The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

As I mentioned the other day, I saw three Huey Lewis and the News concerts last week. Which actually reflects a great deal of maturity and restraint, as there was a fourth concert I could have theoretically gone to, but I once again chose to sit it out due to time/money allocation issues.

But that's ok because the three I saw were plenty of HLN-goodness, particularly the first, which I'll describe in a bit. The latter two were last Friday and Saturday nights at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga (and not "Los Gatos" as Huey mistakenly called out during "Heart of Rock and Roll" in the spot where he usually changes the "Detroit!" exclamation lyric to wherever he's playing, although it's not like Saratoga is any more impressive a rock and roll town than Los Gatos is, as anyone who's ever been to these wealthy suburban enclaves can surely attest). It's a decent venue though, high on the hill overlooking Silicon Valley. I like to sit on the bleachers at the side of the stage so I can actually see the keyboardist and drummer work for a change, since normally they are obstructed by their instruments.

The staff are also quite nice, and were once again very helpful in supporting my harebrained scheme to ride my bike to the show Saturday. It turns out a year is long enough to forget how awful that 62+ mile bike ride is from Sausalito to Saratoga, so once again I foolishly inflicted it on myself.

Well, it's actually not too bad a ride:

The route is over the Golden Gate and down to the Great Highway, then up and over Daly City. Laugh heartily (or bitterly) at its "Elevation: 800 ft" sign before eventually hooking up with the 280 corridor as it follows the San Andreas fault. Gently descend along the bucolic mid-peninsula lakes, prepared to yield for chipmunks and deer, and then catch the stick-straight Cañada Road to Woodside. From there pass by the venture capitalists of Sand Hill road before jogging around Stanford. The Foothill Expressway then takes you most of the way there before leaving you to fjord the traffic of Cupertino. Fortunately there's only a few more flat roads until the final insult of the 1.5 miles up Pierce Road, which summits at the Mountain Winery gate. Hitch a ride up the driveway (cyclists aren't permitted on it) and then you're there. Piece of cake.

I was joking that since I hadn't ended up collapsed in a ditch somewhere during last year's attempt, there was no reason why I shouldn't do it again this year. Yes, well... This year's ride was a little bit better than last, mostly because I now knew the route and could better pace myself. But it was worse because I'd not eaten nor slept properly over the last week, and as a result I was essentially bonking even before I hit the Golden Gate Bridge. I persevered, however, and made it in decent time (no land speed records, but within the time I had hoped). Unfortunately I was so wiped out by the time I got there I had a hard time enjoying the show. It was a little like May's Foxwoods show, only this time I was more physically checked-out than mentally so. Also, I still haven't quite worked out all the accompanying logistics, like how to get me and my bike back home afterwards. Despite some valiant efforts both occasions, I keep ending up sort of all Blanche DuBois and very dependent on the kindness of strangers (er, well, other acquaintances) to help me out on those details...

Fortunately everything all worked out, and it really only took me Sunday to recover. In fact by Monday I felt great. Not only not sore at all, but completely recharged. Maybe some of that's from the concert, maybe some of that's from the exercise. Or maybe it's from having an entire day where I didn't have to think about law... But either way, maybe it's something I'll do again next year.

I saw this posting this week on EFF attorney Jason Schultz's personal blog:

EFF Seeks Detail-Oriented, Can-Do Referral Coordinator

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an Internet civil liberties nonprofit organization based in San Francisco's Mission District, is seeking a full-time Referral Coordinator to start immediately. Job responsibilities include answering the telephones, answering general email, doing legal case intake, filing, data entry, helping with membership mailings, and all-around organizational support. Ease with using computers, office applications, and the Internet is essential. Familiarity with (and, preferably, passion for) Internet civil liberties issues is also required. Daily interaction with the public requires compassion and interpersonal skills. Environment is fast-paced, work is cutting edge, staff is hardworking yet laid back and friendly.

Salary at nonprofit scale and includes benefits package. To apply, send a cover letter and your resume in a non-proprietary format to rc-at-eff-dot-org. No phone calls please!

This sounds like the job I had done for them early this year. It was a great job, at a great organization, with really great people.

It's actually not a job for a JD, but it could be a good one for someone thinking about going to law school who also has an interest in these high-tech civil liberties issues. (Or perhaps even a local night law student since I think it's a 9-5 job.) It's also a good one for someone who thrives on helping people. The EFF has become a big point of contact for people having trouble when law and technology collide. It can't help everyone through representation, but just being able to point people to other information and sources of help can be really important too, and this person would play a key role in doing that.

I saw the touring production of Jersey Boys in San Francisco on Thursday. I went principally because the regular Huey Lewis and the News trumpet player, Marvin McFadden, was playing in the production, and I wanted to be supportive. But even though he had a lot less on-stage time than I expected, I still enjoyed the production.

