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.

interaction

all the cool kids (brands) have an online presence, be in facebook, myspace or twits. they think, or least outwardly show, this makes them a great company with whom you can interact with.

here's the thing though: most of them don't have shit for customer support. they spend all this cash to look great online where lots of people interface with the brand. fine, and that's great. but similar to my mtg problems, when you actually CALL a fuckin' company to talk to somebody, they better know what the hell they're doing. in my opinion, interaction with a customer service rep can make or break a relationship with that brand.

here's my story: nixon. the verbal spouse and i have headphones from them. we've had problems with them so i fedexed them back to the company for repair/replacement, along with a key chain that needed a new screw. they held on to the merch for over a month w/o telling me anything about what the hell was going on, whether or not they headphones would be replaced, yada yada yada. i call, they apologize and say they will send my package out priority. two weeks go by, nothing. i call again. we're sorry sir, the gentlemen you spoke with didn't mention they were closed the day after i talked to him for a whole week! my shipment sat at their warehouse. awesome, it's on its way though. i get the package and THEY SENT ONE OF THE ITEMS INCORRECTLY. i got regular headphones, not speaker, iphone compatible headphones. what a mess. i call again, they apologize, AGAIN, and they say they'll send the correct ones out immediately. a week later and i still don't have anything.

the brand's great, i love their stuff and frankly, ive never had a problem with them before. this experience has been beyond a problem though. this is atrocious customer service! not informing me what was going on, holding the package for over a month, telling me it was going 'priority' but really not and then sending me the wrong stuff! not exactly the type of endearing help that makes me want to spend anymore money on nixon.

large brand managment

i propose no solution to the problem i address. but really, should this happen.

my mtg is with bank of america. an institution i truly wish i did not have to deal with. they are horrible, completely disorganized, the classic right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.

i tried to sign up for automatic drafts to pay my mtg. it would deduct from our checking account (no way in hell is that with bofa) twice per month, starting middle of november. i called to verify it was set up properly earlier that month and assured it was. middle of november, there goes my money to bofa, no problems. not so fast....

december doesn't get taken out. i called them and was told that the first november draft is floating out in bank of america cyberspace land and was NOT applied to my mtg. awesome. 'how do we correct this problem?' i ask. they said go pay HALF of the mtg and the rest, the floating rest, will be applied and your mtg current.

i hope you got that.

i had to call SIX more times to resolve that fuckin' little problem. everytime i called, the conversation started with, 'sir, did you know your mtg is past due?' 'yes, jerk off, and its not past due!'

i understand in large entities, especially ones strewn about the country (and bangalore, for that matter), need to link their systems and input accurate data. i don't mean to sound like an ass here but it's not that hard of job. or, they can't train their employees for shit.

i just want some appropriate diligence on their part. i do my part by paying. the least they could is properly ACCEPT and CREDIT my payments.

anyway, thirty days later, it was finally resolved and i'm no longer late. let's see if they grab their money on monday...

list of stupidist thing of 2009?

i hate the end of the year for one reason (actually, two if you count how freakin' cold it is). that is all the 'top ten _____ of 2009." even better, this year we get, top ____ of the decade lists."

these fuckin' things are repulsive. look, the end of the year is three weeks away! something drastic could happen anybody remember that tsunami a few years ago? that happened on....december 26, 2004. huh, i'd bet that was after all the 'top ten events of 2004 lists were compiled and released to a hungry public?

can't we wait till after the new year/decade starts? then decide what was best of 2009?

are you anonymous?

for starters, read wired. really good mag with very interesting articles.

i'm particularly fascinated by the article "gone" in last month's issue. one of their writers tried to 'disappear' for a whole month. anybody that found him got $5K; if he stayed away, he got $5K. in a digital, where you are really never anonymous, he managed to stay away for about 25 days before getting caught.

the lengths the 'hunters' went to find him was truly staggering. they tracked him all over the country despite him setting up a phantom computer and IP address in vegas.

just think about this the next time you're fucking around on the internet. somebody's watching you.

did advice to brand tiger follow the template of brand jordan?

so last night, verbal spouse commented about the silly tiger woods story and more mistresses "stepping" forward and nike's full support of brand tiger.

so i thought a bit. now, i'm from chicago and remember another cash cow icon for nike (their first and arguably most important one). i recall a few years ago (maybe more by now) when numerous allegations came out about jordan's affairs going as far back as shortly after his marriage. i don't remember the particulars but i do recall somebody commented about jordan's "arranged" marriage, more of thoughtful push really. somebody (i'd guess nike) wanted to make him more marketable, protect the image of what they created. so it was a "why don't you get married, mike?" type conversation. "jordan is more than incredibly talented athlete, he's a family man. see? he's married, with kids!"

the family jordan emerged even though, later reported and google-able (is that a word?) he was having affairs all over the place. cut to recent events and tiger woods.

is it possible that tiger was always this guy, as apparently jordan is/was? not the family man you see in the media but the image that's now come out? tiger seems to be following the same playbook, down to the build a huge house and insist on complete privacy while you compete for public adoration and money. similar stories: uber talented out of college, signs with nike, becomes marketer's wet dream, wife and kids, and oops! mistresses!

