Posted by TDot on Sep 8, 2010 in
Randomness Hey y’all 
I’ve actually got a TDot’s Tips entry ready to go that I was planning on posting tonight, but a couple hours ago one of my friends on Twitter tweeted about a portion of a Facebook note I had written what feels like an eternity ago. So I figured since many of y’all have been reading my (crazed) musings for quite awhile now, you deserve a copy/paste of the original note to help shed some light on the man behind the laptop 
And even if you didn’t, I’ve got classes starting at 8:30am tomorrow so I need to finish studying and go to bed 
You can read the original note (and ensuing comments) on Facebook here. Here’s the copy/paste, with footnotes added for the few items that have changed since starting law school:
ok I give up! — 25 things about TGD
by T Greg Doucette on Saturday, June 20, 2009 at 3:57pm
Back in late January, a friend of mine at UNC Pembroke tagged me in a note posting 25 random items about her and asking the folks tagged in the note to do the same — in what turned out to be the first salvo in the latest wave of Facebook “chain notes.” A couple dozen tags later, I still hadn’t written one myself mostly out of (i) laziness and (ii) hoping I would outlast the fad.
Despite the nagging inbox messages and IMs and texts, eventually folks stopped writing the notes in favor of whatever new thing was going around. And there was no note from El TGD. Victory was mine.
Then I guess people felt bad for not responding months ago, b/c the summer rolled around and they started sprouting up again. And again. And again. So after being tagged another couple times, I’m finally throwing in the towel, taking a break from work, and posting my own note so I can assuage my guilty conscience. I even went back and tagged all the people who tagged me originally — and threw in a few extra folks just to subject them to the same shame for not writing a note of their own when they got tagged months ago 
====================
THE RULES
====================
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. I may have tagged you even if you’ve posted 25 random things already. In this case I just tagged you because I love you!
[TGD's edit: I didn't write the rules, I just copy/pasted them ]
====================
25 THINGS ABOUT TGD
====================
1) The “T” stands for “The” (or “Thomas”, depending on who’s asking).
2) Before anyone ever used the phrase “larger-than-life ego” to describe Barack Obama, they were using it to describe me.
3) Loyalty is more important than competence. And I passionately despise incompetence. So you can imagine what I think of disloyalty
4) I also have issues with people who i) complain all the time, ii) always need to be taken care of, iii) are unreliable or iv) only contact you when they need/want something.
5) I am a firm believer in a benevolent and almighty God, although I generally keep my faith to myself and usually avoid theological conversations.
6) I didn’t have an alcoholic beverage until I was 25. And I still never touch the stuff in the presence of my grandparents.
7) My greatest contribution as a lobbyist was figuring out how to explain why I don’t smoke (one of our clients was the Cigar Association of America). Remind me to tell you some time if you haven’t heard it already.
8) My eyes are really, really sensitive to light. That’s why I usually keep my office fairly dark and always wear sunglasses outside. It’s also apparently earned me the nickname “The Vampire” among certain denizens of Witherspoon Student Center
9) It takes a *lot* to get me angry. And on the rare occasions it happens, I’m usually perfectly fine after a decent night’s sleep.
10) In tandem with #9, it kills me to upset people (intentionally or otherwise). Except when it relates to #3 or #4
11) I’ve learned more in the past 4 years at NC State than in the 7 years before it combined — and more in the past 11 years being in North Carolina than the previous 17 combined.
12) I was raised in Virginia Beach, but never really appreciated the ocean until I moved to Raleigh. As much as I love oak trees, I prefer the coast.
13) Women are my kryptonite. Of all the dumb things I’ve done in my life, the majority were done for a girl.
14) At some point about two years ago I was looking back on the path I took to come back to NCSU… and stopped worrying about failure. It’s a transformative and profoundly empowering realization, even though it also helped torpedo my GPA.
15) Despite #14 I’m still excessively competitive, especially when it comes to basketball, video games, and politics
16) There are only 2 decisions I’ve made in my life that I can genuinely say I regret. Few people know either of them. No one knows them both.
