Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor

Okay, so I haven't really had the opportunity to indulge my impulse to buy video games in a while, so you can understand why I'm reduced to a giggling virgin when I see a game like Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. Really, I love those Japanese turn-based tactical RPGs and I especially am hooked on the whole devil-summoning kitsch that Atlus goes through in developing successor titles to this series. It's times like these that I miss having a PS2 and a life outside of the law.

This latest iteration of the series combines both the demon fusion aspects of the SMT series with a strategy RPG for battles. However, when you choose to attack a particular enemy, you go into a first person view, turn-based RPG system, combining both a Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy type system with a Tactics Ogre kind of deal. Of course, I haven't played this game and probably won't until several months after this post, so I can only speculate how it actually plays, but Gamespot gave it a 9.0 out of 10. . . so it has to be good, right?



Also, it's got sweet metal!

Waiting for 3 more essays. . .

This morning we did the MPT, which I was able to actually finish for once, followed by three essays. We'll do three more in about 20 minutes, and then be done for the day at 3:30-ish. I hate to say that I am not looking forward to taking the bar.

I'm just wasting my time now playing with my multi-tool. IT'S ERGONOMIC AHHHHHHHH! Maybe I'll be forced to go all MacGuyver on something.

Bought a mini-tool today

While at Frys getting a replacement AC adapter and cables for the TV, I saw a cute little number with a wirecutter/vice, blade, serrated blade, can opener/flathead, bottle opener/flathead/wire stripper, flathead, Phillips head, awl, file. . .

AND AN LED LIGHT!

Nerdgasm for only $9.99. This will be useful when I get lost at night.

Best Friend Ever? David

I've decided to just make a tag for best friend ever. Here's what David had to say about my bar exam prep:

David: right
David: but im sure you'll do well
David: if not
David: then we arent friends anymore, so i hope that gives u added motivation

Awesome.

Secured Transactions - Warning Signs

We are about 25 minutes into the lecture, and we haven't moved past page one. The introductory page. With no blanks, no questions.

This is why this class goes for three hours instead of its scheduled two-and-a-half. Bite me. Also, if I had the gift of seeing legal fictions, I would shoot myself.

Please Give Me A Job. . .

So's I can buy me an Always Innovating Touchbook. . .it's finally out and spec'ed:

• Texas Instruments OMAP3530 with Micron 256MB (RAM) + 256MB (NAND) Memory
• 8.9 inches 1024x600 A+ screen
• Main storage: 8GB SD card — we decided to change from Micro SD to standard SD, so that you can easily upgrade it
• Internal USB wifi 802.11 b/g/n powered by a Ralink 3070 chipset
• Internal USB bluetooth class 2.1
• FCC, CE, UL-certified, 5V, 3.5A power adapter
• 8.9 inches pressure sensitive touch screen
• US Qwerty 24cm-large keyboard — around 95% of the size of a standard keyboard
• Cirque Touchpad
• Two Owolff high-quality internal stereo speakers
• 3D accelerometer
• Two internal batteries 6000 and 12000mAh — it can be replaced with a screw driver
• 7 USB ports: three external, four internal, three of them may be reserved for wifi, bluetooth and keyboard
• Bi-color silver/black case — see photos — with a beautiful dark-red back cover (we decided to go only for red for the first batch as it really jumps out, you won't regret it).
• Secured attachment system of tablet into keyboard
• Independent magnet system for the tablet — we don't want your Touch Book to un-magnetize all your credit cards while carrying it in your bag!

Always Innovating

Words you don't want to hear in a doctor's office. . .

"More intimate" plastic surgery. . .

GROSS

I might have just had bad string cheese. . .

The flavor was not nice, and I had to wash it down without chewing it. I really hope I am not going to experience some horrible throw-up episode in BARBRI.

Gross. . .

Also, I am sad that I missed the phone call for poutine.

The Common Law Material Breach Rule

Or, as Prof. Epstein likes to say, the "really bad wrong" rule.

Shaft. . . shaft. . . shaft.

Thank god this is a video lecture. My mind is in the gutter whenever he says this stuff.

Buzz Aldrin: From Earth to the Moon to Hip Hop History

Making of Buzz Aldrin's Rocket Experience w/ Snoop Dogg and Talib Kweli from Buzz Aldrin

Why does Buzz Aldrin look like Hugh Hefner?!

Edit: I love Talib Kweli.

Parol Sex

In Contracts today, learning about how people in me-DI-E-val England had parol sex, as opposed to oral sex.

(it's a contracts joke about oral evidence)

Tom Richmond, Best Friend Ever?

He has agreed to help me with my computer woes with his Mac expertise. I love it!

6-8 Weeks. . .

