I Regret Trying to Get Work Done at a Coffeeshop.

I'd rather study at a truck stop. I think I'd fit in with the people there and could actually relate. I had to sit through an insufferable exchange between two young hippies who were performing some complicated fake-intellectual mating ritual. I have never heard so much continuous bullshit in my life, and really was torn between tearing my eyes and ears out or laughing my ass off. Some high points:

• She said it was hard to accept spiritual guidance from someone who broke her heart (talking about an ex who is still creepily trying to get back together).
  
  
• He knows the creator of hackysack. . . I mean, "footbag" because he lives in Oregon. He goes to Reed College to participate in some weekly "footbag" event, and was talking about how this awesome "footbag" guy has now made it into some kind of martial art. Seriously.
  
  
• Either he or she went to Halloween dressed as "a random act of kindness." I had a random act of aneurysm right there.
  
  
• Dick Cheney is the Penguin joke. QUACK QUACK.
  
  
• His name is Happiness (or some foreign language equivalent of it), "THOUGH NOT LEGALLY" BECAUSE YOU WOULD BE A MORON TO DO SO.
  
  
• We all love acupuncture! Yay we love random bits of Eastern culture because it makes us "educated."
  
  
• Something about a PC-version of Merriam Webster's where there are no anti-women references. I don't even know what that means.
  
  
• Oh I think we should live off the grid and barter our excess deer meat instead of CONSUMER CULTURE SMASH.
  
  
• Something about living in a hippie forest commune in the middle of Oregon.
  
  
• He doesn't have a cell phone anymore (DON'T YOU WANT TO GET CHICKS' NUMBERS?!!!!1! OMG worst reply to the question of "Do you have a phone number?" ever. This dude has NO self-preservation instinct) because people wouldn't answer his phone calls. *tear*

I am surprised that I got ANY work done after all of that pretentious posturing. They were SO in love with each other and themselves that the amplitude of the ridiculousness kept ratcheting up. It was funny at the end when he awkwardly tried to get her to play something on her guitar-like instrument and she was like, "Oh my acupuncture appointment." SERVED.

I've been reading too much Wonkette.

Today has taught me that I need to get a Rubric's Cube.

Sitting in the sole practitoner track is kind of scary... I've never felt the fear of failure and getting screwed so badly.

Lesson 2: Your legal staff will screw you over and you will be sanctioned.

Whenever the bar talks about paying lots of money for software, I thank my lucky stars I use open source software. I can't afford to be a high-powered attorney.

Today's CLE topic: Why It Was a Bad Choice to Become a Lawyer. The running theme seems to be that we are all going to be disbarred. Please let me survive, God.

Just met with an attorney who does software licensing work here in PDX. If anyone has any leads on how to get in the door, I would totally appreciate it.

Best of the Best: Google Voice

As I've commented to Rachel and perhaps a few others, I find that Google Voice's voicemail transcription service is a pretty interesting way to determine how clearly a person is able to enunciate. Until today, I had not managed to get a perfect transcription, whether it was due to signal interference or people talking at a non-optimal volume, speed, etc. The closest I got was with Josh, which I randomly attribute to the speaking skills necessary to be an effective psychologist. There were only two words that got mis-transcribed in his 18-second voicemail to go see Starts No Exit, but were minor enough that it didn't really alter the grammatical structure or understanding of the entire message. Great job, Josh!

However, the honor of perfect transcription goes to my dad, for his short, 7-second voicemail he gave me today briefly telling me to call him back. When I caught the SMS notification with transcription, it just seemed impossible that there could have been an error, and upon playing back the message, I was pleasantly surprised. Hopefully, this phenomena won't be extremely rare, and either Google or my friends and family will step up to make transcription more useful to me in the future (because sometimes, the messages are just too ridiculous).