Turtles all the way down

It’s fairly well known that multitasking can be inefficient. Some of this inefficiency comes from task switching.

On a typical day I’m juggling 2-4 projects for work, as well as reading and assignments for 2-4 classes. I’m finding that, when switching between tasks, I use the “down time” to catch up on email, read online news, diddle with Facebook, and so on. Not good.

There are a few tricks that can overcome this loss of focus. Turning off email notifications. Actively avoiding “non-work” web sites. Having an ordered set of tasks that I’m going to work on also helps. Sometimes I can be very productive if I disconnect my computer from the network and thereby force myself to do just one thing. However that doesn’t work if I need the Internet to do research or access files.

Regardless I need to get better at task switching.

Yesterday we held Appellate Advocacy (Moot Court) at a bar for purposes of team building. That was the bright side of things. On the other hand, our brief / oral argument assignment was released, and it is this one. It’s a doozy of a First Amendment case and worth a read even if you’re not a law student. (As an aside I’m willing to bet money that the Court tells Summum to get stuffed, but wouldn’t it be great if they didn’t? In that case I’ll start my own religion and start putting up monuments…)

Civil Procedure was pretty good last night. The prof is no where near the hard-ass he comes off as in his syllabus. He uses the Socratic method but in a fairly non-confrontational manner. He also has students play-act scenarios and hypotheticals to illustrate his points as well as to generate discussion. Another topic with the potential to be boring might actually turn out to be otherwise.

Today I have my Legal Writing 4 Equivalency, a zero credit hour course that is supposed to be quite easy with little to no work. Or so I hope.

I originally planned on writing about the changing face of copyright in a digital world. My thesis was going to be about how, once you turn content (music, movies, etc.) into zeros and ones, and/or make it available over the Internet, you lose control over it, DRM or not. Then I would analyze how the law is catching up with this basic fact, and how the law should encourage copyright holders to embrace the inevitable conclusion that content will be free (or at least low-cost). Or something like that.

But my initial research into this area found the topic and subject matter to be crowded. There are dozens, it not hundreds of law review articles discussing matters in this general area, so I feel as if I would have little to say aside that would be new and insightful.

So, I switched over to my backup topic, food allergies. My plan was to provide an overview of federal and state legislation, with a focus on how it impacts children. I would then summarize the case law surrounding and interpreting this legislation, then compare US laws to Canada and the EU. There are only about 10 on-topic law review articles that I could find in this area. So I think I have some room in which to work.

However, my attempts at finding a faculty advisor have failed so far. At this point it would be beneficial to discuss my progress with someone more well-versed in legal research.

So far so good with classes. Legislative Process was last night and promised to be the dullest class yet. However the professor seems nice, she kept it interesting, and even acknowledged its potential for dullness while arguing that we’ll think otherwise at the end of the semester. Better yet, she’s canceled class for Wednesday, as she’ll be at the Democratic National Convention.

It was nice seeing my fellow students again, and catching up with them and what they did over the summer.

Tonight is Appellate Advocacy and Civil Procedure. A reading of the CivPro prof’s syllabus appears to indicate that he is a bit formal and old-school. We’ll see.

School starts up tomorrow. I expected to spend my last weekend of freedom relaxing, playing with the kids as much as I can, and ramping up for the semester.

Instead, early Saturday morning, the kids’ computer came down with a virus. I ran the virus scanner to fix it, but it took almost all morning for the check to run. I also ran it scans on all of the other computers in the house, just in case.

Then, I bit the bullet and decided to move one of my websites to a new hosting provider. Had it up and running in a couple of hours, modulo a sticky issue with a configuration file that got munged in the transition between Linux and Windows. I cut traffic over to the new server soon after. So far I’m thrilled with the performance at the new hosting provider, and I’m giving a tentative thumbs-up to Lunar Pages.

We took our younger son’s broken dresser across town to be fixed, stopping for lunch at a crowded Subway. We were in back for a little bit of quiet time, during which my wife took a trip to the grocery store and I fiddled with the settings on my newly-transitioned web site.

Around 4pm, I headed out to play in a neighborhood softball game. Our hero went 3-for-4 with two runs scored. Of course, out of my 4 at bats, the kids only watched the one in which I struck out. Now how will I get them to listen to me when I teach them how to hit?

That evening we took in some of the soon-to-be-over Olympics and after the kids were in bed, my wife and I watched Eastern Promises, a halfway decent thriller. Mildly recommended.

At 6am the whole family was wakened by one of our smoke alarms chirping. Not going off - chirping. Although all of our smoke alarms are wired into house power, they need 9 volt backup batteries. And if one of those batteries is about to die, the alarm will chirp. Loudly. Did I mention it was at 6am? As an aside, this happens every year or so and it always seems to occur early in the morning.

Awake, I fiddled some more with the web site, fixing a feature that was broken, then after breakfast had a couple of quick games of Yahtzee with my older son, then we headed out to pick up the now-fixed dresser.

I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon working researching my law review article, then we all headed to the gym. The boys were looking forward to climbing the rock wall, but the gym had mysteriously changed its the rock wall’s hours, so we arrived right after it closed. Instead we let them play racketball, after which my wife and I hit the weights. I was still sore from softball but managed a decent workout regardless.

Once home again, we cooked steaks and had a family game night. The boys played chess, then we all came together for Carcassone (a very cool game - highly recommended) in which I got trounced.

