My old friend Ben Kepple, of Daily Rant fame, was in town as part of his Economic Stimulus Vacation Tour. In keeping with the theme of his trip, we stimulus-ed the economy of Ann Arbor with a visit to an old favorite, Good Time Charley’s. A good time was had by all.
I have always liked cats because when I was a wee young lad, my grandparents had a cat, Charlie, who was pretty much my constant companion when I’d visit. Later, after I became a lawyer, it seemed to me that a rather disproportionate number of lawyers had cats—I have two, and I know several other lawyers who have at least one. But apparently, engineers also have an affinity for cats, as demonstrated by this helpful video:
Travel writer Thomas Khonstamm has admitted that he either plagiarized or just plain made up a bunch of the stuff he wrote for the “Lonely Planet” travel guidebook series. He says that he broke company policy by taking free travel (presumably from travel companies whose services he was reviewing, though the story doesn’t say). He even claims to have written stuff about Colombia without even going there, relying instead on information from a girlfriend who worked at the Colombian consulate in San Francisco.
Well, hell, I can do that. If I knew you didn’t have to be a travel expert to write travel guides, I’d have tried my hand at it years ago. Of course, I actually have done a fair amount of traveling. In my travels, though, I’d say I came across many things that I couldn’t even make up. So I’d have to go the honest route and, you know, actually go to the places I would be writing about.
But one thing this story shows is how you can’t necessarily trust those who hold themselves out as experts. There seems to be so little vetting or oversight. I mean, apparently nobody would have caught Mr Khonstamm (which sounds awfully similar to “con man”) had he not come out with a book in which he admitted his deeds.
Anyway, the expert tag gets handed out with a bit too much frequency these days. In my profession, when we call “expert witnesses” to testify about something, there is a whole pile of evidentiary and legal standards we have to meet in order to qualify our “experts” as bona fide experts. You have to establish that they have training, expertise, and that that their opinions on the subject have some kind of grounding in fact or accepted theory.
Not so for Mr. Khonstamm, it seems. And not so out in the real world beyond the courtroom, either. Lots of people get to be experts on all kinds of things, without any guarantee that the “expert advice” you’re getting is based upon reliable information or an acceptable amount of training or experience. For example, I have an acquaintance I’ve known for a few years who apparently fancies himself a relationship expert, who even had a column running in an actual local newspaper. Oh, he would often, in his columns, coyly pretend to shrug off the title of “expert.” But ask yourself: how many newspapers would waste precious column-inches for “some guy who really isn’t an expert in the subject being discussed, but wants to prattle on about it anyway”? (Granted, that’s a good way to describe this blog sometimes. But I’m not asking people to pay to read it, either.)
Anyway, despite the coy, and not altogether too strident, attempts to make it look like he’s not the presumptuous type of guy who would label himself an “expert” on relationships, he would often “quote” other people who described him as (good God) the “Male Carrie Bradshaw” (the relationship-expert-columnist protagonist of Sex and the City fame). The columns themselves, however, were less “male Carrie Bradshaw” and more the print version of the high-school/college guy who wears the very thinly veiled sensitive-new-age-guy disguise to try and get women into bed with him. Except not even as well-written as that. Oh, sure, to people who didn’t know much about the guy, and who didn’t read too much below the syrupy, very-easy-to-see-through veneer, this guy looked like the in-touch-with-his-feminine-side progressive man. It was easy to get caught up in the tale of a guy who got his heart broken time after time by women who didn’t appreciate him for the nice, sensitive guy that he is.
Except, that’s not really how I knew/know the guy. To get the full picture, you have to see the side that wasn’t in his column. You have to see the guy who’s several years older than me (I’m in my early thirties) who surrounds himself with women in their early- to mid-twenties (some of them are younger than my girlfriend’s youngest sister, who is in her early twenties). If you go to his page on one of a number of social networking sites, that’s what you see—scores of much-younger women in his friends page. You also have to see the guy as I saw him when I first met him—married, with an infant daughter, pocketing his wedding ring, and making the rounds of every female at our office in search of one who would be receptive to his advances. I had friends who knew him in other contexts, and that seemed to be his M.O. in other contexts as well. (Suffice it to say that I wasn’t shocked to learn of his divorce a couple of years later.)
My reaction, when I learned of his column, was mixed — I wasn’t sure whether he had no business playing the sensitive “metrosexual” relationship expert dude, or whether he ought to be considered an “expert” because he had done just about everything a guy shouldn’t do if he expects to have and preserve a long-term relationship.
