Posted by TDot on Jul 9, 2011 in
The 3L Life If I’ve learned anything from law school, it’s that school-related work tends to ebb and flow instead of coming in a steady stream. Case in point: nothing at all for the latter part of the coming week, but 2 papers and ~100 pages of reading all due Monday 
New blog material coming soon… once I make it through this weekend 
Have a good night y’all 
And if you’re a Legal Eagle who hasn’t done so yet please consider sending us your (anonymous) class rank and GPA data for the 2011 pie charts!
Tags: #fml, 3L
Posted by TDot on May 23, 2011 in
The 3L Life For whatever reason, Mondays are the red-headed stepchildren of the week. I always thought it was an ill-deserved reputation; after all, Monday signals the start of the work week and all the cool stuff that happens when people work on doing cool stuff.
The popular perception of Mondays
Besides, if nothing else it means you can start making money again for another 5 days 
But, every now and then, I can see why people hate Mondays…
- I’ll be volunteering as a counselor for NCCU Law‘s Legal Eagle Law Camp, where 2Ls and 3Ls spend a week teaching 7th-11th graders about our legal system. The volunteers can either get paid or get course credit, and I opted for the 1-credit over the $$$… only to discover that getting the course credit will entail assignments on the side and 3 extra class meetings on either Wednesdays or Thursdays
- Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, since there was an open spot in my Thursday schedule. Except that my USPTO class has now randomly been moved from Tuesdays — where it was scheduled in our course registration system, and around which I’ve planned my summer work and travel schedules — to Thursdays. (A change that just got announced when? Today.)
- And I still don’t have any Spring 2L grades…
- Aside from the academic drama, I also somehow managed to sprain my left thumb this weekend. The pain got bad enough that I decided to go buy one of those immobilizer things you can find at just about any big box or department or drug store in the country (theoretically). So I go to the Super Target closest to my house to save gas, just to discover they only sell them in Small/Medium sizes instead of a one-size-fits-most style
They suggest the Walgreen’s that’s on the way home to my apartment… which I visit, and which is out of them entirely. By the time I’m done the Rite Aid up the street is now closed. The closest Walmart is out-of-stock too. So I end up having to drive to a Walmart in a neighboring county until I can finally get my hands on one, wasting more gas than if I had just gone there in the first place and burning an hour of my life in the process.
- And the whole trek takes just long enough that, by the time I get close to my apartment, there’s a car accident blocking both westbound lanes of Fayetteville Street nearest to the apartment complex — the only portion of roadway that can be used to get into the complex, since there’s a median with trees blocking the entrance from the eastbound lanes ::headdesk::
Yes, I realize things could be worse; that could have been me in the car accident, or I could have broken my thumb instead of spraining it (or I could have all my grades but they turn out to be F’s ).
But I’m still adding Mondays to my list of things to avoid in the future…
Hope Monday went better for the rest of y’all out there — have a good night!
Tags: #fml, 2L, 3L, ::headdesk::, Legal Eagle Law Camp, NCCU Law, USPTO
Posted by TDot on May 4, 2011 in
Fail …if you’re going to write down the wrong time for your last 2L final exam, at least make sure the time that you write down is before the actual exam time and not after it.
That is all.
Tags: #fml, 2L, ::headdesk::, CrimPro
Posted by TDot on Mar 1, 2011 in
Technology Don’t have much to write tonight y’all — operating off 2 hours of sleep and just got home from NCCU Law about a half hour ago, so I’m completely beat and ready for bed
I’m also still locked out of my Gmail account, just like I’ve been for the past two days now 
Fingers crossed that I’ll wake up tomorrow and have all my stuff miraculously restored so I can promptly back everything up and contemplate de-Google-fying my lifestyle…
Tags: #fml, 2L, NCCU Law, Tech Talk
Posted by TDot on Feb 28, 2011 in
Technology Another day on the internet, another day with no access to anything Google-affiliated
Now at least it says Google is trying to fix things...
