mini-vacation

I'm off to the land of Starbuck's coffee, Grey's Anatomy, 70 degree weather, mountains, and bitchy friends from the Peace Corps. I might stop by Microsoft and tell them how much I hate the .mup driver, which seems to be what killed my computer. My efforts at resurrection have so far been unsuccessful.

An open letter to Dell

FUCK YOU!!!!

Your piece of crap computers are intentionally designed to last for less than three years, and your evil assembly minions in Malaysia installed malicious code three years ago that caused my Dell Inspiron 500m to crash and die at the most inconvenient moment, like when I am writing the LAST question to my LAST final that happens to be a painful 24 hour take home exam.

Fortunately for me, I learned from my years in a country where just about everything is broken to take precautions. I previously backed up the first two questions onto webspace and only lost about a page and a half of work. Still, that is about an hour and a half worth of crap that must be re-shat.

I am extremely bitter that your fucking piece of shit $1500 "computer" crashed on me and forced me to come to the law school at 11 PM and spend the wee hours in the clinic. I am also bitter that many of my files from this past semester are probably irreparably lost. I may try to salvage the hard drive, but things don't look good when you are repeatedly told to press Ctr+Alt+Delete to reboot. The money that I would have to spend on a new computer will instead be spent hunting down the previously mentioned Malaysia assembly minions in Malaysia this August, and when I get a job and a paycheck I will be shopping for an iBook.

For my suffering this evening, I should get at least an A- on my exam. And you know what? I am DONE with law school.

Three down, eight to go

I'm not referring to final exams. If I were, I would probably shoot myself. I am referring to ABC's genious decision to place full episodes from four of this season's shows online for free. Because I was in Belém last semester, I missed 11 shows of Alias. And now, thanks to ABC, I am able to catch up on this season's happenings instead of studying for my final final.

Speaking of which, I should probably just take it already. I've convinced myself that I understand the material; this may be just another sign of denial. The prof thinks he is doing us a favor by giving a 24 hour open book take home, but this really means that I will have an entire day to flip through the text and my notes not to find the answer and then type 10 pages of gibberish.

Surplussage

This morning I completed enough credits to receive my JD. The fed courts exam wasn't that bad. I wrote in complete sentences and remembered a few case names, so that should be good enough for a C. That means that I didn't fail, earned the 4 credits for the course, and have accrued 87 credit hours, 1 more than required for the degree. Rejoice?

Not quite. I'm not done yet. I still have a 24 hour take home that I'll probably take home on Tuesday, Monday if I am feeling ambitious. My motivation to study is right at about zero. I had a nice, law-free afternoon. I checked out the new Blanton Museum, had lunch, took a satisfying nap, and then went to the gym.

TMDL

In environmental law parlance, TMDL = total maximum daily load. My TMDL for studying is down to a few hours a day; I really can't take much anymore. Just wait until Thursday when the dam bursts and the effluent really starts to flow on the fed courts exam. How I will survive this summer studying for the bar I do not know.

Depressing distractions

In the past month there have been two articles on logging in Borneo. The one from "The Economist" talks about economic incentives and alternative sanctions, some of the stuff I worked on at Imazon last semester in Belem. Last week's article in the New York Times is more depressing and makes me wonder if there will be any trees left when I visit the Malaysian side of the island in August.

Computer band-aid

Rejoice, the band-aid I bought at Comp USA has restored my internet access at home after almost a week of hardship. Now I can really start studying.