Of course, you didn’t see any of that in his column. You rarely saw a mention that he had ever been married, and you didn’t really see him talking about having a kid. Because if you’re a late-30s guy trying to get sweet young twenty-somethings under your spell, you can’t be some old divorced dude with wandering eyes, a flexible definition of commitment, and a kid. No, what you saw was a guy who latched onto some kind of “metrosexual” persona to show how in touch with his feminine side he was. He would always lament his failed relationships with some girlfriend or another, and the theme would always be “poor me, these women just don’t know how to deal with a nice guy in touch with his feminine side.” It was certainly never his fault. It probably had little to do with the fact that he could be sometimes be seen literally hanging all over other women.
He would also post his columns to a running online blog for the rest of the world to see. Most of the comments that showed up were from the segment he likely aimed for — women who don’t know any better who always fell for the guy who had the thinly veiled nice-sensitive-guy act. Every once in a while, someone who did know better would throw the bullshit card, but such comments either disappeared or were buried under a back-pedaling act that politicians could take lessons from. Indeed, once the guy had the gall to post a syrupy-sweet column about how he had never had a girlfriend on Valentines Day, and how he longed to know what that was like. That’s right, the guy who was married for several years. Posting about how he envied people who had “someone special” to spend Valentines Day with. Someone posted a comment throwing the bullshit card on that one, too. I could only imagine what his ex-wife might have thought when she read that. I can only imagine what his child will think if she ever stumbles across it.
Eventually, he posted a column saying no one would get to kick him around anymore because his column was leading to too many problems dating because his status as a “relationship expert” put “too much pressure” on his dating life. I suspect it had a little more to do with one too many bullshit cards being thrown. Of course, as those of you who are cynics like me might guess, it wasn’t very much longer before he started posting again, despite saying he’d never do it again.
Anyway, my point is that it’s all a little too easy to become known as an expert today, and consequently, not too surprising to see that so-called experts are just making things up and phoning things in. If an ardent womanizer can cast himself as a soulful “relationship advice columnist” in seek of his one, true love and lamenting the fact that a nice guy like himself keeps getting jilted, then surely there can be travel writers who never travel to the places they write about. The problem is, people don’t seem to care. Oh, sure, they act surprised when the cat’s out of the bag, but really, what do they really do to check whether the guy dispensing travel advice or advice for the lovelorn actually has anything backing up his opinions?
On the other hand, what do I know? After all, I’m no expert.
It seems that a woman was arrested at a courthouse on the day of her wedding, in front of her entire wedding party. What is it that she allegedly did? Well, the day before her wedding, she threatened someone. A juror. A member of the jury in the trial of the blushing bride on felony charges of driving while her license was suspended because of an earlier drunk driving charge.
So, to recap: (1) got convicted of drunk driving, license suspended; (2) got arrested for deciding to drive anyway; (3) while on trial, (allegedly) employed the brilliant trial strategy of threatening one of the jurors; (4) called to set up a wedding at the very same courthouse the very next day; (5) got arrested right before the wedding. Well, who would want to let this peach get away?
When I was a kid, I used to love to read Garfield cartoons. As I grew older, I might stumble across the occasional Garfield strip in the newspaper, and they still managed to get a smile out of me, but they tend to be rather formulaic. Garfield eats a bunch of food and annoys Jon. Garfield torments Odie and annoys Jon. Garfield lays around being lazy and annoys Jon. Guess I was easier to amuse as a kid.
Until now. Some comedic genius discovered that you can completely change the meaning of Garfield cartoons by, well, removing Garfield. Here’s an example:
That’s right — by removing Garfield from Garfield comic strips, you’re left with a portrait of Jon Arbuckle as a lonely, bitter, depressed, and even schizophrenic man. This piece of internet comedy gold is known as “Garfield Minus Garfield.”
Now that I’ve seen this, I’ll seek out the Garfield strips in the newspaper, and mentally remove Garfield from them. I’m sure it’s not what Jim Davis intended, but often the result is quite hilarious.
Well, it seemed like just about that time to completely overhaul the site again. Now that Movable Type version 4 has been out for a while, and seems mostly stable, it seemed like a good time to make the switch. Since I’ve basically been cobbling on updates for as long as I’ve been running MT, I figured it was time for a clean install, including using MT4-style templates. So here it is.
The behind-the-scenes stuff, like blog maintenance and entry posting and editing is really quite well put together. And there’s some nifty changes to the “front end,” too.