. . . is how long I am having to wait for my computer to get fixed. BIOS won't load up, but the HD is spinning. I'm still under manufacturer's warranty, but the ironic part is that had I been outside of warranty, Frys would have taken a look at it first, and this may have been over in a week with an extra $65. Of course, I guess this is how bureaucracy (and Acer) seem to go.

This also means that I'm probably going to have to spend about $70-100 for a replacement AC adapter for my other computer to take the bar, since ExamSoft doesn't work with Macs. My life is hilarious right now. If anyone has any cheaper options for me (like the ability to borrow a PC for the next 5-6 weeks), I would appreciate it. Otherwise, I am just going to sit here and cry over how much fake money I am spending on the bar.

Don't go to law school.

Also, this Contracts guy is equal parts hilarious and boring. How the hell do you manage to pull that off?!

Weekends make me hate my life. . .

If I study, I hate the bar exam and BARBRI. If I don't study, I hate the fact that I'm behind in my studying. Today also happens to be a typical Portland day, so I really am hating life right now. Thank god for punk rawk and Pandora, otherwise I would just beat my head against the wall right now.

Well, let's not rule that out just yet.

Studying Crim Law. . .

Finally marked all my emails as "read"

Time to start over on a new slate in Gmail. Of course, it doesn't mean I DELETED THEM, but that's okay, since I'm only using 22% of my inbox.

1.6 gigs of mail. . . that's just horrible.

Why I am waiting for Google Voice:

http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?answer=115073&cbid=18y4rw2i0wcnc&src=cb&lev=answer

Listening to voice mails and recording phone calls on the fly seem to be pretty hawt. At the same time, that raises some privacy concerns. . .

Scribblenauts... I want this game so bad.

Read about this on the SA forums, and am totally interested in games that involve using Einstein, blowtorches, or other things in the dictionary to fight other things and get stars.

Criminal Law

Man, this guy makes criminal law seem really awesome. . . I'm sure that the reality of this is much different. He just did an impression of Barney from The Simpsons. Rule for today:

Addicts and alcoholics are always voluntary intoxicated!

Testing out Blogging via Email. . .

I'm trying to figure out why this is useful, since if I'm on the internet and have access to my Gmail account, I likely have access to Blogger.

LOL, the professor just said not to use text language for essays.  It will equal failure.

Testing out Mobile Blogging

So, I'm testing out my phone's ability to post to my blog... I am a tech dinosaur.

Bought a new book today during BARBRI

The Future of Work, by Thomas Malone, Prof. at the Sloan School of Management, MIT.

http://ccs.mit.edu/futureofwork/

I need to unsubscribe to my MIT Alumni Association RSS feed. . .

A quote from the website:

In The Future of Work, renowned organizational theorist Thomas W. Malone, codirector of MIT’s landmark initiative “Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century,” shows where these things are already happening today and how—if we choose—they can happen much more in the future. Malone argues that a convergence of technological and economic factors—particularly the rapidly falling cost of communication—is enabling a change in business organizations as profound as the shift to democracy in governments. For the first time in history, says Malone, it will be possible to have the best of both worlds—the economic and scale efficiencies of large organizations, and the human benefits of small ones: freedom, motivation, and flexibility.

I was able to buy this used for $0.75 + $3.95 shipping. Hopefully it'll be a good read. There's also a preview of it on Google Book search.

Opera Unite: The solution to all my internet-related needs?

File server, media server, web server, SERVER SERVER SERVER?!!

Opera Unite is apparently an effort to combine a bunch of web-related services under one application so that you don't have to sign up for a bunch of separate services. I haven't had the time to fool around with it yet, but I'll post updates to the awesomeness.

Link to Opera Unite: http://unite.opera.com/

The perfect example of why we need antitrust laws.

BARBRI is flaky in the quality of its lecturers. There is no feasible alternative available, as it has cornered the market. The next-closest competition is PMBR, which does only Multistate multiple choice topics, and may or may not suck (my interactions with the PMBR head rep for the school have given me an impression that the latter holds true). Yet, for all its inconsistency, BARBRI still manages to fleece around $2800/student because of our fear of passing the bar. Furthermore, the general consensus is that most people need BARBRI to pass a state bar, making the program not a choice for a study aid, but a prerequisite to practice law. Just look at the numbers:

Bar Exam (OR): $525.00

BARBRI (approx): $2,800.00

BABRI costs over 5x the amount of the bar exam. Obviously, you can't hedge your bets on taking the bar five times because of the fact that there is a lost opportunity cost each time you fail the exam, and BARBRI guarantees a high level of passage (in the 90% range). But can you hedge your bets for at least one failure of the bar (I don't intend to fail, and I AM taking BARBRI, so this is purely hypothetical). Let's make a few assumptions.