17) Once upon a time I was the youngest elected Vice Chairman in the history of the Wake County GOP… and have since been convinced that most of the “party leaders” in North Carolina are utter fruitcakes. Now I generally prefer local Democrats and national Republicans (except for those dumbasses in the House who equated themselves with Iranian protesters).
18) I’m a pretty good cook (breakfast is my specialty), and I’m very protective of my kitchen. But I’m also not terribly adventurous with food — the most exotic thing I’ve tried was alligator, and I wasn’t impressed.
19) I’ve taken tap, jazz, and ballet classes, sang in chorus, and acted in theatre (and even a movie). And contrary to popular belief, none of it was to meet girls.
20) I’m open to pretty much any kind of music, but my iTunes library is overwhelmingly R&B, rap, and classical.
21) When I first came to NCSU, I couldn’t afford a computer. Looking back, I don’t know how I was able to pass my classes without one.
22) As much as I complain about being stressed, I’m a Type A workaholic and haven’t taken a bona fide vacation in years. And forcing me to turn off my BlackBerry for more than an hour is almost as painful as waterboarding…
23) Surprisingly, I enjoy being a teacher and mentor. I have no idea where life is going to take me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that ended up being my career after law school and the USMC.
24) The most rewarding experience I’ve had in my life so far has been serving in Student Government at NCSU and in the UNC Association of Student Governments. I’ve met dozens of amazing people, worked with some of the best student leaders this state has ever seen, and learned more than I thought was possible — all while helping to improve people’s lives and having more than my fair share of fun
25) I am a hopeless romantic, an incurable idealist, and an unapologetic believer in American exceptionalism and the God-given rights of man. I bleed Wolfpack red. I’m allergic to bullshit. I hate cold weather. And I’m done with this note 
Law stuff tomorrow Have a great night everybody!! 
Tags: About TDot, NC State, SG, UNCASG
Posted by TDot on Sep 7, 2010 in
The 2L Life Good evening everybody!
Earlier today the Student Bar Association at NCCU Law conducted the elections for the 1L class officers. Now before the election, the Class of 2013 (2014 for the night program) had already surprised us during Orientation with their (feigned?) attentiveness during the 2L/3L panel. And they surprised us again by having multiple candidates for every single SBA office. The surprises kept coming during the 1.5-week-long election cycle, when several candidates teamed up to form actual slates and campaigned as a team.
So today was Election Day, and I guess they decided to throw one more surprise into the mix: voter turnout was 69.14% 
None of us on the SBA can definitively say that’s an all-time record, but only because our historical records on voter turnout are rather… mmm… shall we say “sparse.” We’re fairly confident it’s an all-time record though.
For comparison purposes, the closest turnout for an election for U.S. President that I could find happened in 1960 when JFK was elected, and even then turnout was only a hair above 60%. Not trying to equate the NCCU Law Class of 2013 presidency with the US presidency of course, but merely offering some “food for thought” on civic activism
Congratulations to the folks who won! The SBA officers are looking forward to working with all of you — and personally I’m looking forward to watching what y’all do in the future!
Tags: NCCU Law, SBA
Posted by TDot on Sep 6, 2010 in
The 2L Life If you’re tuned in to the political process, you’ve probably heard at some point that Labor Day marks the “official start” of campaign season — the time when voters start to pay attention, and aspiring politicians sprint toward Election Day with their assortment of negative ads.
My 2L Fall semester at NCCU Law seems to be following a similar path: from early August through today it’s been comparatively relaxed (complete with the past week off), and now things get kicked up a notch as we grind out the next 5 weeks until midterms start on October 11th. And I feel like a total slacker for confessing this, but I’m really not looking forward to actually having to attend classes this week
Wake me up when 3L year gets here…
Tags: 2L, NCCU Law
Posted by TDot on Sep 5, 2010 in
Technology Good evening y’all!
The never-ending war on WordPress comment spam has been less-intense the past couple weeks, owing in large part to my hair-trigger tendency to add people to the .htaccess banlist I started keeping track of the raw number of referrers and IPs banned just for my own amusement, and in typical TDot fashion created a chart showing where things were as of September 1st.