At least eventually, as I thought it started out a little slow and confusedly. The beginning has a lot of rapid dialog that sets up the exposition, and up in the balcony of the Curran Theater I couldn't hear it. (I've had balcony seats for other productions in other theaters, but somehow the Curran's seemed higher than others'. I'm not sure it's worth the savings to sit in those cheaper seats.)

I also thought it was perhaps a little much in playing up Italian-American stereotypes to some degree. I mean, it wasn't really politically incorrect, but, how should I express this? It perhaps sacrificed accuracy for the sake of easy jokes. Which I guess is reasonable, although somehow it rubbed me wrong. Which is sort of odd, since I'm not Italian, but since I am from New Jersey I think that's where my sensitivities were. I did laugh at a funny early joke about the Meadowlands, but otherwise I think I felt irked that the culture defined by the play was being passed off as the culture of the entire state. And while I think there may be a ring of truth to it in some places, *my* New Jersey was a much different place, and I felt like it was being painted over by the play's broad brush.

But I eventually warmed up to the play, mostly because the music won me over. For people unfamiliar with Jersey Boys, it's supposedly the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I'd actually never really liked the Four Seasons. Valli's falsetto never worked for me. But after having seen the musical, I'm rethinking my opinion.

The early songs in it, non-Four Seasons songs (as they were from the period before the group finally gelled), were a little stiff. But in a sense that's a good thing, because it helped drive home the point of the amazing musical chemistry generated when they finally recruited Bob Gaudio and harmonized on their first note, which reasonated amazingly throughout the Curran Theater. And from there the music took off. Even days later I still have the songs rattling around in my head. For that, tremendous praise goes to the cast, particularly the actor playing Valli (I think it was Jarrod Spector), who had a tremendous range and faithfulness to Valli's sound.

This production is in San Francisco through the 30th of September, at which point it travels on.

Edit 9/18: Did you see the Emmys? If so, you saw the cast of the Jersey Boys I saw in San Francisco. (In fact, if you look closely, I think you see Marvin too.)

I'm finding myself tempted to see the production again while it's still in town. That Jarrod Spector, who plays Frankie Valli, is really pretty amazing. CNN (and others) may have panned the Four Seasons medley as a tribute to the Sopranos, but while it may have been misguided as an idea (enough with the Jersey = Italian = mobster insinuations, ok?) it's impossible to pan the performance.

I'm barging into my self-produced near-silence to announce that I FINALLY FINISHED MY CLE HOMEWORK!!!! Yay!! I can get my life back! And just think of the possibilities: fun! regular blogging! learning to actually like the law again!

Of course, they do grade these things, and for any of these five assignments they could kick back to me more homework on any of them if they didn't like my performance. Which would really, really suck. And probably make me cry.

On the other hand, I did make a good faith effort on everything. I'm hoping therefore, based on something they said in their instructions, that they reserve the do-overs for people who did their original work in pencil and such. And at least by having handed something in by the deadlines I staved off being doomed to repeat the whole freaking course again, which, as we all well know, would have required another trip to New Jersey. Even I'm inclined to make dismissive New Jersey jokes when faced with that prospect...

Stay tuned though for next year when I'll have to do still more courses, also physically in New Jersey, but at least from what I hear they don't require homework. I did, of course, chuckle bitterly at the evaluation questionnaire they asked us to submit with our final assignment, where they solicited our opinion on the form this course should take in the future. How nice of them to ask... I'm inclined to presume they'd either never asked before, or else all previous New Jersey lawyers are nothing but evil bastards who all checked off the "yes! this course should absolutely be nothing but unhelpful mandatory lectures with impossible and infinitely-long assignments thereafter" option just to stick it to the next generation...

Happy 5768! Thursday was the Jewish New Year. I didn't make it to services, but I did stay home for the day and performed one of my favorite rituals, tashlich.

For tashlich one goes to a flowing body of water and casts off breadcrumbs as a symbolic way of casting off one's sins. Since I live on a flowing body of water, this was a very convenient ritual. But I didn't want to just throw my sins out the window, as they'd just wash right back up on our porch, and that would seem to defeat the purpose. So I instead boarded the kayak and paddled out to the middle of Richardson Bay.

It was one of those gorgeous early Fall days out on the Bay, one of my favorite places to be meditative. In many ways this is a time of great newness for me, and I took some time to think about it. With the completion of the last of those CLEs an enormous fog has finally been lifted. It's a fog I've been in for years, all through law school and its year-long aftermath as I've been racing around doing everything I needed to do before I could finally start living this new life as a lawyer. Now, though, that all the CLEs and (hopefully!) bar exams are behind me it looks like I'll never need to do legal homework ever again. It's very freeing to finally get to think about what I'd like to have in my life instead.

