The First Part of the Last Week of School this Quarter
Sunday, June 27, 2010: I slept pretty solidly last night, and woke up a little after 6:30. When I got up, Marty was already up and getting ready for his day. I spent most of the morning working on the latest chapter of my Trek story and then sent it off to my betas for editting. It was a hot one today, so even through Marty went off to visit with friends and do some Gay Pride stuff, I stayed home with the dogs, made a batch of chicken-vegetable soup, and watched a little TV between bouts of writing. Watched the DVD "The Men Who Stare at Goats". What a wierd-ass little movie that was!
Monday, June 28, 2010: It was HOT outside today, around 102 degrees, so I stayed inside for the most part. Did some job search stuff, and answered some e-mails, then did some writing for a while. Not a lot.
I got my new LG420G phone from Tracfone today . It's not fancy (only cost about $19), but it's a step up from my little pink handheld Motorola thta does nothing. With this new phone, i can at least download some ringtones! Hah! I got the "Imperial March" (Darth Vader's theme) for the ringtone for now.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010: It was "only" 98 degrees today, but felt a little humid... This is my last week of school for this quarter, so there isn't much to do but take finals and fill in the rest of the time in class with whatever.
In Civil Litigation II class we had our final and I got an "A" -- which I was expecting. I only got one question wrong on the test (dangit), which had to do with how to treat a "hostile witness" in court. {You can cross-examine them and use "leading questions" to get the information you want; you can't "lead" a witness that isn't "hostile".}
In Legal Office Management class, we just went over Chapter 8 in the book, which was about marketing. Ms. Goodwin had brought in some advertisements that she felt violated the Model Rules for attorneys and passed them around so we could see them. Some of them were willfully misleading. One of them, though, was from First Magnus -- one of the mortgage companies on the list of "predatory lenders" and referred clients to a 1-800-number of another comapany that was also part of the scams. (It didn't have anything to do with laywers or a law firm, even though it mentioned in the ad that the lenders weren't able to give legal advice). When I told Ms. Goodwin who the businesses were, she seemed shocked -- I think she got the ad from a friend or family member. I hope she clues them in about the scam...
In between classes I got my new schedule for next quarter, filled out a "drop class" form for the Math 103 (Algebra) class I want to take on-line eventually, and picked up my certificate of award for having a perfect 4.0 GPA last quarter. Go me!
I felt I deserved a little something for my A on the test and my Award, so I picked up a couple more RedBox movies at the grocery store before going home: "Zombieland", "2012", and a miniseries called "Fallen".
When you've seen one zombie movie you've pretty much seen them all, but sometimes people play with genre and come up with an interesting take on the subject matter. "Zombieland" did that. It was a comedy about a young nerdy guy who survived when 99% of the population got zombified by sticking to a series of self-made rules like: "don't use the bathroom", "cardio!", "limber up", and "the double tap" (shoot or smash the zombie twice to make sure it's dead-dead). The actor who played the kid was likable and funny, and the whole movie kind of played off of him -- leaving the whole zombie issue itself very secondary. The tag line to the film was "Nut up, or shut up"; and that pretty much exemplified the humor in the whole thing. It was a fast 2 hours, and sort of mindless, goofy fun, so I enjoyed it.
The movie "2012" got very mized reviews when it came out, and now having seen the film, I understand why. The epic disaster scenes were so well done they were literally jaw-dropping, goose-bump inducing things; unbelievable; during the Yosemite melt-down scene, I was literally shouting at the screen trying to get the characters to move their butts and get out of there. The flood scenes (which echo some recurring nightmares I have) made me shake all over and even start to cry. So the movie gets 100%+ on that stuff. The cause of the disaster was interesting too: a giant solar flare creates nuetrinos that radiate toward the Earth, super-heating the core and causing the mantel (under the crust) to liquify. When that reaches a critical point, the magentic poles shift (the South Pole repositions itself under Wisconsin) and the tectonic plates start to heave and drift around like surfboards on the magma under them. The scene where California breaks off and tips into the ocean is fantastic. (That's the image you see here.)
Where the movie fails miserably, however, is in the storyline of the family (John Cusack as the dad) trying to escape the disasters and reach the arks being built in China. There were just waaaaay to many "coincidences" that got to be ridiculous after a while: he just happens to find crazy Woody Harrelson (who was also in "Zombieland" by the way) in Yosemite, and Woody just happens to know where the arks are being built, and Cusak's ex-wife just happens to be married to a guy who can fly airplanes to get them out of immediate danger, and Cusak just happens to be a chauffer for a rich Russian dude who just happens to have tickets to get on an ark... Puh-leeze. And as much as I like Danny Glover, he was just NOT right for the role of President of the US. So in the technical aspects the movie gets an "A", but in the story-telling aspects and character-building aspects it gets a "D-". It's from that imbalance where the mixed reviews stemmed, I'm sure.