See the footnote before complaining about my spelling
Banning spammers has the upshot of “purifying” the site stats — meaning the people who show up in the logs are now either (a) search engine crawlers or (b) honest-to-God humans — but it also raises the possibility a legit visitor might get banned because they happen to be accessing the site from a spam-tastic host.
I’ve been meaning to clean up the ErrorDocument files that our web server spits out when that sort of thing happens, but considering I’ve barely kept up with posting do you really think I got around to something that requires actual coding?
Fortunately it’s a long holiday weekend following an abbreviated school week, so today got to be the lucky day I sat down and hammered out some more tweaks. In lieu of studying of course
Now if you happen to be one of those unfortunate souls banned from accessing the law-licious goodness of law:/dev/null because you or your fellow server denizens have engaged in scurrilous spamming or other electronic acts of villainy, you’ll be greeted with a page explaining that you’re forbidden from accessing anything and, more importantly, my email address if you think I’ve banned you in error. w00t for slightly-more-useful error messages.
Of course with the 403 Forbidden page getting a makeover, the 404 Not Found page was feeling left out so I tweaked that too. Now if you try to reach a post that no longer exists or you go somewhere that’s just plain silly (http://www.lawdevnull.com/pinkelephants/ for instance) the page will not only let you know the thing your looking for isn’t there but also — thanks to AskApache’s Google 404 plugin — provide you with Google-generated suggestions for what you might have been trying to find
Feel free to poke around and experiment, and if you notice any bugs or kinks or typos let me know! Actual law-related content coming soon, but until then have a great night!!
Tags: Blawg Love, Tech Talk
Posted by TDot on Sep 4, 2010 in
The 2L Life …the whole “not updating the blog on a timely basis” thing. I promise. I’ve just noticed that I tend to slack on the blog on the same days I slack on the schoolwork.
This past Tuesday, the day after the last post I managed to get online here at law:/dev/null, was spent helping to run what we called the SBA Student Stimulus Sale — a 9am-9pm event where all the NCCU Law paraphernalia sold by the Student Bar Association was discounted by 15% to raise money for student groups. The other SBA officers and I wanted to do some kind of promotional event close to when financial aid refunds went out, so folks would be more willing to part with their cash.
Let’s just say the plan was a success
But that success also meant skipping all of my classes for the day to run the SBA’s store, prompting Co-Counsel to complain about my priorities. Then the next day Prof ZombieLaw wasn’t feeling well and cancelled class, meaning I got the day off. Then on Thursday most of the NCCU campus endured a day-long power outage so all those classes were cancelled too. And of course I have no classes on Fridays, then today was the first real day of the college football season 
So overall I’ve barely thought about law for almost a week now, and that meant barely doing anything with the blog aside from cleaning out the spam comments
It all comes at a price: in between games today I cleaned up the apartment a bit, so tomorrow and the Labor Day holiday can both be devoted to catching up on all the reading I’ve missed. Hopefully the academic work will remind to keep things updated here though
Hope all of you had a great week last week, and have an equally great holiday weekend ahead!
Tags: 2L, Co-Counsel, ConLaw, NCCU Law, Prof ZombieLaw, SBA
Posted by TDot on Aug 30, 2010 in
The 2L Life Good evening y’all
Sorry for never finishing another entry from this weekend! As a super-quick recap: Friday night’s post-meeting festivities lasted until about 5:30am, I woke up at 7:30am, and was not only coherent but surprisingly non-exhausted — I made it to the UNCASG meeting 30 minutes early and was the first one to arrive, the first time either of those things has happened in the 4 years I’ve been involved with the organization 
My presentation that morning went well, and I used the rest of the afternoon trying to catch up on ConLaw from last week. The post-meeting dinner was good in terms of company but the service and food were both abominable. The obligatory carousing afterwards made up for it, until folks were a bit too loud for my comfort at 2am and I convinced them it was time to leave my hotel room and venture somewhere else. At which point I promptly fell asleep
Then of course Sunday was the drive back, being reminded how tedious it is unpacking from a mini-vacation, and reading for class.
Which — coincidence! — is the subject of tonight’s post.
If you ever want to quite thoroughly jinx yourself when it comes to law school, start a blog (like this one) and write in an entry (like this one) that you’re 2 days ahead on the reading. Tempting fate is definitely a Recipe. For. Disaster.