After sporadically checking Gmail throughout Trial Practice and Business Associations this morning, I finally just gave up. Still no email. Still no docs. Nothing. Nil. Nada.
At least Google was kind enough to put a new redirect in place when I tried to access my count. Now it tells me explicitly why I can’t access my account, instead of sending me to a page saying I violated their Terms of Service.
After winging AAJ trial team practice tonight since I didn’t have any of my docs, I made my way home from the law school around 11ish when I discovered I now at least (it appears) have access to my non-Gmail services.
I also noticed Google had posted an update on their blog making it out like there was never really an issue. Here’s the copy/paste, but you can read the original at this URL:
Gmail back soon for everyone
Monday, February 28, 2011 | 6:30 PM
Posted by Ben Treynor, VP Engineering and Site Reliability Czar (24×7)
Imagine the sinking feeling of logging in to your Gmail account and finding it empty. That’s what happened to 0.02% of Gmail users yesterday, and we’re very sorry. The good news is that email was never lost and we’ve restored access for many of those affected. Though it may take longer than we originally expected, we’re making good progress and things should be back to normal for everyone soon.
I know what some of you are thinking: how could this happen if we have multiple copies of your data, in multiple data centers? Well, in some rare instances software bugs can affect several copies of the data. That’s what happened here. Some copies of mail were deleted, and we’ve been hard at work over the last 30 hours getting it back for the people affected by this issue.
To protect your information from these unusual bugs, we also back it up to tape. Since the tapes are offline, they’re protected from such software bugs. But restoring data from them also takes longer than transferring your requests to another data center, which is why it’s taken us hours to get the email back instead of milliseconds.
So what caused this problem? We released a storage software update that introduced the unexpected bug, which caused 0.02% of Gmail users to temporarily lose access to their email. When we discovered the problem, we immediately stopped the deployment of the new software and reverted to the old version.
As always, we’ll post a detailed incident report outlining what happened to the Apps Status Dashboard, as well as the corrective actions we’re taking to help prevent it from occurring again. If you were affected by this issue, it’s important to note that email sent to you between 6:00 PM PST on February 27 and 2:00 PM PST on February 28 was likely not delivered to your mailbox, and the senders would have received a notification that their messages weren’t delivered.
Thanks for bearing with us as we fix this, and sorry again for the scare.
A “scare”? Really??
I realize Google has a vested interest in downplaying this situation — after all, they’re trying to convince major corporations to entrust their networks to The Cloud — but I’m almost offended that they’re acting like (i) losing access to my email for 2 days now (potentially permanently), complete with (ii) redirects to a page saying I violated the Terms of Service, alongside (iii) cryptic and thoroughly uninformative status updates on the Google Apps Status Dashboard, and (iv) no substantive response from the company until after the media catches on to what’s going on, is all merely a “scare.” 
Then there’s the rest of the content in this non-apology apology. They’re backing up my email from tape archives but it’s somehow still all there? I call bullsh*t: the sheer volume of tape cartridges they’d need to use to back up all their users is too huge to believe they do these backups daily. A more likely explanation is that they’ve got a monthly or quarterly tape archive that they’re going to use to restore my account (assuming they actually restore it), which would mean I’ll have permanently lost anything recent.
We’ll see what happens over these next 48 hours that they’re supposedly working. But for now I’m drifting toward becoming one of those anti-GOOG partisans…
[Postscript: And to those of you thinking "But TDot, Gmail is free! You shouldn't complain!": I'll stop complaining about losing my access when Google decides to give me the advertising $$$ they made from ads targeted based on heuristic analysis of my email messages All the "free" users are paying for Gmail service, exchanging the privacy of our email correspondence for cloud storage and reliable access.]
Tags: #fml, 2L, AAJ, BALaw, Tech Talk, Trial Practice, Trial Team
Posted by TDot on Feb 27, 2011 in
Technology [Update @ 10:00am on 02/28/11: Still locked out of everything. Now on Day #2 of no Gmail... no Gchat... no Google Docs... no Analytics... no Feedburner... no Calendar... ]
Take a look at this photo. It’s a screenshot from the Gmail account that I’ve been using for about 5 years now.
