It’s official

Yesterday morning Kenyon & Kenyon officially offered me an associate position upon graduation from law school. I think it goes without saying that I’m ecstatic right now, but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway: I’m ecstatic!

I’m doubtful that I could have had a better summer at any other firm in the country. It was a wonderful experience and I feel very fortunate to have found what seems to be a great fit for me.

I’ve also been asked to work part-time during my last year of law school. While this will certainly be difficult given all of the things I’m already involved with outside of school, the opportunity was obviously something I couldn’t pass up and I look forward to working with everyone again as soon as possible.

San Jose Grand Prix

Earlier today the firm gave us some tickets for the San Jose Grand Prix, which, by the way, has turned San Jose completely upside down — the track is nearly two miles of streets in the heart of downtown and so getting anywhere in the city is a nightmare. We got to take a tour of the pit and had great seats right above it.

I didn’t bring my camera to work because I didn’t think I was going to the races, but one of the partners actually has a 20D and offered to let me use it. I’ll put some of those pictures up as soon as I get them from him.

Without question, the coolest thing I saw at the track on Friday was the drifting exhibition. I’ve watched a lot of drifting videos on the net the past couple of years and just read a great article in the latest edition of Esquire about it (subscription required), but had never actually seen it done (on a track!) in person. All the superstars of the sport were there and they put on quite a show. It was fun to watch everyone’s reaction to all of the near-crashes and donuts. I absolutely could not wipe the grin off my face each time they slid through my turn.

Got root?

I think it’s a safe bet that I’m the only summer associate at a large IP law firm that wears a “Got root?” shirt around his apartment. Old habits die hard.  :)

And so it continued

It’s well known among my friends that I’m pretty much the unluckiest person on the planet when it comes to most everything except women. However, that one exception keeps a lot of my friends from being sympathetic to my plight, yet I will always insist that, on balance, I’m generally worse off than all of them. Not wanting to deviate much from my destiny and NorthWest apparently looking to further cement themselves at the bottom of my list of ways to travel (somewhere between running and riding a camel), my bad luck with this wedding trip continued. My flight out of Orlando was delayed a full two hours, which, I was told, was likely going to cause me to miss my connection to San Jose in Minneapolis. Fortunately, I made it to Minneapolis on time, but only to be delayed yet again, this time for slightly more than two hours, with most of that time spent on the tarmac. If anyone is keeping score, we have one missed flight due to a mobile phone bug (which cost me $500 on top of my round-trip ticket), a delayed flight, a cancelled flight, another delayed flight, and finally, one more delayed flight. Oh, and two, nearly 24-hour days spent flying, driving, and complaining.

To add insult to injury I left my PowerBook power supply in Florida and so I had to ration my computer time carefully throughout the day. As usual though, when I did manage to brave the malfunctioning heating pad that is a PowerBook on your lap, someone sitting next to me struck up a conversation about Apple and I, of course, being the pundit that I am, did my thing. Not too long after we started warming up to each other she started to complain about NorthWest (her flight to Seattle was already an hour late), and so we began to trade war stories. Next, I did what any self-respecting computer dork would do; I used my mobile phone to connect to the net over Bluetooth and had her read my previous post. She said, “You win.”

As if there was ever any doubt, her story only reinforced my disdain for the airline and we both vowed to never fly them again.

That, however, was not the biggest lesson learned on this trip. No, the biggest lesson learned was that ignorance truly is bliss. This lesson came from the old, bat-shit crazy (think Tom Cruise) lady sitting behind me in the terminal who was convinced that she had done her part to save humanity because she had given $25,000 to a destitute “mystic” who is single-handedly keeping California “afloat” using a series of “atomic bubbles” placed strategically throughout the state. She swore to the poor guy who got caught up in her pipe dreams that all of the “news people” knew about it but didn’t want the public to know, because, well, they would obviously try to “pop the bubbles” and sink the state. What? Yah.

When I’m old I’m going to make up the craziest, weirdest shit ever, just to see what lengths people will go to humor me.