I've already got some ideas, and I'll probably take some more time in the coming days to be reflective about where I've come from and where I'm going. But tashlich for me was part of that process, where I cast off not sins so much, per se, but aspects of my character that I wish to improve as I set forth on this new life.

Out there on the bay I had taken out two slices of bread. I'm not sure if that means I'm so shallow as to think I don't need a whole loaf to do the job, or if it suggests I'm so neurotic as to require all the pieces that two whole slices would afford. Either way, however, this is what I thought was necessary to get what I wanted from the experience.

I began by tearing a strip, tossing it, then paddling on. All went well with this, until the seagulls got wind of what I was doing. Something you should realize is how close Richardson Bay is to Bodega Bay, which is where Hitchcock's The Birds was filmed. So you can understand my discomfort when I'm suddenly followed by a squadron of seagulls trying to eat my sins...

Back when I first started blogging I sometimes blogged about SCO's efforts to claim the copyrights in Linux as its own. Eventually I stopped blogging about it, partly because I found other less ludicrous things to blog about instead, and partly because other people were blogging about it more thoroughly and insightfully than I was ever inclined to.

To summarize the saga for people unfamiliar with it, a company called SCO decided that it owned IP rights in Linux and tried to sue IBM for infringing on its IP rights in creating its Unix operating system. IBM didn't take this lying down, and from there the discovery wars took off. Undeterred, SCO then tried to pitch a licensing program to anyone who might be inclined to use Linux and not want to risk SCO trying to sue them too. But then the plot thickened, when Novell, who actually did have a tenable claim to IP in Linux, sued SCO.

Earlier this year Novell won a decisive round in that case, which is update #1. Update #2 is that SCO has just filed for bankruptcy protection. Couldn't have happened to a nicer company...

I may someday write more about this case, partly because it is a fascinating story of comeuppance, but mostly because it exemplifies the type of issues that can arise when IP laws are used (and abused) as swords. In this case the efforts boomeranged back towards the people who wielded them. But it was only because SCO's claims were so laughable and megalomaniacal that something resembling justice, both karmic and legal, has been able to come about. In many other situations unfortunately the same cannot be said.

I enjoy reading security expert Bruce Schneier's blog. He often notes and explains the difference between effective security measures and the zero-tolerance, zero-intelligence overreactions so often made by authorities who would choose to use 9/11 as an excuse to abandon all civil liberties and common sense.

A number of concerning examples of this type of injudicious behavior have unfortunately come out of Boston, where local authorities seem to think there are boogiemen everywhere out to get everyone. Boston became famously mockable when it chose to wildly and wantonly misinterpret a Cartoon Network advertising campaign, which was at most citable as littering, as a terrorist threat. And that's just one of the more conspicuous examples of its authorities' regular efforts to whip everyone up into a "they're out to get us!" frenzy.

Although technically several jurisdictions are involved, Boston's airport authorities are also developing a similar reputation for an absence of judgment. And innocent people keep ending up paying the price: trumped-up criminal charges and unjustifiable excoriation by their communities. Salem's witchhunting influence is clearly affecting its neighboring city, as instead of questioning whether it's their own judgment that may be out of kilter, charging authorities instead mount a diversionary campaign to convince the public that it was these people's own fault that their otherwise innocent behavior were so willfully misinterpreted by their reactionary, and apparently bored, inquisitors. After all, with no real terrorists to catch obviously they need to do something. Even it's just ruining innocent people's lives.

So I mentioned a few weeks back that I was going to a wedding. Two of these three people got married:

Poor Huey, I'd kind of blindsided with the camera. But it was very nice for him to have agreed to the picture and let me introduce him to my friends. Some people bring their friends home to meet their parents, I bring my friends to meet Huey Lewis... (Well, to be fair, we've all met each others' families too.)

Unfortunately Huey himself failed to attend said wedding, which I was suppose was due in some small part to him having absolutely no idea it was taking place. In his absence, however, I nobly led my table in an a capella-cum-rhythmic rendition of highlights from the HLN song "Stuck with You," which, believe it or not, was actually contextually appropriate...

I realize that my blog lately has become "all Huey Lewis, all the time." Some of that is a creature of timing, as I did recently see a bunch of concerts. Some of that is because, while I get back on the blogging wagon, it's easiest to write about what I already know. The legal posts always require at least some research, even if it's just wrangling up links to other sites so I can confirm that my assertions at least have some basis in reality. Law school has drilled into me that sort of diligence, but unfortunately it comes with a lot of overhead to not "post first and ask questions later." I suppose it will make me more credible as a blogger in the long run, but unfortunately in the short run it also makes me more slow...

And some of this recent HLN topicality is because of how they've ended up being my bellwether throughout this whole great change thing and provided me some with the best opportunities to take measure of where I am with it. It's become clear that my ability to enjoy their concerts and company has hinged on my state of mind at the time. Which is of note now because the last several events provided the first occasions I'd had to see, reflected back to me, how markedly I've changed even just recently.