Buzz is there, but my emails aren't. And no ninjas.
Notice anything unusual?
That’s what I saw when I logged in earlier today. First thing I noticed — no ninjas. I’m not a fan of the bland white default, so I switched things over to the Gmail ninja background.
Next thing I noticed: the privacy-invading Google Buzz is turned back on, even though I cut it off the day it came out.
It was at about that point I realized the biggest issue — 100% of my emails before this morning were completely and totally gone. So were my chat logs. So were my settings.
After probing around online in a panic, I discovered this thread in the Gmail forums and a cryptic entry in their Apps Status dashboard that they were “investigating”. Along with a reassurance that it only affected 0.08% of Gmail users… which doesn’t reassure me at all since I’m one of the people affected
Access Denied. To everything...
Then, just to add insult to injury, as of about 20 minutes ago my entire Google Account has been disabled. Meaning I can’t just get to my Gmail — I also can’t get to Google Docs (including my homework), Google Scholar, Gchat, Analytics, Feedburner, Webmaster Tools, and all the other G-stuff I’ve gotten into the habit of using.
I’ve disliked “cloud computing” ever since it was created. When N.C. State announced plans to migrate from its own mail servers to Gmail, I was skeptical. Likewise during my second term as NCSU’s Senate President, where the (otherwise phenomenal) Student Body President I worked with still reigns as the biggest Google Docs fanboy I’ve ever met.
Maybe it’s my libertarian-leaning political beliefs. Maybe I’m a neo-Luddite. But personally I prefer having all the data coming to my home network where I’m responsible for my own backups and not subject to the failures of someone else.
Then I got lazy trusting in Google’s reliability and set my cron jobs to download/backup my Gmail on the last day of each month. And of course this all failed today, hours before that cron job was supposed to run
The only saving grace is that I didn’t lose all my stuff — I’ve still got a not-quite-a-month-old archive stored locally at home. But my distrust for the cloud has been affirmed, and I will now redouble my neo-Luddite ways in trying to avoid cloud computing as much as possible.
Grrr.
Tags: #fml, 2L, NC State, NCSU Student Senate, Tech Talk
Posted by TDot on Jan 4, 2011 in
The 2L Life Sorry I’ve been gone for a few days now y’all, but I’ve been sick as a dog since New Year’s Day
I’ve still got a bunch of draft entries to get uploaded over the next 24-48 hours, so check back here around Thursday/Friday
Have a great week!
Tags: #fml, 2L
Posted by TDot on Jan 1, 2011 in
Randomness Happy New Year everybody! 
Tonight’s entry is brief — I stayed home instead of attending New Year’s Eve festivities last night because I felt like I might be catching a cold, which less-than-24-hours later has now transmogrified into a horrible blend of a cold and a sinus infection 
Then 雅雅 came to visit on her way back to Tennessee for school, and when we left the apartment to get dinner… I somehow succeeded in my right foot giving out randomly at the least opportune time, as I then tumbled down the staircase of my apartment complex
For all the amazingness that was 2010, this is definitely an undignified start to 2011…
Tags: #fml, 雅雅
Posted by TDot on Dec 26, 2010 in
The 2L Life I survived!