You may notice the “Sign in” link at the upper left corner. As many of you bloggers know, comment spam got way out of hand in a big hurry a few years back. One of MT’s early solutions was to institute authentication using their “Typekey” system. I thought that was pretty cool, and my unauthenticated comment spam was getting out of control. This prompted a switch to Typekey, only to have readers and commenters complain about having to sign into Typekey.
So I brought back anonymous comments, but moderated them. Typekey folks got their comments published immediately, but others had to be approved. You can imagine how onerous that became as the comment spammers ran wild. Then a wonderful person put together a CAPTCHA plugin for Movable Type comment forms. CAPTCHA is an authentication system where you’re shown a graphic with random letters and numbers, and you have to type them into a box — the theory is that only a human being can see them, so only a human being could type them in. This allowed the non-Typekey folks to comment without being moderated, and kept the spam out, too.
In the current incarnation of GeoffBrown.net, there are all kinds of options to let people comment at will while keeping spammers at bay. There’s still Typekey, if you have that. But now you can also register for a login and password directly from GeoffBrown.net. And if you don’t like the idea of coming up with yet another username and password, you can also use your LiveJournal login to post here, too (which should be good for the many friends I know who use LiveJournal). You can also use OpenID, if you have that or your Vox login if you have one. Coming soon, you’ll be able to use WordPress to login, or even your AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) login. That should pretty much cover a lot of folks. And for the stubborn among you, you can still post comments without logging in if you fill in your name and email address, and don’t mind filling in that annoying little CAPTCHA box.
And I’ll even be sure to do regular backups, so that I don’t have an unfortunate comment loss again.
I’m still learning about all the new bells and whistles in MT4, so while I’m checking those out, one nevers knows — I might even post a few things more often.
Unfortunately, I had a bit of a database hiccup, and it seems that all of my comments went bye-bye. That’s right — all of them, going back almost five years or so. So if you thought I deleted that witty comment of yours out of spite, I assure you I didn’t.
Yesterday, I flew up to Marquette, Michigan, to argue a post-trial motion in a medical malpractice case. Our firm’s appellate department is often called upon to handle appeals after medical malpractice trials, and we often start that off with the post-trial motions.
Despite living in Michigan my whole life, I haven’t been to the Upper Peninsula too much, and certainly not as far north as Marquette, which, by my reckoning, lies maybe five minutes south of the Arctic Circle. It’s farther away from Detroit than places like Chicago or Buffalo, so I took one of those tiny propeller planes. Amy helped me out by becoming convinced that I was going to crash to a fiery death because “those little planes crash all the time.” As if Northern Michigan is littered with commuter planes that went down before making it to Marquette.
With that uplifting reassurance, I set out for the airport at an ungodly early hour, and caught my flight to Marquette, which managed to arrive without crashing into the wilderness. Instead, it landed at the “International Airport” for Marquette, which is, well, kind of in the middle of the wilderness.
Marquette is really a very nice place, except it was very cold and there was snow everywhere. Given how far north it is, though, I almost felt like I should be watching out for polar bears everywhere I went:
ME: Your Honor, in response to plaintiffs’ assertion that …
POLAR BEAR: ROAR!!!
ME: AAAAARRRRGGGHHH!!! Oh my God, it’s EATING MY SPLEEN!!!
PLAINTIFFS’ COUNSEL: Objection, Your Honor — counsel is bleeding on my files.
Fortunately, nothing like that happened. As for my hearing, it went about as expected. What was really quite cool about the hearing, though, was the courthouse. If you’ve ever seen the movie Anatomy of a Murder, the courtroom in that movie is the one I appeared in yesterday. It is a historic site, and really quite stunning. It looks like something, well, out of a movie. (As an aside, the movie is based on a novel by John Voelker, a former Michigan Supreme Court justice from the Upper Peninsula.)
After my hearing, I made my way back through the wilderness to the airport, where I again boarded what is, in Amy’s mind, a flying death trap for the flight home. It was quite the contrast to flying out of Detroit, which has about three gazillion gates and planes flying in and out all the time. When they print on your Detroit boarding pass to check at the airport to see whether your gate has changed, they mean it (and my flight out of Detroit indeed did change gates). The gate change is also likely to require you to go to a new gate in a different ZIP code. They print the same thing on your Marquette boarding pass, but there’s only two gates there: Gate 1 and Gate 2. They’re right next to each other. Which means gate changes aren’t really a big deal. Also in contrast to Detroit, when we left, we were the only plane leaving. In fact, we may have been the only plane at the airport. No long trip to the runway. And no waiting around for anything (other than, maybe, making sure there were no polar bears on the runway). That was very nice compared to our landing at the Detroit airport, where we ended up taxiing down the runway for what seemed like three hours before getting to the gate.
