Taken to Spanky's

So today, because it was Friday, I decided not to spend the entire day studying. Instead, I actually enjoyed the day.

First, I went to Spanky's burger joint here in Lubbock. Spanky's is one of those places I'd always driven by, and thought "Wonder if it's any good?" It's located right at the 'mouth' of campus, and looked pretty old, so I figured it would be my kind of place. Yup, sho'nuff, it was. Delicious bacon burger with fried cheese... mmm... bacon.

After studying a bit more, I went and saw the movie Taken with Liam Neeson. This movie was sweet. It was exactly what I expected - neither less, nor more. I enjoyed the fact that they didn't butter up the plot any. It was exactly what the trailer promises - a father rescuing his daughter. Awesome.

Nice

I saw this on the news this morning, and thought it was hilarious....

More good news

Here's a link talking about the dissolution of one of the largest Intellectual Property firms in the United States. Great news. I especially like how the first year associates are pretty much being completely left out to dry on this.

But hey, that's only a few hundred people compared to the 81,000 that have lost their jobs in the last 2 days.

An old friend

So I just got finished visiting an old friend - it had been forever since we'd seen each other. But after some initial awkward conversation, we fell right in step and things just flowed. Who is this mystery friend?

Computer Programming.

I had this gi-nourmous list of data I had pulled from a .pdf file in an unformatted mess. I figured I could either sort it by hand (& mouse), or I could figure out the mysterious world of excel macros. I opted for the second and it was super fun, at least compared to my normal day-to-day activities. It was in Visual Basic, which I had never used before, but after figuring out the basic structures and commands, worked like a champ. The data is now sorted in one fell swoop, and I'm happy about it- which would not have been the case had I done it by hand.

Why am I in law school again?

Dallas

My friend Jenn flew in to Dallas this weekend, so I drove out and we stayed at my parents all weekend. It was pretty sweet. We went to the Dallas Aquarium, which was way cool - monkeys, sharks, manatees, and random other animals.

My Dad took us on the tour of JFK/Oswald sites, and some of the conspiracy theory stuff, then we tried to go to the Ft. Worth Rodeo, which was sold out.

Basically, a great weekend with great company. Now back to the books.

Oh, if anyone is thinking of exploring downtown Dallas, don't do it on Saturdays - almost everything is closed.

Good eatin'

The Other Dark Meat

Proof that I am a coward

The Mongol Derby
is a 1000 km horse race across the Mongolian Steppe. The thought of doing such a race sounds surreal and incredible - a real life Hidalgo. Do I want to do it? YES. But am I going to sign up? No. Do I have anything else going on this summer? Not yet.

Of course, it does cost $4550 + travel, so its not like I don't have an excuse. But do I wish I were doing it? Absolutely.

30 minutes

So I've written before about I.O.U.S.A., and I think we're all aware that we're seeing incredible, mind-blowing amounts of debt being spent in America these days. IOUSA was made prior to the credit crunch/financial collapse we've been seeing the past 6 months, and is now available in a 30 minute version for the webs. I encourage everyone to watch it.



And hey, if it was that bad before the bailouts began, think about it now.

Awesome

So since I'm on the job hunt, both for this summer and after graduation, this is awesome news:

Worst Year for Jobs since '45

Burn Notice

So I had heard of Burn Notice awhile ago, but never really paid it any attention. I think the reason I had even noticed it in the first place was because the mighty Bruce Campbell is in it. Then I saw an episode once, and laughed my mug off the entire time. I caught another sometime ago, and again, was laughing the entire time.

I ended up watching the entire first season on Hulu, and it was awesome. They've since removed the first season, and added a bunch of the second season, which I've been watching over the past couple days.

What's this show about? An ex-spy who was burned, and wants to find out why, but in the meantime he's quarantined in Miami. So he does odd jobs while figuring out why he was burned.

Why do I love it? Because it gives lessons on how to be a super-spy! For example, two things I've learned from the show

1) How to cross a barb-wire fence: Grab a floor-mat from your car, climb the fence, throw it over the barbs, climb over the mat onto the other side.

2) How to quickly break a pad lock: Use a compressed air duster on the lock. The cold air will basically freeze it. Then hit it with a hammer.

I highly recommend watching this show. I'm considering buying the DVDs, I like it that much.

Christmas Break

Unlike last year, where I explored Savannah, this year I went home and did little to nothing for about 3 weeks. It was a much needed break - I realized that if Savannah counted as work (which I'm not sure it should), I hadn't had an extended vacation since beginning law school 1 1/2 years ago.

Being home for that long was nice. Christmas was great, went downtown for New Years Eve. That was pretty crowded, but fun. Here's some pics from the event:
Drove back to Lubbock yesterday - I was pretty tired. School starts back up on Wed. - technically. But I'll probably finish my paper here over the next 2 days before that.