Hey y’all
If you’ve flipped to a news show at some point today, odds are good you’ve seen at least one story on the blizzard that hit the East Coast over the past day and a half. It’s not exactly the type of stuff that would make people from up north flinch, but it ended up setting records in several parts of the Southeast — including being the most snowfall Virginia Beach has gotten since I was born 29 years ago
In other words, after praying for snow on Christmas for most of those 29 years, Mother Nature decided to cooperate on the one year I had to drive back home to Durham the next day
I left Virginia Beach around 10:00am this morning, figuring since the snow wasn’t projected to stop until 3am-ish tonight it’d be better to get out sooner rather than later. The downside in leaving so early was that there had essentially been no plowing or significant road treatment of any kind done on any of the highways between Virginia Beach and Emporia…
…so a leg of the trip that usually takes 1.5 hours ballooned out to 3.25 instead
31mi east of Emporia VA around 12:15pm today
For a stretch I was stuck debating which was worse: (i) the overcompensating pricks in SUVs barreling down the highway at near-full-speed with their headlights off, blazing past me just to later spin out into a ditch, or (ii) the people who acted like they hadn’t seen snow before, crawling along at 5mph and holding up the only lane of traffic
The wind made the whole adventure even more adventurous, with visibility dropped to 50ish yards and occasionally having a full-blown whiteout as the snow falling combined with snow blown off the trees.
To give you an idea of the conditions, I took a couple pictures when I was about 31 miles east of Emporia. The top photo is the view from outside my windshield, and the bottom photo is the view out the passenger side window at the same point.
Fortunately by the time I got to North Carolina all of the highways were totally cleared, so it only took me about 2 hours to make it the rest of the way home 
Kudos to the NCDOT and the various municipal plowing authorities for doing what Virginia didn’t bother to do in a timely fashion 
Now I’m here getting everything re-packed to head down to Orlando for Tuesday night’s Champs Sports Bowl featuring my alma mater… where I’m pretty sure there won’t be any snow
Needless to say I’m looking forward to it, so I’m heading to bed — have a great night everybody!
Tags: #fml, 2L, Gotta Be NC, NCSU Wolfpack, TDot's Travels
Posted by TDot on Dec 6, 2010 in
The 2L Life Ugh.
I’m usually pretty good about gauging how I perform on an exam after I leave the room. For example, I knew within minutes that I got thoroughly mauled on my Contracts II final. Conversely, I figured I knocked the ConLaw midterm out of the ballpark before I left the room.
My impressions of ZombieLaw fall more toward the KII side of the spectrum than the ConLaw side
The cover to my class binder. Clearly I wasn't ready...
I’ve spent most of the past 72 hours studying non-stop for this exam. For someone who can’t stand sitting still for any protracted length of time, and who (successfully) finds a million different reasons to avoid doing schoolwork, somehow managing to sit still in my living room with the North Carolina General Statutes and the Uniform Probate Code and class notes and outlines and etc etc etc all strewn around me while actually reading them was quite a big accomplishment. I thought I knew the material reasonably well.
And then I turned to the first page of the exam, and felt like I spent the ensuing 3 hours being repeatedly violated by a few sheets of paper
The exam was 3 hours long, comprised of 30 multiple choice questions worth 60% and a multi-faceted essay worth 40%. And just like in the KII final, it took me an exorbitant amount of time just to work my way through the multiple choice — 2.5 hours.
For those of you who are math whizzes, that translates to 83.3% of the exam time spent slogging through 60% of the points…
In the 30 minutes that were left I frantically typed as much as I could conceivably type on the essay topics. There were issues with failed devises from a will, figuring out where the residue goes under the fictional jurisdiction’s anti-lapse statute, testamentary libel, partial revocation by physical act, an attempted holographic codicil, dependent relative revocation, latent ambiguity with a devise, the list goes on and on.
I think I maybe got about two-thirds of those issues covered in some minimally-competent fashion, and there’s no telling how many other issues were there that I missed. It was a mess.
The only potential upside is that most of my colleagues had similar concerns, so either (1) we all did equally bad and I can eke out a passing grade, or (2) the extra time I invested on the multiples will put me in the top echelon of the class and I can ride the curve on the essay to a better-than-passing grade.
Or (3) I really didn’t know wtf I was doing and I end up with a C like I did in KII
We’ll see how it turns out Spending tonight and tomorrow studying for Evidence, my last exam of the 2L Fall semester Good luck to everyone who still has exams left!
Tags: #fml, 2L, Exams, The Curve, ZombieLaw