as i previously said, i don't care about the affairs, it's not my business. but isn't it curious that these two have the same story? anything to do with nike, their advice, their creation? or am i totally off my rocker here?

prowling tiger?

huh, so others are starting to notice some chinks in the armor now, too? i'm not going to sit here and speculate about WHAT led to the accident, the talking heads and gossip rags are doing a fine job, but this just appears to be more dents in the perfect suit of armor for the man. he's been pretty impenetrable for the last ten years plus.

something happened that led to the accident. at quarter to three in the morning, the accident just looks suspicious. the "cover-up" for brand woods just kinda makes the whole episode more questionable.

is the post office necessary?

this is another one of those old news stories that i take too long to address. but, really, is the post office necessary? or, alternatively, is the size of the service necessary. i think every zip code has its own brick-n-mortar building. so even your tiny towns have structures. and despite raising rates all the damn time, they are still losing something like $3B a year! it strikes me as a general waste of government resources and natural resources for that matter. how many postal trucks drive how many miles a day? and it's stop and go from mailbox to mailbox to mailbox. what a waste of gas!

now, i dunno about any of you, but is the postal service necessary? for myself, we don't get any mail of substance save magazine subscriptions. all of our bills are emailed, i pay all our bills online and most contact with family and friends that live far away is now done via social media. so what does the p.o do for us? deliver a whole of junk! that's it! most of it ends up in our recycling, catalogs i don't give a shit about (and can see online), credit card offers that i shred, etc. that's just a general waste of paper.

so, what to do about it? can we consolidate offices? especially in parts of the city and the less suburban places, i'd think two zip codes (at least) could be handled by one office. i certainly don't care if a piece of mail takes a few days longer to reach me. again, all my important stuff is emailed and i don't write checks. this could help reduce wasted money for services most of us neither use nor need AND it held save the government money on providing the services and sell the land where p.o's sit for revenue. we raise some money and save some money!

in the meantime, sign up for online banking and paperless billing. and google 'stop junk mail' and help out, huh?

thought this was pretty damn funny....

h/t devin townsend. if you don't know who he is, ya should.

tiger slays melbourne

so i listen to a lot of NPR because it rules. they cover a lot of things that the tradmed doesn't (i'm not that big a fan of the tradmed). more of a global look.

now, i'm a bit late on this one since the tournament is over and all. didja notice tiger woods played the australian masters in melbourne? no? well, shit, he won the damn thing by two strokes. didja know he accepted an appearance fee to play? here's the rub: the appearance fee for him was $3 MILLION. by winning the tournament, he won $300,000. look at those numbers again for me...what if he didn't win? what if he missed the cut?

oh hell, i nearly forgot to tell you WHO paid the appearance fee. that would be the local government.

seriously, i'm a lonely little blogger here and who gives a shit about my opinion on the subject but this bugs the hell outta me. woods makes approximately $75M (prolly more) in endorsements each year, add winnings and whatever else on top and i'll bet my house he's knocking on 9 figures a year.

lots of players/celebrities accept/demand appearance fees and i, on its face, have no issue with that. and i get the point of leverage (money) to appear halfway across the world. but when the appearance fee is 10x the winner take, don't you think there is something tragically out of step? ever more so, during this wonderful economy, that a government paid that fee? NPR said that because of woods' appearance, tickets were sold out for the tournament and officials/organizers/government would make a good chunk of money above and beyond what they paid him. so we're left with a golfer taking $3M in australian taxpayer money. i'd have no issue if this was privately funded, to be clear.

the other part of it is that he accepted the money, or even demanded it! the least woods could do is donate some back into the community. build a park or something for the, ya know, taxpayers. the story didn't seem to get a lot of play here but should brand tiger take a hit for it? i think so, terrible planning there. i think the demand or acceptance (whether it was offered by the australian government or demanded by brand woods was unclear) really stinks. what did the taxpayers get out of this? how do they directly benefit from spending their money to bring woods over? maybe brand tiger should re-examine their guidelines to play in tournaments.

anybody from melbourne reading? fly me out and i'll write and say whatever you want. it's getting cold in chicago...

brock lesnar, really?

so, big news of the day is brock lesnar may never fight again because of some intestinal problem. dana white apparently gave the 'scoop' to TMZ (incidentally, shouldn't they be following kate gosselin? they are a celebrity gossip organization or have a i missed something?). i'm a bit confused on this one. i'll start by saying i don't watch ufc or any mma at all. there's something disturbing about watching these guys TRY to hurt each other...breaking arms, legs, noses, whatever they can for a not-very-large payday. there are lots of stories about how these guys don't get paid very much to fight. contrast with boxing and the fighter's paydays.

back to the point: this is big news? i saw it on cnnsi.com and espn.com and a posts on lots of other blogs i read (now i'm posting on it. hell.). two questions: has mma/ufc hit critical mass where it is considered news for tradmed to cover, beyond the sizable group that follows it? it takes precedence over a lot of other sports stories out there? shit, michelle wie won a damn tournament! in terms of lesser sport stories, i thought that would be the big one. she's actually fulfilling some of that potential. five years + late but she won a tournament! c'mon, wheeeeeeeee wie!!!!!!