roboot v 3.0

i find this pretty amusing. i keep saying that i'm gonna write more, then i don't. let's try this again. see what actually happens. being in portland for several months may make this work again, i dunno. not going to force it but also want to be able to have some creative outlet.

reboot

let's get this outta the way: i plan everything. i plan when to wake up, i plan my breakfast, i plan when to workout, i plan when to eat lunch, i plan what to eat for lunch...you get the picture. so, now, that's a micro view of my planning. can i/we (verbal spouse and i) take a more macro view of planning our life?

so, i already told you that we're moving.  we've decided with the help of what's been a really bad year, to move to portland (i lost). why you ask? i'll tell you why: too many bad memories, too much bs, too much hating my job and wanting something different, too poor a lifestyle, too bad of an environment to raise kids...again, you get the picture. it's not that our life is bad in chicago, but it's not what we want anymore.

so in all of this, i'm trying create some strategy for getting from point A (chicago) to point b (portland). the thing is that it is not that simple. this isn't simply a geographic relocation. it's a complete reboot of our life from location to jobs to family to kids to income. my need to have control and plan all this is totally out of whack. which is good. i have to loosen up and realize that i don't control all and i can't control everything. this whole experience is grand for that, seems to radically be changing my personality for the better.

once we sell our place, we're gonna go and find a place to live. never been to portland, have idea what i'm going to do other than not practice law. suppose we'll figure it out on the way there.

On Writing...

i'm the first to admit that i am not a fantastic writer. hemingway or twain or faulkner or vonnegut are not coming forth through my fingers as i type. plus, i have a proofreading problem; i'm just bad at it and there are constant grammatical mistakes in my writing.  but i've noticed something lately with my writing for work. plus, i mentioned my premise (that legal writing sucks and destroys creative writing) to another person. he's a former journo who is now a business consultant.  he immediately started laughing because he has a friend that is an attorney and desperately wants out....just like me. she has said the same about her writing. he says the same thing about his writing now, too.

i give my writing to my boss for his review, anything from reports to pre-trial settlement memos. i like to pepper my writing with random shit like semi-colons, colons and generally break the 'rules' of writing. ya know, that bullshit you learned in school. point being here is that he rips it up, 'why the fuck are you using semi-colons?' because he wants simple sentences that are noun-verb-action. neither fun nor interesting.... i'm going to try to write more here, to put fingers on the keyboard in some form of expression that doesn't have to conform to his bullshit rules, tastes and preferences. so we shall see what happens. maybe this helps me land the job i'm looking for. so off we go!

the lance armstrong complex

perhaps i've got unique perspective on this issue, perhaps not. i'm an avid watcher of the tour de france, have been since about 1997. i remember riders like marco pantani, jan ullrich's heyday, and bjarne riis when he was a tdf winner and not a team director. that was when i was a kid, now i'm an adult and i get off on triathlons. i compete (not very well!) and i watch kona ironman with a glint in my eye and an itch in crotch that maybe i can do that. 

first, and most importantly, i think la will be remembered MORE for his fight against cancer and livestrong foundation than what he did as an endurance athlete (bicyclist, marathons, tris). that doesn't necessarily absolve him of past transgressions. it's difficult to reconcile the two la's: the athlete who continues to accomplish staggering feats with a prickly personality and the dude behind livestrong.

look, i thought la's comeback was stupid and not meant to attract attention to the livestrong foundation as he claimed.  that's bullshit, to me, it was one last gasp for cycling glory. don't believe me? he tried to unseat the reigning greatest grand tour rider simply because lance armstrong wanted to. thank goodness the accountant decided to ride away from him, but i digress.

so a cycling fan in the late 90's early 00's was similar to a baseball fan in the time. willful ignorance to what was going on. journo did a shitty unless they wanted to make a name for themselves, and many of them went on the attack of la. guys like david millar have pretty much said that if you weren't doping during that time, you couldn't EVEN KEEP UP with the peloton.

so, what do i think la did? doped. just all the other leaders of the peloton including ullrich, pantani, riis, alex vinokourov, ivan basso. some lesser ones such as those lobbing accusations at la including tyler hamilton and floyd landis. shit, i'll throw in rasmussen, too, since he got chucked from the tour. and i don't begrudge any of the riders for doing it.

i'm not saying he should simply be let off. it's a witch hunt on the biggest name.  they need to after all the cyclists, presumably including whoever will inherit each of the 7 wins. the point of going after la no longer has anything to do with whether or not he did it. preventing him from continuing to compete strikes me as odd. if he was still on a bike only, sure. but doing tris? where's the connection? i just very confused on the thinking and equating the two.

sometimes, the world blows harder than before.

haven't posted in a while, and i'm sure there are some people dying to know what's going on. it's been a rough year so far. it has kinda made us decide it's time for big change.

we're looking to leave chicago and find a home in portland or seattle. we're having a bit of an 'argument' on which one to go for. i voted seattle; she voted for portland. it's time for change, time for an adventure, time to leave some bad things behind....