I just spent pretty much my entire night tonight doing absolutely nothing but grinding away on ConLaw to get caught up. My figuring is if that’s the class with material I’m already kinda comfortable with, and it’s worth 4 credit hours, I need to go full-tilt for a solid grade. And I can successfully say I’m back ahead on the ConLaw readings so that’s a mini-sigh of relief.
However…
Catching up on ConLaw meant not touching Evidence, for which I’m now at least 1 full class behind. I’m also totally lost in ZombieLaw, not so much because the material is difficult (it’s not) but because it’s SO F*CKING BORING. Legal Letters is at equilibrium, and I’m ever-so-slightly ahead on DV Law.
Not bad, but it’s thrown me that I’m already behind in 2 classes… when just last week I was safely and substantially ahead of schedule.
Hope your respective academic years are proceeding apace and you’re still on top of your readings I’ll be using the Labor Day weekend to get fully caught up myself. Have a great night y’all!!
Tags: 2L, ConLaw, DV, Evidence, Legal Letters, UNCASG, ZombieLaw
Posted by TDot on Aug 27, 2010 in
Student Government Hey everybody!
It was about this time last year that I was down here at UNCW for the first meeting of the UNC Association of Student Governments. Luckily there was no rain this time
My role tonight was to help with the leadership development stuff on the agenda, something I was trained in during the years I was a college dropout. Even though I’ve noticed almost no one knows that. So y’all are among the first to know. Just because I love all of you
Everything seemed to turn out well, so I’m happy. And even if it didn’t, it’s a volunteer gig so I’ll gladly issue refunds if people are dissatisfied
I’m off to grab my Grey Goose-laced Diet Mountain Dew and hit the pool for a bit. I’ll try to cobble an entry together tomorrow, but if I don’t get the chance I hope all of you have an amazing weekend!!
Tags: UNCASG
Posted by TDot on Aug 26, 2010 in
The 2L Life Way back in March I mentioned one of the benefits of 2L status: my weekend starts on Thursday at 4pm.
Didn’t realize how much more appreciative I’d be of that perk after a rough week
On the personal life front, 雅雅 is in Tennessee for optometry school and (understandably) homesick. The problem is she’s been there for 3 weeks now and it seems to be getting worse instead of better. Fully two-thirds of the text messages she sent me over the past couple days have been full of 
faces and references to missing me, missing her family, missing North Carolina, and so on. I try to cheer her up as best I can, but truth be told the whole situation sucks for me too… and constantly being reminded I can’t do anything about it just depresses the f*ck out of me. Not sure how to deal with it going forward but need to come up with something soon…
I figured out a solution fairly quick for Q.T. on the other hand, who over the past week has really gone out of her way to prove she has a maturity level roughly comparable to her height with a moral compass (to the extent it can even be called that) rivaling the most ignoble of politicians. And this is on top of her inconsiderate (footnoted) foolishness back on Monday. So I blocked her on Facebook. And Twitter. And Gchat. And BBM. And Skype. I’d remove her contact entry from my phone entirely, but I needed it for archiving the text messages in case I ever develop a vengeful streak one day.
To all you disloyal immature jumpoffs out there: deuces
It’s a crushing change for someone who was a friend for 2 years, attended my graduation, even made my shortlist back at Thanksgiving 
But with some people sometimes you just need to chuck the deuces.
Law school hasn’t been my typical 2L lollipops and rainbows either. The guy who recruited me for the VLAAC had some serious personal issues come up so he’s out of the competition, and me with him. Then there was yesterday’s workshop debacle. And with everything else going on I didn’t finish all the law school reading that had to get done for today, meaning I’ll need to shelve my plans to party this weekend so I can get caught up — I did, however, make sure to volunteer early and often in ConLaw when we were still covering the 3 pages I finished out of the 20 we were supposed to read
Sorry for the downbeat opening y’all, just needed to vent a bit. I’m done now
A huge bright spot of the week: finally getting my $$$ for the semester. So I lifted my spirits earlier today by paying off all my credit cards, restocking the apartment with about $300 in groceries, and buying a new electric razor (I officially now 
the Norelco Arcitec line). Now I’m packing to head down to Wilmington tomorrow to help with training for this year’s UNCASG delegates, which will at least give me an opportunity to be at the oceanfront tomorrow night — one of the very best forms of therapy ever created
I hope all of you have a great weekend, and I’ll do my best to keep things updated while I’m in Wilmington!