At this point it was just about bedtime, so the boys went down to read to each other while I read a couple of law review articels for my paper research. It has begun…

Me: “How was your first day of Kindergarten???”

Him: “Didn’t learn anything.”

As I was cutting my older son’s fingernails last night, I told him that when his nails got to a certain length that he should tell Mom or Dad so that we could cut them. In order to further motivate the point (and perhaps because I was frustrated that I had not previously noticed how long his nails were) I told him that if he didn’t, his nails could break or split and that could be very painful.

His response: “How come girls’ nails don’t break or split?”

I didn’t have a good answer. I mumbled something about how girls put polish on their nails to make them stronger. That was sufficient for him, but not for me.

I want to avoid the silly stereotypes, but apparently, in the spectrum of sexual correctness I draw the line at a certain point. It’s not exactly where other people draw the line but it is still a line.

Should boys grow long fingernails? No.

Should girls be able to dress in traditional “boy” attire (e.g., pants)? Sure.

Should boys be able to grow their hair long? Of course.

Should boys wear dresses? No.

Should girls be able to boy sports? Yes, as long as they understand (as boys need to understand as well) that they could get hurt.

Should girls play with “boy” toys? Yes.

Should boys play with “girl” toys. I’m not so hot with this idea.

While I have resisted certain archaic social norms, I’m not willing to act as if there is no difference between the sexes. Thus, apparently I’m compelled by prevalent social norms to raise my boys in a certain way.

Perhaps this isn’t such a big deal. I believe the most important aspect of all this that the kids need to understand is that EVERYONE should be treated fairly and with respect.

One week of freedom. One week of being home early in the evening. One week of being able to play with my kids before they go to bed. One week of eating dinner at home. One week of at least having the option of getting a good night’s sleep.

Law school starts again on Monday and I’m just not looking forward to it. Sure, I enjoy the material, the challenge, the learning, the hanging out with all those bright people.

On the other hand, there are the inevitable boring lectures, the mind games, the research and papers, and of course trying to balance all of this with work and family life. Not easy.

And it will last four months.

Some days I vacillate between feeling like I know so little that I need the intense experience of another semester, and feeling like I’m doing ok at learning the law in spite of school.

At first I though I was too cool (or un-cool depending on how you look at it) for Facebook.

For kicks, last year I set up a profile.

Now I’ve got over 130 friends.

That in and of itself is not a big deal. What is a big deal is the fact that these friends are my current co-workers, past co-workers, fellow law school students, classmates from high school and college, former students, family, neighbors, musicians that I like, and, of course, plain old friends.

The big deal is that I can easily keep track of what is going on in their lives on a daily basis. They publish their status updates, activities, photos, and so on. I know who’s on vacation, where they are, and what they doing. I know who is at work, who is feeling up, who is feeling down, who is having a birthday, who is wise-cracking, who is tired, and who was awake in the middle of the night.

Compared to other ways of staying in touch, Facebook wins hands down. Phone calls? Too intrusive. Texting? Too limited. USmail? Too slow, too Eighties. Email? Too much commitment involved and not immediate enough. IM? Also too intrusive.

And the nice thing: No one can accuse you of being nosy on Facebook, since status updates are voluntarily published. I know these things because my friends choose to share them.

Furthermore, I can publish my updates as well, let everyone know what I am doing, feeling and so on. I can do this for kicks or for purposes of “selling” the brand name of myself.

On top of all this, they have a pretty good mobile interface that I can actually use from my cell phone.

Nice work, Facebook.

Every law school has a law review, and mine is no exception. Basically, it is a student-run academic journal. Law Reviews also differ from other academic journals in that articles are rigorously cite-checked and fact-checked.

Law review is considered by some to be the most prestigious honor that can be bestowed upon a law student. Others tell me that that it’s not only boring, but a waste of time.

We’ll see.

I have two duties this year as new law review staff: cite checking, and writing an article suitable for publication.

I’ll have three or four cite-checking assignments. My understanding is that they will each have two phases. In the first, I will gather basic information on about 40 references in an article submitted to the review. In the second, I will actually obtain physical copies of those references.

That doesn’t sound too hard, but it doesn’t sound very exciting either. And somewhere in this process I will have to read the article to proof it, including making sure that its citations are all in Blue Book form.

Again, doesn’t sound hard or exciting. But maybe I’ll reneg on the not-hard part because I’m told that I’ll only have three days to do the first phase start to finish.

For the article, I’m not scared. The requirements are a 25 page paper with 125 citations. I’m told the latter is not as difficult to achieve as it sounds. For the E-Commerce course I took this summer (when am I going to get my grade, eh?), I wrote a 20 page “law review” style paper with about 65 citations. It took time, but it wasn’t bad.

Speaking of time, the paper is due to be written on a regimented schedule over the course of the entire school year. So I’ll have time. Hopefully. If the crush of two lecture courses and Moot Court (where I’ll be writing an appellate brief and making oral arguments) doesn’t consume all of it.

As for a topic, I have two candidates. One plays to my strengths and the other doesn’t. The topic that I have a better background for is an analysis of the changing laws surrounding digital copyright and the near-impossibility of enforcement of most of these laws thanks to the Internet. The other is a survey of laws in all 50 states, as well as federal laws, regarding food allergies, with a focus on food allergies in children. Right now I’m leaning towards the latter.

We’ll see.