First, assume that Student fails the bar exam once and must take it again. He did not take BARBRI. He works from August to the beginning of December, then stops working to study again for the bar, without using BARBRI again. Only because of these economic times, let's just assume that people who pass the bar (and obstentially have taken BARBRI) aren't finding attorney jobs and are therefore in the same working pool as you (either as clerks, non-traditional legal jobs, or non-legal jobs) being paid the same amount as you. Clerks traditionally get paid around $12-15/hr, barring outliers like the BPA, which pays $18.75-ish. Here's a rough estimate of some of the costs you lose by taking the bar exam again:

Bar Exam: $525.00 (no, you can't take it for free after failing once)

3 months of non-work (assume $15/hr): $15/hr * 40 hrs/week * 12 weeks = $7,200

Total Cost: $7725.00 versus $2,800 you spent on BARBRI.

Obviously I have no pass rate/fail rate percentages, which makes a lot of this meaningless in terms of realy cost-benefit analysis (you'd need to know the differential rate of passage between people who have taken BARBRI and not taken BARBRI, etc.). But it provides a basic level of assurance that you most likely did spend your money wisely, even though the professors suck.

Con Law, Day 2

Several people left during the second break. Immediately afterwards, he kind of did an opera singing joke. Not worth it.

My hand hurts.

Being a Constitutional Lawyer

Any delusions that I've recently had to being a Constitutional lawyer have been washed away by this guy's lecture. It's so long-winded and convoluted. . . unnecessarily so. Thank god I'm in the classroom with the video transfer, so that we can all laugh and roll our eyes without him knowing what is going on.

I've already seen some people leave, and I think Jon may go soon too. He's not writing anything! There is no rational basis for this class of law students to be punished like this.

Jon Bloomfield is a close second.

He gave me an apple slice!

Aubrey is my new best friend!

I got me some loose-leaf tea! Bomb-diggity! Trying it out tonight.

Con Law, Day 1

Our guy is a hotshot law professor from Seattle U / opera singer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Skover

Post-MPT Impressions

I hope that someone else felt like this after they took one of the practice MPTs today.

Faking it!

Prof. asks if anyone has heard of a "Theory of the Case Memo." One person raised their hand. He said, "Well, that's more than I usually see," followed by "The only person who knew this was the professor who wrote the question, because it's a fake memo."

Someone's taking his "Fake it!" advice to an unprecedented level.

Anecdotal evidence guarantees MPT passage!

If an army vet who received brain damage from a bomb explosion causing him to become a slow reader only was able to read one case, write his MPT and pass, so can I?

HE FAILED IT FOUR TIMES PRIOR UNTIL THE PROF TOLD HIM TO JUST STOP PREPPING AND START WRITING!!!

Today is a caps lock kind of day.

FAKE IT

That is the advice we are being given if we don't know the law for this exam, because "that's what lawyers do."

ALL THE STEREOTYPES ARE TRUE!

:(

Goat Answers

We're going over the Multistate Performance Test, which is basically a huge closed universe essay. The guy is hilarious, but I thought this was the best (paraphrased):

"What they're looking for is sheep answers. You can write a goat answer. . . that's cool, that's cool. Be a goat. But do you want to be so different that a grader is going to get alert and think, 'Huh, this is different. . . maybe I should read this EXTRA carefully because it's so different'?"

"Good idea? Good idea?"

Torts, Day 1

Why is it that all torts professors:

(1) Ramble on with tort anecdotes for a long time; and

(2) Yell "OUTRAGEOUS!" when explaining IIED.

At least he can chop down each intentional tort to two factors.

Smart Mop: The Recession Buster?

I was watching Batman on broadcast TV today, and I came across this ad:

Yes... if you watch past 0:30, Anthony Sullivan is actually encouraging you to mop up your spilt soda off the floor, wring it out, and drink it. I never thought that the economy would get this bad.

Stuck on a Saturday in Room 2

All my J.D. and J.D.* peeps taking the OR bar are in BARBRI class on a Saturday, learning Civ Pro from some guy who seems like he needs some Ritalin. He is pretty awesome at teaching though. I did well in Civ Pro my first year, so maybe I'll do okay for our assignment due Monday.

Stupid assignments. Didn't I graduate from law school?!

Also, I have to think about designs for our team shirts for kickball. We're the "Hot Cops." Now I have to watch Season 1 of Arrested Development all over again.

Catch up on BARBRI

Instead of doing BARBRI, I did this last night:

Congratulations to Rachel's sister, Iris, and Rick on their nuptials. (This will be used as some kind of seal for envelopes holding wedding gifts to those attending. Which is not me.) Also, congratulations for me for learning how easy it is to convert a line drawing raster to vector. I am really making a mistake by being a lawyer, lol. Time for a power weekend without Rachel and Nealon!