property and Civil Procedure. This reversed itself for exams. I felt okay about the Civil Procedure take-home, Property wasn’t as bad as I expected, but I ended the semester by spending three hours flailing around in the oddly-warm Criminal Law kiddie pool, just trying to keep my head above water.

I like the eight-hour take-homes better than three-hour in-class exams. (Yeah, I’m crazy…) And I like open-book exams more than closed-book. (…but not that crazy.)

On policy questions, there’s a thin line between complete BS and saying something interesting and non-obvious. I have absolutely no clue which side my answers ended up on, which suggests that it’s probably not the right side.

They say you get the best grade in the class you felt worst about, and vice versa. Everything’s curved, so your feelings probably have little to do with your grade. We’ll see.

Anyways. Off to relax. Rock over London, rock on, Chicago.

David Letterman is awesome.

Civil Procedure is over. Those eight-hour take-homes are rough. Especially when you waste a bunch of time trying to fit Erie into an answer, then waste another bunch of time worrying about whether you’ll be the only one who wasn’t able to see the Erie issue , then a third bunch of time wondering whether the circus would take a law-school dropout.

Ugh. Thinking about the test any more will just make me nervous, so I’ll go play video games now. I promise I’ll wait at least half an hour before I start studying Property.

You have all break to get your heat fixed, but you wait until the day before my Civil Procedure exam to have people come and fix it. With hammers. And drills. And possibly a metal saw.

Not funny.

Why did I spend multiple hours yesterday watching the World’s Strongest Man competition?

Oh, right. Because I HAVE EXAMS IN FOUR DAYS. Crap.

Okay. I just saw someone walk into the bathroom reading a study guide. Maybe Glannon, maybe not, but the same kind of thing. Softcover, fairly thick, non-intimidating cover. That’s not the point. The point is, he was reading it in the bathroom.

But here’s the bad part. He walks in, takes a standing pee, and walks out of the bathroom, still reading the book.

Seriously, what kind of serious legal scholar uses the restroom at this point in the year? Even the average students have been skipping showers and using chamber pots for weeks, and the gunners are now sporting IV drips and Depends. I’ve been living off of peanut butter, Triscuits, and salt since November, and I just finished memorizing the index I made for the collected works of Judge Posner. Y’know, just in case.

Moral: If you have to take restroom breaks, you’ve already lost.

No, seriously. That’s what he calls himself.

I suppose “Scott Spindel, attorney who defends drunk-driving cases” just isn’t as catchy. “Scott Spindel, DUI Defender”? Maybe if he wore a cape.

A Google search for “caped lawyer,” by the way, led me to this story, from the motherland of Ohio.

Back to the drunk driving attorney… Thanks to the wonderfully detailed BAC Calculator on his site, I now know how many Mint Juleps it takes to put me over the legal limit. Not that I’ve ever had a Mint Julep before.

I don’t want to do the rest of my reading for tomorrow. Can you tell?

ALSO: Why am I capitalizing Mint Julep? I dunno.

My post below was unclear. Here’s a simple explanation that doesn’t make me look like a dick:

I had overheard some people acting as if the custodian was mentally challenged because she doesn’t speak English very well. It annoyed me.

Note to the people I overheard talking the other day: the custodian is Hispanic, not retarded. Believe it or not, there is a difference.

Possibly more than one.

I never would have guessed the Heyman Fellows Panel, featuring Harvard grads working on Capitol Hill, would be a good source of unintentional double entendres, but I would have been wrong, thanks to the fellows’ shorthand method of referring to the Senators/Representatives they worked for as their “member”:

“You need a good member.”

“Your job experience all depends on your member.”

“Unfortunately, there are some dud members out there. You don’t want to get stuck with a dud member . . . not for very long, at least.”

“You have to respect your member. You have to agree with your member–not all of the time, but most of the time, or else you’ll be frustrated.”

And the crowning moment of the night:

“It’s great if you’ve got the big member in a committee.”

Indeed.

We can whine about which parts from the book were left out. We can disagree about the casting and whether this was a better movie than the last one. We can argue whether the kids are too old to play fourteen-year-olds.

But I think we can all agree that Moody’s magical eye should not be making motor/electronic noises when it zooms in on people. It’s freaking magic, people. C’mon.

Pandas!

This is a proud day for me. I have just discovered that this site is the first Google result for screw law school.

I am the winner of everything. Bow down and kiss the ring.

From Property: “People today are not big on testamentary freedom. If I held a rally today for testamentary freedom… [sounding resigned] …well, there wouldn’t be a great turnout. I will, though, if you all promise to come.”

Criminal Law [discussing Terry stop-and-frisks]: “It’s very bad police work to get shot by somebody.”