Tags: 2L, ConLaw, 雅雅, Money Money Money, NCCU Law, Q.T., Veterans Law Appellate Advocacy Competition
Posted by TDot on Aug 25, 2010 in
Fail That’s the excuse I’m using for today: Twitter is affecting my speech patterns
One of my jobs as the Treasurer of NCCU Law‘s Student Bar Association is to spearhead our appropriations process, where we distribute roughly $100K each semester to the various student organizations at the law school.
And one component of spearheading that process is running an annual “Student Leaders Meeting and Budget Workshop” attended by the President and Treasurer of each of those organizations. During my campaign I got several complaints over how the process ran last year (noted in my candidate speech), so I did a pretty extensive revamp for this one.
Expected (and publicized) duration: 90 minutes
Actual duration: 45 minutes
I was 15 minutes late due to technical problems on my end (things like the mic not working in our cavernous Great Hall) before finally deciding to just yell really loud most of the time… and yet we still somehow finished 30 minutes ahead of schedule. 
The agonizing part is that I can’t figure out if I really am just getting better at brevity, or if the more likely scenario that I forgot to mention a bunch of stuff — 45 minutes is a huge chunk of time that was supposed to be filled with something. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say
I guess we’ll find out which of the two it was when appropriations requests start coming in? ::fingers crossed::
Tags: #fml, 2L, NCCU Law, SBA
Posted by TDot on Aug 24, 2010 in
Things TDot Likes Just kidding!
Sort of
OK let me at least try to explain with a quick prefatory note before continuing: despite assiduously projecting an ego more-than-once described as “outrageously oversized,” underneath the cocksure exterior I’m essentially the total opposite. And because of that I never really learned how to take a compliment gracefully; most of the time I just get embarrassed, my face turns red, and I quickly change the subject.
Yes, I’m socially awkward. </surprise>
But like a well-trained puppy, I still like knowing when I’ve done something good / positive / cool / etc. I’m not talking about the gratuitous puffery over trivial stuff that passes for complimenting folks nowadays — “You color-coordinated your attire today! Here’s a cookie!” — but the comments made when folks genuinely appreciate something for whatever reason.
For example, back during 1L Orientation two weeks ago I was selling NCCU Law paraphernalia for the SBA and met a 1L student in the evening program who was browsing the merchandise. We talked for a bit about what SBA did, what 1L year was going to be like, and so on… and then she asks “Do you happen to know who it is who does the blog? He did computer science or something like that before law school? I love reading it, it’s so funny!”
Absolutely nothing could have erased the smile I had on my face for days after that remark
That’s the type of stuff I’m talking about. So now that that’s clear, </prefatory note>. Moving on…
We’re in ConLaw today, which as of Week 1.5 is still my favorite class. We’ve finished the core basics on judicial review, including a quick discussion on Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 (1821) and a corresponding mention that only a government/state actor can violate someone’s constitutionally-enumerated rights.
So Prof ConLaw pitches an open question to the class: if one person can’t violate another person’s constitutional rights, how is the federal government able to regulate such huge swaths of private conduct?
For folks who follow politics — or who just happen to enjoy ConLaw — answers that jump out might include Congressional authority under the “necessary and proper” clause. Or maybe Congress’s taxing and spending powers. Or the 800-lb gorilla in the Constitution, the power to regulate interstate commerce.
But instead we had like 5-6 folks in a row who offered up answers that… well… weren’t correct, let’s put it that way. So I raise my hand and bring up the Commerce clause, then go back to surfing the web. I check out my Facebook wall and see this from a classmate:
Totally made my day And definitely a better specialty than being Mr. Tech Support
Have a great night y’all!
Tags: 2L, ConLaw, NCCU Law, Prof ConLaw, SBA
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