Apropos of Nothing: FaceBook, the social-network on-line, was able to compile a "Circle of Friends" for me based on my FaceBook friends. The circle shows everyone by name, and then shows how/if they're interconnected with one another. Kind of kewl, huh?
Monday, June 28, 2010: It was HOT outside today, around 102 degrees, so I stayed inside for the most part. Did some job search stuff, and answered some e-mails, then did some writing for a while. Not a lot.
I got my new LG420G phone from Tracfone today . It's not fancy (only cost about $19), but it's a step up from my little pink handheld Motorola thta does nothing. With this new phone, i can at least download some ringtones! Hah! I got the "Imperial March" (Darth Vader's theme) for the ringtone for now.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010: It was "only" 98 degrees today, but felt a little humid... This is my last week of school for this quarter, so there isn't much to do but take finals and fill in the rest of the time in class with whatever.
In Civil Litigation II class we had our final and I got an "A" -- which I was expecting. I only got one question wrong on the test (dangit), which had to do with how to treat a "hostile witness" in court. {You can cross-examine them and use "leading questions" to get the information you want; you can't "lead" a witness that isn't "hostile".}
In Legal Office Management class, we just went over Chapter 8 in the book, which was about marketing. Ms. Goodwin had brought in some advertisements that she felt violated the Model Rules for attorneys and passed them around so we could see them. Some of them were willfully misleading. One of them, though, was from First Magnus -- one of the mortgage companies on the list of "predatory lenders" and referred clients to a 1-800-number of another comapany that was also part of the scams. (It didn't have anything to do with laywers or a law firm, even though it mentioned in the ad that the lenders weren't able to give legal advice). When I told Ms. Goodwin who the businesses were, she seemed shocked -- I think she got the ad from a friend or family member. I hope she clues them in about the scam...
In between classes I got my new schedule for next quarter, filled out a "drop class" form for the Math 103 (Algebra) class I want to take on-line eventually, and picked up my certificate of award for having a perfect 4.0 GPA last quarter. Go me!
I felt I deserved a little something for my A on the test and my Award, so I picked up a couple more RedBox movies at the grocery store before going home: "Zombieland", "2012", and a miniseries called "Fallen".
When you've seen one zombie movie you've pretty much seen them all, but sometimes people play with genre and come up with an interesting take on the subject matter. "Zombieland" did that. It was a comedy about a young nerdy guy who survived when 99% of the population got zombified by sticking to a series of self-made rules like: "don't use the bathroom", "cardio!", "limber up", and "the double tap" (shoot or smash the zombie twice to make sure it's dead-dead). The actor who played the kid was likable and funny, and the whole movie kind of played off of him -- leaving the whole zombie issue itself very secondary. The tag line to the film was "Nut up, or shut up"; and that pretty much exemplified the humor in the whole thing. It was a fast 2 hours, and sort of mindless, goofy fun, so I enjoyed it.
The movie "2012" got very mized reviews when it came out, and now having seen the film, I understand why. The epic disaster scenes were so well done they were literally jaw-dropping, goose-bump inducing things; unbelievable; during the Yosemite melt-down scene, I was literally shouting at the screen trying to get the characters to move their butts and get out of there. The flood scenes (which echo some recurring nightmares I have) made me shake all over and even start to cry. So the movie gets 100%+ on that stuff. The cause of the disaster was interesting too: a giant solar flare creates nuetrinos that radiate toward the Earth, super-heating the core and causing the mantel (under the crust) to liquify. When that reaches a critical point, the magentic poles shift (the South Pole repositions itself under Wisconsin) and the tectonic plates start to heave and drift around like surfboards on the magma under them. The scene where California breaks off and tips into the ocean is fantastic. (That's the image you see here.)
Where the movie fails miserably, however, is in the storyline of the family (John Cusack as the dad) trying to escape the disasters and reach the arks being built in China. There were just waaaaay to many "coincidences" that got to be ridiculous after a while: he just happens to find crazy Woody Harrelson (who was also in "Zombieland" by the way) in Yosemite, and Woody just happens to know where the arks are being built, and Cusak's ex-wife just happens to be married to a guy who can fly airplanes to get them out of immediate danger, and Cusak just happens to be a chauffer for a rich Russian dude who just happens to have tickets to get on an ark... Puh-leeze. And as much as I like Danny Glover, he was just NOT right for the role of President of the US. So in the technical aspects the movie gets an "A", but in the story-telling aspects and character-building aspects it gets a "D-". It's from that imbalance where the mixed reviews stemmed, I'm sure.
Apropos of Nothing: FaceBook, the social-network on-line, was able to compile a "Circle of Friends" for me based on my FaceBook friends. The circle shows everyone by name, and then shows how/if they're interconnected with one another. Kind of kewl, huh?