In which I defer studying for the bar by fiddling with my computer
(well, before bar exam FAIL)
Let's get this out of the way: I hate the BarBri website with a passion. It is clunky, slow, counter-intuitive--pretty much everything I've grown to hate about websites that cater to lawyers.
Helpfully, Barbri offers their "StudySmart" tool for the Multi-State Bar Exam. Essentially, it will administer all the sample MBE questions your lawyerly heart could possibly desire--then grade your answers and tell you exactly where you went wrong in the logic. Sure, I could do that out of the phonebook-sized exam books I have, but marking the answers (and double-checking that) is so utterly tedious.
I have two choices. First, I could run the tool in Flash, which should work everywhere. Problem: every stressed-out bar exam candidate in the country is hitting their servers at the same time. The Flash app is so laggy that it really started bugging me. My other choice is to install the software locally--surely that will be faster.
Helpfully, Barbri's license allows me to make two installations on any given product key. I dutifully used one of them on my Windows partition. No problems. Still a bit laggy, but much better than having to hit the Barbri website.
Then I got crazy and decided--hell, I run WINE on my Ubuntu partition--why not run this there? Then I'd be able to do my MBE review from my primary OS.
Well, the software isntalled OK. Some text in the install wasn't showing up properly--I chalked it up to regular WINE weirdness. Consequently, I probably mis-keyed my goddamned product key more than twice. Now the software won't authenticate because I am apparently an evil software pirate, having installed the software once too many times.
Except that I haven't. The inordinate number of authentication attempts wasn't malicious, but fat-fingered. Too bad, so sad, no MBE's on Linux for me!
Incidentally, it turns out that the BarBri Study Smart software wasn't showing me any text because of a known WINE bug. Fortunately, the fix wasn't too complicated: I created a new file (norender.txt):
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver]
"ClientSideWithRender"="N"
Then it was a simple matter of telling WINE to cram that reg key into WINE's registry:
$ regedit norender.txt
With the fix, I could see the text in StudySmart software again--but not in time to actually validate the goddamned thing. I am inclined to call their tech support monkeys tomorrow, just to say "look, I mistyped my key a few times, can't you reset me?"
This bar review process, incidentally, is not very much fun. I'm just getting shellacked in the practice problems I attempt--I'm never sure how much detail I'm covering, or whether that's going to be even remotely close to good enough.
So of course, I'm coping by watching too much sport on TV--the World Cup, naturally, my beloved (terrible) Nationals--anything but land conveyancing again.
And for when I need to get myself pumped up, there's '80s music.
Let's get this out of the way: I hate the BarBri website with a passion. It is clunky, slow, counter-intuitive--pretty much everything I've grown to hate about websites that cater to lawyers.
Helpfully, Barbri offers their "StudySmart" tool for the Multi-State Bar Exam. Essentially, it will administer all the sample MBE questions your lawyerly heart could possibly desire--then grade your answers and tell you exactly where you went wrong in the logic. Sure, I could do that out of the phonebook-sized exam books I have, but marking the answers (and double-checking that) is so utterly tedious.
I have two choices. First, I could run the tool in Flash, which should work everywhere. Problem: every stressed-out bar exam candidate in the country is hitting their servers at the same time. The Flash app is so laggy that it really started bugging me. My other choice is to install the software locally--surely that will be faster.
Helpfully, Barbri's license allows me to make two installations on any given product key. I dutifully used one of them on my Windows partition. No problems. Still a bit laggy, but much better than having to hit the Barbri website.
Then I got crazy and decided--hell, I run WINE on my Ubuntu partition--why not run this there? Then I'd be able to do my MBE review from my primary OS.
Well, the software isntalled OK. Some text in the install wasn't showing up properly--I chalked it up to regular WINE weirdness. Consequently, I probably mis-keyed my goddamned product key more than twice. Now the software won't authenticate because I am apparently an evil software pirate, having installed the software once too many times.
Except that I haven't. The inordinate number of authentication attempts wasn't malicious, but fat-fingered. Too bad, so sad, no MBE's on Linux for me!
Incidentally, it turns out that the BarBri Study Smart software wasn't showing me any text because of a known WINE bug. Fortunately, the fix wasn't too complicated: I created a new file (norender.txt):
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver]
"ClientSideWithRender"="N"
Then it was a simple matter of telling WINE to cram that reg key into WINE's registry:
$ regedit norender.txt
With the fix, I could see the text in StudySmart software again--but not in time to actually validate the goddamned thing. I am inclined to call their tech support monkeys tomorrow, just to say "look, I mistyped my key a few times, can't you reset me?"
This bar review process, incidentally, is not very much fun. I'm just getting shellacked in the practice problems I attempt--I'm never sure how much detail I'm covering, or whether that's going to be even remotely close to good enough.
So of course, I'm coping by watching too much sport on TV--the World Cup, naturally, my beloved (terrible) Nationals--anything but land conveyancing again.
And for when I need to get myself pumped up, there's '80s music.
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