Yikes

My first exam is tomorrow (Evidence) so I'll keep this brief...

My parents emailed us to say that a big storm was headed their way, but I had no idea it was this big. At least 109 people dead!? Please pray for the people of the Philippines.

An odd, but pleasant, tradition

At this law school, there is a tradition that at the end of the last class of the semester the professor makes a few closing remarks (i.e. "Thanks for walking with me down this winding path of Constitutional law...") and then all of the students applaud. I don't remember this ever happening at undergrad, but it's a nice recognition of the teacher's efforts. I remember one class last year where the teacher actually got a standing O. I wonder if any other law schools do this?

Birthday recap

I'm breaking my exam-period blog silence to post a few thoughts and to recap my birthday. There is so much more I could write about - Thanksgiving, the Civil War, how I hate studying for finals, etc...but I'll keep this one brief.

- My birthday was yesterday and I had a really nice day. I had class in the morning, followed by Missi and Sam meeting me at my office with lunch. They brought Cafe Yumm, which is always great (sidenote: if you live in Eugene and haven't eaten at Cafe Yumm, you NEED to. If you don't live in Eugene, well, you're missing out). I worked throughout the afternoon and then we had some friends over for a birthday dinner. Missi did a great job of cooking my slightly-obscure choice of birthday dinner - yakisoba and bulgogi beef. For gifts, she and the kids got me some great shoes and a very cool Treo 650. I'm sort of a geek for little electronic gadgets like this so I'm pretty excited. Our friend Monica brought over an ice cream cake from Cold Stone, which was really great. Over all, it was a very good birthday.

- There is a lot that could be said about the Ducks collapse on the football field. To be honest, I don't really have the time or energy to relate all of my thoughts, but in general it was just a really disappointing season. Go here or here to read two of my favorite Duck blogs writting by Oregonian writers.

- If you want to read a really great newspaper column, check out Bob Welch's columns in the R-G. He's a great guy and a great writer. And, after playing against him in a Turkey Bowl, he's a darn good flag football player.

- There's some white stuff on the ground this morning, which is definitely exciting for the kids. Not enough to cancel school, but it's still fun (and CERTAINLY not as much as my sister sees up in Alaska).

- Last note, and this is something of a "teaser." The Wilson family has decided to add a new member to our family. No, this DOES NOT mean we're pregnant (that's for you AZ!). It just means that Christmas morning will be very, very exciting for our kids. Go here for a glimpse.

See you in a few weeks…

I’m heading into my most difficult four week period of the year – those leading up to and including my final exams. Therefore, I’m going to take a break from blogging and I’m sure I’ll add some more in early-mid December once everything settles back down. Have a great Thanksgiving!

A short trip to Bend

I left Thursday evening around 5:30 and I drove over to Bend. Nothing quite like driving 2+ hours in the dark after a long day. A deer ran out in the road in front of me but it wasn’t really too close. After arriving in Bend, I had a great dinner at the Pine Tavern with my boss and then did some reading. The next day we had our hearing and I was back on the road to Eugene by 12:30. Somewhere around 17 hours within the city limits of Bend, and the majority of that was spent sleeping.

Here are a few pics taken from the road.


The Three Sisters


Just a dusting of snow on the Pass


Self-portrait taken at 70 mph using the camera's timer

We may have an answer!

Yesterday I posted something about the possibility of quantifying the number of raindrops that would fall during a five minute period in a one square mile area. The topic generated a surprising amount of reaction, and I knew that if anyone could make an educated guess about the answer, it would be my friend Charlie. He has an engineering background and his mind works in ways that fascinate me. That, combined with the fact that he is in Business School right now (where they use tons of statistical analysis), led me to believe that he could actually figure it out. Here is what he sent me:

My estimate is 2.63 trillion rain drops/square mile in 5 minutes when it is raining at 1cm of accumulation per hour, would be a light/moderate steady rain.



Here’s a spreadsheet you can play with to see how many drops accumulate when the severity of the rain and the drop size distribution changes. I got my drop size distribution here: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/IgorVolynets.shtml

This is, after all, the same guy who calculated the total amount of time it would take for the EMU to pass out all of their student football tickets and the points-per-minute ratio on our Property exam. He has a mind like a computer (if we could somehow just get him assigned to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or figure out how to get us out of Iraq I have little doubt he'd come up with a plan). Way to go Charlie!