Jokes about wilderness and polar bears (which don’t really live that far south — I hope) aside, I rather enjoyed my day trip to the U.P. It’s really quite a nice place, somewhere I’d like to visit again. Maybe in July when there’s a little less snow.
Since I've become a homeowner, I have had a few occasions to see whether I am completely incompetent at home improvement and home repair projects. My dad, an engineer, is also quite skilled at home improvement projects. When I was a kid, he was always working on some project. For example, he turned our unfinished basement into a finished basement. That meant cutting up lumber and turning it into walls, and putting drywall up and all that stuff. My role was helping. I was never too keen on it, because, well, as your typically computer geek type, I was neither skilled nor interested in building stuff. For my dad, it must have been the first heartbreak, which continued when I became a lawyer, and likely became complete when I got my cats.
Until a couple years ago, I spent most of my adult life in apartments, where repairs were handled by the landlord, and you couldn't make much in the way of modifications to those places. But now, this place is mine, and I have to do the repairs, and get to make all the modifications. Which is pretty funny, because unlike my dad, who could wander into a forest with a cordless drill and a hammer and build a house, I pretty much have all the building acumen of a chipmunk (except that they can probably build their own homes).
So not too long ago, I decided to put in a programmable thermostat. It was billed as an easy job, but it did involve a bit of drilling and hammering, and also disconnecting and reconnecting wires. The last part is the only part that I felt pretty confident I could handle. The first two parts had the potential for putting unwanted holes in the wall, or, worse, me. But I managed, and now I have a functioning programmable thermostat, which really has helped lower my energy costs. Plus it will make Al Gore and the other tree huggers happy.
More recently, specifically Thursday night, I came home from work and a quick stop at the grocery store (at about 9:30) only to find that the door from my garage into the house stopped working. The knob turned, but the door wouldn't open. Luckily, I was able to get in the front door. After figuring out how to take the doorknob apart, I was able to to discover that the deadlatch -- the part that keeps the door closed -- pretty much disintegrated and so the doorknob would turn without opening the door. Now I always was good at figuring out puzzles, so I was able, after some fumbling and swearing, to reassemble the thing, but it just disintegrated again after I (after some more swearing) managed to put it back together. Luckily, the hardware store sells replacement deadlatches, so I was able to keep my old doorknob and finally fix the door so I could open and close it again. Score another one for me.
Today, I installed a new shower curtain rod -- one of the ones that curves out so that the shower curtain sticks out a bit and give you a little more room. This involved more drilling, measuring, and putting in hollow wall anchors. Again, the risk for unwanted holes in the wall or me seemed to have increased. But I managed to get the thing put in with a minimum of bodily injury (Amy helped hold things and hand me stuff, which was only fair since it was her idea :-) ). Score another one for me. I guess I picked up more helping my out my dad than I thought. It was even kind of fun. I hope he doesn't find out I said so, though -- he gets way too into "I-told-you-so"s.
On top of my brief forays into home repair, I spent a good chunk of the day making what is possibly some of the best chicken noodle soup I've ever eaten (if I do say so myself). Luckily, I'm far more skilled at cooking than I am with home improvement. Good homemade soup is so much better than the canned stuff, but it can take time, and I haven't had as much experience with that as I have with a lot of the other stuff I like to make, so it was nice to have the chance to try it out.
My good friend Ben Kepple periodically goes through his logs, pulls out keyword searches people used to find his blog, and answers the questions put to the search engine, with often funny results. This inspired me to dig into my own logs to see just how people manage to find my blog (translation: “I thought Ben’s idea was funny, so I shamelessly stole it”).
It has been a while since the last time I did it, so I figure that it’s a good time to dig into the ol’ log files and see just what kinds of odd questions will bring visitors to this site.