I'm not entirely sure how to characterize what's different. I'm not even entirely sure I can characterize it as wholly good, although clearly it is good in many ways. I suppose it can be described as a new confidence, which, of course, is most welcome. But I fear that it also includes something of a hardening, and this concerns me. I'm always happy to shed insecurity, but I worry I may have inadvertently also shed, I don't know how describe it, perhaps a kind of sensitivity? I worry because I don't want to lose what I think was good about me in the quest to become better. But I don't really think it was in becoming more confident that I may have become more hardened, if that is the word. What I do think is that this hardening may have actually been a by-product of becoming a lawyer altogether, and I'm not quite sure what to do about that.

Except perhaps to postpone worrying about it for another day, because with this new confidence comes recognition of new capabilities and potential, and that is fun. Returning to the wedding mentioned above, it was wonderful to get to share in Mike and Rosa's special day, but it was also special to be there because it turned out to be a reunion of sorts of our circle of friends from law school. As we wished one of our own well as he moved on in his life (married!) it became clear that, one year out of law school, all of us were moving on. Or "growing-up," as one friend noted. Marriages, careers... We're all working now, with at least one successful bar exam under all our belts. We've all come such a long way since the first year of law school when we first met, and it's clear we're all well on our way to what's next.

Now that I'm starting up again with the regular blogging, I'm going to risk everything by trying to upgrade the software. We'll see how this goes... (The problem is that I do this so infrequently I forget everything I learned the last time.)

Edit: It would also help considerably if the documentation could make up its mind on what the upgrading instructions actually should be. The website says one thing, but the readme file says another.

Edit #2: OK, it's done, I think, three hours of frustration and bitterness later. Given that the license for Movable Type is free I guess I can't complain too much, but geez it's poorly documented. And what makes it extremely annoying is that one of the features Six Apart bragged about when pitching the upgrade was how well documented it was. I might not have cared so much if they hadn't gotten my hopes up...

I also think it might have a bug, because the wonderful comment-spam blocker I was using no longer seems to work. Which is distressing, because I'm not keen to have to delete spam again. So stand by, as I may have to turn comments off and on while I work this out (although at the moment they're still on).

I'm also so far not crazy about the upgrade because it affected the UI of the administration screens. I suppose I'll get used to them, and apparently they can be modified, but for now they just make me cranky...

Anyway, so far, except for the comment-spam thing, it all looks ok to me. Please let me know if you discover otherwise.

Edit #3: By the way, does anyone know how to make MT 4.01 automatically send out new posts as emails? I thought this version could, but I can't see how.

Edit #4: You know, I thought I had it figured out. I held off upgrading for a month to wait for all the bugs to be worked out. Unfortunately it seems like it would have been a much longer wait... Other parts of the system are also not working as intended. They won't really affect me, but it's really annoying since it means I'll probably have to do this again sometime soon. In any case, I do not recommend upgrading to anything higher than 3.3 for now (although the other, later 3.x versions are probably fine).

Edit #5 9/24: I know what I was thinking when I decided to upgrade. Six Apart promised all sorts of features I wanted to have for some other projects I'm working on. But it was so not worth it since it seems with the upgrade I've lost functionality I already had. It seems to all run slower, and the worst thing is that I'll have to turn off comments until I can get that anti-spam program working. Hopefully that will be soon, but I really have no idea, dammit.

Edit #6: In the further adventures of Cathy banging her head on the desk, I think user error may have contributed to the anti-spam plugin not working... On the other hand, if it weren't for the poor MT documentation that might not have happened. And I still think there is a significant bug in the comment part of the system, as its behavior is not what I'd expect it to be. For instance, I'm trying to turn comments back on, and yet that's not actually happened...

Edit #7: This was a good system: bitch and moan, then solve the problem... Seriously, it was actually constructive, as the venting helped relieve the pressure in my brain so that there would be space to reflect on screens that I'd previously seen such that I could derive clues to possible solutions from them. That's how I solved the plugin problem, by remembering something I'd seen on a screen that on further reflection I realized wasn't quite what I should have seen had things been working properly, and I used a similar mental mechanism to figure out how to finally turn the comments back on right now.

It now appears that everything is working (yes?), including the amazing spam filter and the comments themselves. I do, however, still have issues with the MT software. The documentation is too vague/inconsistent/obscured to be useful, it seems much slower than the previous version (3.3), and the general design of the administrative backend leaves something to be desired as well. I was able to figure out what was going on with the comments, and maybe the weirdness was due to the upgrade and will never be an issue again, but somehow I doubt it. There seems to be some poorly thought out behaviors stemming from these controls, where checking or unchecking certain boxes reverberates throughout the site in ways one wouldn't necessarily anticipate.

In any case, however, it looks like I can stop with the swearing for now and move onto writing more regular prose. Yay.