Three thoughts for a Monday

1. I was up in Portland over the weekend, had a great time although I spent all day Saturday doing school work. It was good to spend time with our good friends Jesse and Nicole on Friday evening (we went to Solo and Kell’s) and I couldn’t ask for a better situation than the fact that Fred and Maggie let us stay with them whenever we’re in town. On Sunday, I packed up the car and drove back to Eugene. Once home, I realized that the one bag I left in Portland was the most important – my school bag, and especially my computer. I essentially hopped in my car and headed back up to Portland, but my amazing mother-in-law and step father-in-law agreed to head south with the fruit of my forgetfulness. I met Fred and Maggie in South Salem where I retrieved my stuff. I don’t have anyone to blame but myself for the mistake, but it resulted in almost 4 hours of driving on Sunday afternoon/evening. Thanks to Fred and Maggie for saving me about another 90 minutes!

2.Did you know I am now a professional blogger? That’s right, I’m actually getting paid to blog for my school. I have to post 2-3 times per month and they refer prospective students to the blog. Kind of crazy that I’m actually receiving money for espousing the virtues of a school that I love!?

3.Here is a theoretical/scientific question for this rainy, stormy season: Do you think it would ever be possible to figure out how many raindrops hit the ground in a one square mile area over the period of five minutes? I was thinking that you could somehow take a 1’ x 1’ box and figure out how many drops hit in during a period of 5 minutes and then extrapolate that figure over the square mile. How could you figure out how many drops actually fell? You could figure out the average volume of each drop, then take the total amount of water collected and divide it by the average size of drops. The equation might look like this:

(Total volume of water collected/average size of each drop=total number of drops)

You would of course, have to take into account wind factors, the variety of different sized drops, etc…But do you really think it’s possible? My head is hurting.

Some new pics

Family pic at the PSU game

I suppose I could spend today’s entry discussing last night’s election results, or Rumsfeld’s resignation, or any number of current events, but it dawned on me that it has been quite a long time since I’ve posted any pictures. The primary reason is that it takes quite a bit of time to post pictures. I have to upload them to a site like Flickr or Photobucket, and then manually link to the images from this blog because no one seems to have a good system to post multiple photos to one’s blog. Anyway, without further adieu, here are some pics from the last few weeks and months. Hope you enjoy them…

Missi and I (photo by Drew)

Halloween Night

We've got Spartan Spirit!

Craig and Kobayashi, the champion hotdog-eater

The Ladies...

The Fellas...

Drew and his soccer buddies


P.S. Sorry for the weird formatting on this post. I can't figure out why Blogger does this to me...

I wish I had an "audio blog" right now

I kid you not...I am sitting in my office on a Friday afternoon and the security guard who sits in the lobby of our building is trying to teach himself how to play saxophone. He just purchased a new tenor sax on eBay and he brought it back to show off. He is now sitting at his little desk trying to squeak out some notes. He has never played sax before so his sound, ahem, is not quite perfected. I only wish I could somehow capture the soulful sounds of the tenor sax and upload them onto the web so all of you could enjoy the melodious strains. Maybe someday...

What a day...

My schedule for Thursday, November 2.

5:45: Wake up, get ready to go to basketball, get suit ready
6:25: Leave the house
6:45: Arrive at the REC for basketball games
7:00 – 8:20: Basketball league (I play in the Legal Ballers Association league. Our team was 1-1 on Thursday)
8:30 – 8:45: Shower, change into suit and tie
9:00 – 10:00: Go to part of class (American Legal Biography – discussing Chief Justice Earl Warren)
10:15: Make it into the office, begin prepping for hearing
11:30: Head to courthouse
12:00: Facilitate negotiations with lots of folks who had received citations
1:00 – 2:30: Appear before Magistrate in a weird, convoluted hearing (ask me about it sometime – my defendant appeared in court intoxicated)
2:30: Head back to office, leave to school
2:45 – 4:20: Attend class (Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Legislating Morality – it’s a really sweet seminar-style class. Today we talked about the collateral consequences to a conviction, i.e. disenfranchisement or the loss of parental rights).
4:30 – 4:45: Talk on the phone to Missi
5:00 – 5:45: In library study room, prepping for Moot Court argument
5:45 – 6:10: Eat dinner, graciously provided by the Moot Court Board
6:15 – 8:30: Continue prepping for appellate argument for Business Law Moot Court competition
8:45: Give oral argument in front of 3-judge panel
9:10: Finally head for home
9:30: Get home, change out of suit, begin working on big paper
10:00: Check email, get good news about results of moot court competition
10:10 – now (11:00): Continue working on paper and take a break to write this blog entry

Very busy week...

This week has to be up there for one of the busiest of the school year, if not my whole entire law school career:

1. Working on a big paper (25+ pages) with a draft due on Friday.
2. Hearing at work on Thursday. I'm scheduled to appear in front of the Magistrate Judge on something
3. Giving an oral argument on Thursday evening as part of the Business Law Moot Court Competition. I turned in the brief last week and haven't even thought about the argument yet.
4. I've got a Law Review hard edit going on right now that is due early next week.
5. All of my other normal class work.

Oh yeah, finals start in just about a month. This isn't going to be a fun month.