Turtles all the way down

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.

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.”

“The opening ceremonies are on? I want to watch! I want to watch!…when are they going to play games? There’s no games in the opening ceremonies?!?!”

“BOOOOOOOOOORIIIING!!!!!!!!”

A cool feature of Rock Band that is missing from Guitar Hero 3 is the ability to do some limited amount of improv. Well, very limited.

How cool would it be to have games like these support a greater degree of improvisation? Maybe the game would rate your improv and grant points based on staying in key and your playing off of what your bandmates are doing. Imagine the replayability - each time you play a song it’s different.

Guitar Hero 4 is promising to allow gamers to compose and share their own music. Hopefully true improv is coming soon as well.

Blood Diamond. Above average fictionalized piece on the Africa diamond trade, its illicit dealings, and its affect on the people of Africa. Perhaps a bit too preachy from time to time, and featuring an over-idealized supporting character, but overall a good story with very good acting. Recommended. A-.

Wall-E. I prefer the edgier or the funnier Pixar pieces, such as The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Having said that, Wall-E is a good way to spend an afternoon, but falls into Pixar’s second tier. The plot is predictable and hits you over the head with environmentalism and health issues. Even if you find yourself agreeing with this advocacy, its heavy-handedness is almost cringe-inducing. The graphics and technical aspects of the film are outstanding, as you might expect. However, brilliant CGI never equates to brilliant storytelling. Mildly recommended. B+.

Night at the Museum. I know this is meant to be a silly, childish movie, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a silly, childish movie. Even with a plot that forces you to suspend your disbelief to begin with, you have to end up suspending it even more to sit through the contrived storyline. Right. Nothing to see here…move along… C.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. If you don’t like movies that only feature characters you don’t like, then you won’t like this one. A strong cast demonstrate a wide range of human weaknesses in a chain of Murphy’s-Law-inspired events, where everything just keeps going wrong. Very worthwhile. A.

We bought Rock Band last weekend. We (the whole family) are having a blast with it, though my wife and I are probably enjoying it the most.

Here’s today’s top ten list of things-I-previously-didn’t-know-but-learned-playing-Rock-Band:

1. My wife is a pretty good singer (five stars on hard).
2. I’m a lousy singer (three stars on easy).
3. Nothing is better than Big Rock Endings on the drum kit.
4. I have slightly better rhythm than I thought (I thought I had none).
5. My 7 year old is doing well on the drums and guitar.
6. My 5 year old hasn’t quite gotten drumming yet, but he’s great at vocal improv (i.e., screaming into the mic).
7. Drumming makes you work up a sweat, even if you suck.
8. Guitars are not the emphasis here.
9. I sure wish the peripherals were wireless.
10. We won’t be going on tour anytime soon. A basement band we will remain.

We went to the local balloon festival this afternoon. We didn’t stick around for the balloon launch or the fireworks, but that was part of the plan.

We got there about 1:30 in the afternoon. The kids did rock climbing and the patting zoo, then we watched lumberjack and acrobatics shows. After a snack break, we let them do some rides, but at $3-$5 per ride per kid, we felt that someone out there was being unjustly enriched. $16 for a family of four to ride a Ferris wheel?

After watching the parade, we decided that we had had enough. It was almost 4:30, the kids were tired and the crowds were piling in. After a rather long wait for an inefficient transport back to the parking lot, we were on the way home.

A few hints to festival organizers: (1) figure out how to move people to and from the parking more effectively. At the very least, have people form lines instead of letting the buses get mobbed, (2) use bigger buses - the glorified minivans didn’t cut it, and (3) sure you’ve got a captive audience but don’t take every opportunity to ding visitors for a few more bucks - or at least have a flat rate option for rides.

Ten months ago I switched jobs and insurance carriers. Or so I thought.

A few weeks ago my current insurance carrier, who had been paying my claims to that point, indicated that my account with my previous insurance carrier was still active. This meant that my current insurance carrier might not pay certain future claims because they thought they might not be my primary insurer.

I figured that this would be an easy problem to rectify. I called my old insurance carrier and explained the situation and that I wanted to cancel my insurance. They refused.

Apparently, someone from my previous company’s HR department needed to cancel the insurance. However, my previous company had been acquired and it no longer existed. The individuals they listed as being able to cancel my insurance no longer worked for my old company or the acquiring company.

Even after I explained this, they still refused to let me cancel my own insurance coverage. After several hours on the phone over the course of two weeks, I finally got ahold of the previous insruance carrier’s local sales representative who quickly understood the situation and applied for a retroactive cancellation of my insurance, all the way back to when I left the previous company. Once that went through, my new insurance company picked up the change and all was fixed.

Here we are, in a country were some people can’t get insurance, and I’ve got two policies, one of which I can’t get rid of.

On Friday, our functioning but old air conditioner took its last breath, knocking out main breaker power to our house along the way. Panic briefly ensued, but rational heads prevailed. On Saturday, we had a brand new air conditioner and the house and family was no worse for the wear. However the bank account had taken some damage.

On Friday, we had plans to spend the weekend in Michigan, going to amusement parks and beaches. On Saturday our plans had changed to stay home and fit the trip in sometime later in the summer.

We usually keep the doors and windows closed year round due to my family’s issues with seasonal allergies. So air conditioning is a greater need for us than it is for more people.

About the trip: the kids are disappointed, but not as much as my wife. I’m ok with postponing it, as my schedule is crazy enough this week.