things make sense...just not your sense

so, just read this interesting article on the bloomberg about stockton, california's finances and whether or not it will need to file for bankruptcy. the article states that their finances of the town are all fucked up, partially because the city agreed to provide healthcare for life to each city employee and spouse after only one month on the job. there's a bunch of stuff about pension issues in there as well, but that's not the point here.

effectively, the post blames the unions of public service employees for all the fault in stockton's finances (and vallejo's before that). it's very self-righteous that the unions need to accept cuts for their pensioners because they city can't afford to pay them. the comments are quite interesting, with one person stating the union heads of public sector employees should suffer unrelenting chest pain. wow...

look, i get it. unions = devil. slight hyperbole there but read the comments. the unions ain't the boogie man here. it's not all the unions fault. they didn't negotiate those deals with themselves. according to the comments (amazingly omitted by the writer of the article), republican administrations of this city were in charge. meaning the negotiated these deals! meaning they bear as much culpability in this fiasco! meaning they're the boogie man too!

the talking heads want to argue that the public service employees must accept cuts for the good of the city. why? the unions negotiated these deals for the benefit of their members. that's what unions do so spare me your sanctimonious bullshit. they did their job and they continue to do their job with refusing to accept cuts. why should they? what is being offered to them in return? by my reading and understanding, nothing. but if they don't accept the cuts, the unions get vilified by poorly sourced articles written by hacks for national publications.

sometimes, the world blows

so, sometimes my job involves rather distasteful things. today is one of those days. my firm represents a company whose driver ran over and killed a young woman. i have to depose the administrator of the estate, the young woman's mother. i've going through documents and other things the plaintiff produced to prepare. it's pretty difficult because it seems this girl was beloved by her friends and colleagues alike. the outpouring of support and emotion is amazing, the breadth of it is striking, makes you wonder why certain lives are snuffed out when it seemed to be on this amazing trajectory....

at the same time, you wonder if your life would create something similar from people: do i have friends and colleagues who would feel the same way and write so eloquently about me? have i touched lives in some similar manner? have i accomplished things of the magnitude that this woman did, at a younger age than me? when i ask myself these questions, i'm left with the notion that the answer is no, that i'm not doing what i should be doing, that i'm not going where i should be going, that i'm not fully engaged with my life or my decisions that brought me here....that's actually the most painful part of this.

back to the grind

hmmm, so i find this really interesting. a random conversation at a bar with a friend has led me BACK to blogging. and why? to be honest, i didn't particularly enjoy it in the first place. i also didn't hate it. it seemed like an appropriate outlet for the garbage that floats around in my head. shit, i'm an attorney with no creative outlet so this seemed to help. it kept me to busy sometimes. seriously, it's been nearly two years! maybe i have something interesting to say, but i doubt it.

beyond that, fuck, do i have some life changes going on. i'll slowly get to them for all my eager beaver readers. oh wait....

first though, blogger/google make it so fucking difficult to transfer accounts, when the solution was actually really simple. i used an old yahoo account to set this up. i have since cancelled that yahoo account and formed a gmail account. you can't actually just switch it over. but blogger allows you to either add authors or admins. the problem is you search google help for hours (literally, i just wasted about an hour of my day searching) without explanation or a helpful guiding hand in a particular direction.

i get into work today and read this...and i'm reminded of that. see what i did there?

i'll say this: i doubt i'm the only one to have made that connection but why did it take the tradmed so long to put that together/publish it?

fees fees fees everywhere and not a drop to drink

i've held a citibank card for 12 years, since i was 18. it was my first credit card, my only credit card for about 8 of those years. it's not my back up card and we use it mainly for low interest rate balance transfers. the credit limit is insanely high which works well for those transfers.

earlier this week, i read an article on the new credit card reform law going into effect shortly. the article basically said, beware, the law kicks in soon and some issuers will make sure tho change your terms and conditions before then.

imagine my surprise, then (none), when citibank mails me a change in terms and conditions letter! they are going to start charging me an annual fee of $60, UNLESS i use their card for $2,400 in charges per year.

fuck them! mind you, i get no benefit from this card. it isn't an amex with points redeemable, etc (at least i don't think so, i don't use it enough to know) but even if it is, amex didn't just bend me over and give me an annual fee on my blue credit card.

here's the thing that infuriates me about the whole thing, it ain't like $60 a year is going to break the bank. it's my options, or the lack of them. when are my choices, really? bend over, grab my ankles, grit my teeth and bear it or cancel the card. im pissed enough to cancel and i will. i have until the end of my current card to pay off the balance (something like 16 months).

here's the rub: my credit is now going to take a hit. my FICO score will now reflect this canceled card and my overall credit available will go down so my percentage of used credit goes up. which, as i've constantly read is bad for the score. this is what pisses me off so much. the banks have a choice, we as consumers don't. the choice we have is to bear or take a credit hit. either one isn't a good choice. i wonder if fair isaac takes that into account when the calculate score. fuck sticks.