NBA & the Economy

So I'm a fan of Bill Simmons, a sportswriter for ESPN. He wrote an interesting article about the NBA and how it's being affected by the economic downturn, which I highly recommend.

I know I've been pretty negative about the economy, and I'm hopeful that things are on the upswing. I've seen data saying that we've passed through the worst... but I have my doubts. In my mind, the fundamental problem is that we continue to lend $$$ to people that can't repay the loan - be it home mortgages, cars, credit cards, or federal bailouts. And while those have slowed down, they certainly haven't stopped. In fact, it seems like certain people want those loans to increase back to previous, non-repayable rates.

Anyway, with the NBA the cliff note version of the article I linked above is this: that NBA contracts are huge, multi-million dollar contracts, which are completely separate from attendance and revenue streams. That is, the player gets payed for showing up, even if the stadium is empty. That's bad for the owners, because suddenly they're kicking out millions, but not making anything. After all, why kick out tons of money to go watch sports when you don't have money for groceries? Interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years...

Teaching

So I've decided that there are as many ways to teach as there are people in the world. I don't think its any surprise to anyone reading this that most people generally annoy me, so I guess its really no surprise that most of their teaching styles annoy me as well. Between law school and church I feel like lately I've seen quite a variety of teachers, so here some descriptions of teachers that drive me crazy.

The Preacher
Gets up and tells everyone, in a loud voice and with much energy, how they know what's right and insinuate that everyone should be more like them.

The Used Car Salesman
You feel like slime after talking to them. Uses poor analogies, doesn't really pay attention to what the audience is saying, but really wants to get his point across.

The not-quite Spiritual Giant
Trying to be so spiritual that you fall asleep listening to their monotony. Jokes are prohibited here, as is any practicality.

The Bum
Didn't actually prepare the lesson, so you read out of the textbook/manual the entire time. Questions are generic, and you feel like you could have used your time better by staring at a wall.

Socrates
Rather than telling you how it is, they ask you questions to see if you already know how it is. Really great method, especially if you don't like to teach.

OK, so I wrote this after I just got done with a class where the professor drives me crazy, and my mood probably dictated the tone of this post. Still, his teaching style is the absolute worse I ever seen in a classroom. It's not uncommon for him to speak absolute rubish for 50 minutes straight without asking or answering any questions, and in some cases providing incorrect/misleading information. He drives me absolutely nuts. Just a complete waste of my time.

Harddrives

So I was beginning to ponder making a list of some of the cool but unknown websites I frequent, when I got distracted by the topic of harddrive destruction/wiping. I know most people just tune out to this sort of thing, but it's important - think Identity Theft. You throw away your computer, or sell it to someone, and somewhere on the drive is your social security number. Not good.

When I was in undergrad, a buddy of mine took a computer forensics class at BYU. Once a month, the professor would bring in a bunch of old hard drives and they'd have to put together a profile of the previous owner. Scary stuff.

One might think, "I deleted everything, I'm good, right?" Not necessarily. Here's a brief explanation of why not, complete with some neato drawings I made.

Computer harddrives are magnetic based, and record information basically as a One or a Zero. Like this:
When we delete something off our computer, we normally think the data completely erased, and gone back to the 'zero' level on the magnetic tape in the drive. But the truth is, it never gets completely back to zero. It's more like this:

Now, most people don't have the specialized software to recover data when it's in a partial state like this. Some people, like computer forensics guys, police departments, and the NSA can. Oh, and some crazy people too - maybe your neighbor that digs through your trash trying to steal stuff? I dunno.

So what to do about it? There are a couple schools of thought.

1) Wipe the disk. Here's a discussion on how to do it. Basically the fastest way to do this is to fill the drive with meaningless data. This can be random data, as mentioned in the article, or just fill the ENTIRE drive with '1's (not mentioned in the article). While deleting doesn't get the physical data back to 'Zero', when you record data it does become a '1' (or close enough).

2) Destroy the disk. Definitely more fun. There some fun videos on how to do this with extreme prejudice. Environmentalists probably say that this is a waste of resources and hurts mother earth. But it's your stuff, and its your identity.

Weird Month

So I've had a weird month. Rather than write out all the reasons why, here are some short blurbs about the past couple weeks in my life.

• I almost got crushed by a garage door. No, really. It wasn't cool.
• I superglued my face, and got some in my hair
• I hit a bat in my truck. Impact was smaller than the horse I hit a few years ago.
• I was billed for something I returned over 2 months ago
• I made a pinewood derby car that had 7 wheels
• I wrote an excel macro in Visual Basic
• I drove in snow and ice, and had to scrape my car for 10 minutes
  

All of this, while in law school. No wonder I feel super busy all the time.

Home Cafe

I know everybody's interested in where I eat here in Lubbock, so in continuing on the theme today I went to Home Cafe for lunch. From the outside it looks just like a little Ma&Pa restaurant that will probably go out of business anytime soon.

Upon entering, I realized my mistake. The place has a old time Texas feel, replete with old black & white photographs and aging books. Every table is different, as are the chairs. And the food is pretty much made from scratch. I got the chicken fried chicken, which was delicious. This is definitely one spot in Lubbock that people should know about.

Oh, and no worries about it going out of business. At one point while we were there the line extended out the door.

Located at 34th & Gary in Lubbock.

Defensive Driving

So a few weeks ago I got a ticket. It was my first ticket in almost 5 years, so now I get to go to defensive driving. Frankly, I think it might be worth it to drive slow just so I don't have to endure going to defensive driving ever again.

However, I decided to take my course at defensive driving at Home Plate Diner so I could get a free Chicken Fried Steak dinner with it, and ice cream tonight when I go back for the second half.

But oh yeah, my teacher's freaky. I found some YouTube clips of him. Be scared.

Dirty Monkey

you will laugh...

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.

6 1/2 days

So when I left Lubbock last week for Dallas, I forgot my cell phone charger. I went to Best Buy to get a new one, but couldn't find the one for my phone... so I waited for my sister to bring me mine when she came into town. She arrived 6 1/2 days after I left town... and the phone was still working.

I think this is incredible. 6 1/2 days with no charge! Of course, since I completely drained the battery, it's no longer holding a charge of more than a few minutes, kinda screwing me up. And I'm about to check the Dallas metroplex for replacement batteries. Still, I think it was pretty sweet.

Tumbleweeds

So I drove home to Dallas today. Pretty uneventful trip, then got caught in the Dallas traffic, in a light drizzle. Super fun.

What did make the trip a little more eventful than usual was the tremendous amount of tumbleweed blowing across the road. Dodging tumbleweed can be difficult - especially if there's a significant amount of oncoming traffic. All told I'd say I dodged 20-30 pieces, but hit 2.

I think it's hilarious that there's actually that much tumbleweed. I don't think I'd ever seen tumbleweed in my life before moving to Lubbock.