Taking the good with the bad

As some of you know, one of my best friends got married on Saturday and because I was in the wedding I headed back to Florida last Thursday for the rehearsal and whatnot. The wedding and the weekend in general were wonderful. I had a great time, met a lot of really neat people, and got to catch up with some friends I hadn’t seen in years. The wedding went off without a hitch and the rehearsal dinner and reception were a lot of fun.

So, overall, the trip was great, but getting to and from Florida was anything but.

On Thursday, the alarm on my mobile phone decided that it wanted to get me off on the right foot by refusing to sound. I missed my 6:40AM flight. I was livid, not only because I just missed my flight, but because I don’t think I’ve ever missed anything in my life (of any import) or even been late for that matter. I called Expedia, through whom I booked my NorthWest flight, and they told me that everything to Orlando from San Jose was full (of course). I then had them look at flights out of San Francisco. They had one seat on a 12:30PM flight for a little more than $500, which was more than my initial round-trip ticket. It was my only option. I was at the airport by 8AM (friend had to be back in San Jose for work) and I waited there for 4+ hours until we started boarding. I had a layover in Minneapolis where we sat on the tarmac for over an hour because the beverage people were running behind. And what did we get for this delay? Perhaps a free alcoholic drink or a “snack box?” Nothing. Nothing but a “we’re sorry about the delay, but now that the beverages have been loaded we can leave.” Thank god, because without my half can of Mountain Dew I might have complained about arriving in Orlando on time. As it turned out, I didn”t get into Orlando until after midnight and by the time I rented a car and drove to my dad’s house it was approaching 2AM.

Knowing that the fun couldn’t possibly be over, I was all kinds of excited to see what the flight back had in store for me.

My flight was supposed to leave at 1:28PM. I got to the airport around noon after returning my rental car and shuttling to OIA. As I approached the automated ticket kiosk I was apprehended by a NorthWest agent and asked if I was on the flight that was to connect in Minneapolis. I said I was and she proceeded to tell me that the flight had been cancelled because “the plane just leaked 400 gallons of gas onto the tarmac.” She then pointed me to the end of a line that practically reached California and said that I would be helped “soon.” Two and a half hours later it was my turn to bitch about the situation and make it known that I could have walked to California aleady had I not been made to wait in the line. I handed the guy my ID and waited patiently while he pretended to type a novel at 200 words per minute. Almost a full five minutes later he said, “I’m sorry, but there is nothing available for San Jose today.” I said “of course there’s not” and then turned around and asked the remaining line if anyone was suprised that there were no other flights available to Silicon Valley today; while a rhetorical question I got quite a few “NOs” and a lot of negative head-shaking. I had the agent try San Francisco and Oakland as well. Nothing. The earliest he could get me back to San Jose was 7:30PM… the next day. It was my only option. After taking that flight, I shuttled back over to the car rental place, rented another car, and then drove the hour back to my dad’s place.

Anyone want to bet that I don’t actually get back to San Jose tomorrow?

I thought typing all of this out would help to squelch my anger and frustration, but I’m afraid it hasn’t helped at all.

As you were.

Foggy harbor

Last Friday after work I headed up to Half Moon Bay (a small town on the northern coast of California just south of San Francisco) hoping to get some shots of the coast and the sunset. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that it was going to be foggy as all hell until I actually got there. Fortunately though, right as I was about to get off the Pacific Coast Highway, I noticed a small harbor packed with boats. The full harbor coupled with the heavy fog was a scene that I just couldn’t pass up. Besides the pics below, there are a few more from this set in my stream. Enjoy.

Expect more photos

You may or may not have noticed that I’ve just resized the width of my content div to 500 pixels (from 400). So, the site is now 830 pixels wide, which, while a little wider than I would like, should still suit most monitors just fine. The impetus behind the greater width is that I plan to put pictures up on the weblog a bit more frequently than I have in the past (after all, I didn’t sell my soul for nothing) and the larger the picture I can get away with the better.

Though I wouldn’t go above 500 pixels anyway, two factors restrained me regardless. First, Flickr’s “medium” file size is 500xYYY and you can’t specify anything different (i.e., 400 isn’t an option). Because, as of this post, I’m using Flickr as the “src” for the images on my weblog, I’m now constrained by its limitations. Second, I have to have the width of the paragraphs be the same as the width of the photos. It’s an anal-retentive thing that isn’t up for debate; I just don’t like how the page flows (or not) when one is wider than the other. Furthermore, if I started making the paragraphs much wider than 500 pixels they would quickly become annoying to read. Nothing, and I mean nothing, makes me crazier when reading a web page than to have to scroll over to read the end of the sentence. Text should always be confined to narrow, easy-to-read columns; anything else is inefficient and annoying. [I'm now jumping off the soapbox]

Why not a photoblog?

I thought long and hard about maybe doing a separate “photoblog” kind of thing, but I finally got the good and bad halves of me to agree that that probably wasn’t the best thing for me given all the other shit I have going on for the forseeable future (read: I don’t mind sleeping less than 99% of the population, but at some point I have to pull back a little). I also gave serious consideration to simply splicing certain photos from Flickr into my RSS feed using FeedBurner (you can actually specify which photos should be included in the feed using Flickr tags). The problem with this approach is that while I’ve been on the RSS bandwagon for years, I’m well aware that a lot of the people that visit this site (read: family and real-life friends) don’t have the faintest idea what it is (despite my best efforts to change their lives  :P) and that these people are more often than not those that I most want to see the pictures.

The transition

I spent the better part of yesterday morning resizing the pictures (sourced from Flickr) in my weblog and linking them to their respective Flickr pages, a process that can only be described as a horrible chore. This involved loading up my archive pages for each year, scrolling through them looking for pictures, finding each particular picture in iPhoto (not too hard because I have them all tagged with “weblog”), determining whether I’ve already uploaded them to Flickr, and if not, uploading them to Flickr, going to the “medium” download page on Flickr, pulling the HTML information that Flickr generates (very nice), adding some CSS values to the HTML, and finally inserting this into each post.

While a bit of work, I think the setup should serve me well for at least a few years. Unless they’re subscribed to my photo feed, most people will only look at the pictures (or picture sets) I direct them to from this site, which are usually those that I think are the best. Also, a nice bonus to using Flickr for everything is that it allows people to comment on the photos (separate and apart from the weblog itself) and I think linking to the photos directly from the website will spawn a lot more comments; I’m generally anti-comments, but it hasn’t yet been an issue with my photos. Indeed, I’ve quite enjoyed the interaction.

Not for nothing, but I’ve turned off Nice[r] Titles until I can get it working how I want with images. I’d like it to look the same as it does (did!) with my bits.

Smart Archives is doing pretty well

I was sifting through my web stats like I tend to do every so often and I just noticed that over 10,000 [unique] people have visited the Smart Archives project page. Wow, not too bad. That number seems to be commensurate with the volume of support e-mail I get.  :P

First shots with the dSLR

Below you’ll find some of the first few shots I took with my new Canon EOS 20D and EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens. I didn’t have too much time to devote to picture-taking this weekend and so I just walked around downtown San Jose for a while and shot whatever I found interesting. While looking at the pictures, I ask that you keep in mind that this was literally the first time I’ve shot with this camera, or any type of SLR for that matter — I’ve much to learn (and learn I will). As always, you can find the full-size pictures in my Flickr photostream (along with 800+ other photos, including some more from this “christening”) .

The deed is done

I’ve just ordered the Canon EOS 20D and the EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens (it took me forever to decide on the lens after it took me forever to decide on the body). While the lens was well outside my price range (and I’ve now spent double what I initially planned for my first DSLR), I knew that I would get it eventually and so I went ahead and sprung for it now. I don’t think this will come as a shock to most of my friends — if there is something I want I usually figure out a way to make it happen. Granted, that way might mean that I can’t eat for a month, but at least I’ll be able to get some great shots of my emaciated body.

It should be here by Friday, and assuming I haven’t withered away by then I’d like to have some shots up by the weekend.

Overheard in San Jose

Taking a cue from Overheard in New York, I heard the following said at the San Jose America Festival tonight (which, by the way, had a great fireworks show) by a guy walking through the crowd hawking various shit-nacks.

Get your lighted stars! If you aren’t wearing a lighted star you’re a communist.