Keywords: drew henson was suppose to be tom brady
Well, if that’s true, I’d say he has officially failed quite miserably. What’s not to love about Tom Brady? He’s a fellow alumnus of the University of Michigan, has three Super Bowl rings, was MVP of two of those Super Bowls, has awards and honors coming out the wazoo, and has dated multiple super models. Drew Henson? Not so much. Despite the hype surrounding him at Michigan, which he never really delivered on, he hasn’t really amounted to much. I always said that the only reason everyone cared so much about him is because he had a multi-million-dollar contract with the New York Yankees baseball team, and also was supposed to be a good football player. In reality, he ended up failing miserably at both sports. The hype at Michigan caused Lloyd Carr to go to a kind of two-quarterback system (I hate those) that screwed Tom Brady out of a lot of playing time (and Brady was the better QB at Michigan, too, but didn’t get anywhere near the same hype). Then, after Yankees owner George Steinbrenner paid Henson $20 million to give up football and start playing baseball (I can’t fault Henson much for this, I guess — there aren’t a whole lot of things I wouldn’t do for $20 million), Michigan got saddled with the disaster known as John Navarre. Then Henson crashed and burned as a baseball player, getting cut by the Yankees, and decided to try football again, getting cut by a rather staggering number of NFL teams. So, to recap: Brady has Super Bowl rings and MVP honors, is regarded as one of the best QBs in the NFL, and has supermodels throwing themselves at him; Henson, on the other hand, well, he has lots of time to watch Brady on TV, and hopefully, he has some of that 20 mil socked away for a rainy day.
Keywords: what if i don’t like law school
My suggestion would be not to go anymore. It costs you three years of your life and a crap load of money — if you don’t like it, you’re wasting both. I really liked law school, and I like being a lawyer. Even though i like being a lawyer, it’s a demanding profession that can make your life miserable at times. If you don’t like it, your life will be miserable all the time, and that’s just not worth it.
Keywords: i hate charlie weiss
Well, it’s nice to see I have Notre Dame alumni reading my blog.
Keywords: clostridium difficile joke
You know, my undergraduate major was biology, and before I became a lawyer, I was looking to devote my life to science. As a result, I made, and continue to appreciate, a good number of geeky biology jokes. But I don’t think there’s any kind of joke to be made about Clostridium difficile.
Keywords: using chunks of concrete to build a house
I’m definitely not any kind of expert in construction. My dad is the rare kind of guy who is good at do-it-yourself building projects, but he’s an engineer. His home improvement skills didn’t filter down too well to me, although I can manage minor projects just fine (for example, I was quite impressed with myself when I managed to install my own programmable thermostat, which required using a drill and hollow wall anchors, without any bodily or property damage). Still, I know enough to know that a house built with “chunks of concrete” is not likely to be a very good house. In fact, building a house with “chunks” of anything is likely to be fraught with peril.
Keywords: is eating meat bad?
I don’t think so. If eating meat was bad, it wouldn’t taste so good. But there are a variety of viewpoints on the matter. For example, my friend Heather, the vegan cardiologist, will, as you might expect, tell you that eating meat is bad. Given that I’m an intelligent person, I should be taking Heather’s word for it, because she’s a cardiologist, and should know better. If a cardiologist tells you something can be bad for your heart, it’s probably not a good idea to ignore that. But I’m stubborn like that.
But then again, people are different. It’s hard to say what’s good — or bad — for everyone.. If you are in good health and eat it in moderation, with lots of vegetables and healthy stuff, then it’s probably fine. If you never exercise, have high cholesterol and triglycerides, heart problems, and all that stuff, then maybe it’s time to lay off the steak before you drop dead.
Keywords: claw problems in dogs following allergic reactions to turkey feed
Who the hell gives a dog turkey feed? This guy probably also wonders why his turkeys won’t eat the dog food he puts out for them.
And what, pray tell, does he mean by “claw problems”?
Keywords: drinking beer and eating pizza lowers fat
Good God, don’t I wish. That’s a health food program I could get behind.
Keywords: how did bo deal with problem football players at michigan?
If you want some good stories about that, then I would suggest Bo’s Lasting Lessons: The Legendary Coach Teaches the Timeless Fundamentals of Leadership which was co-authored by Coach Schembechler and John U. Bacon. It’s a book every Michigan football fan should read. And if you ever get the chance to see John Bacon speak, then do that, too.
Keywords: i still haven’t found what i am looking for
Well, maybe next time, then.
This picture pretty much confirms every joke I've ever made about the Ohio State University Buckeyes, who recently blew their second straight shot at the BCS National Football Championship, and who also can't, apparently, manage to spell the name of their own state correctly:
(Courtesy of my old Michigan Review chums Ben Kepple (blog post) and Lee Bockhorn (photo).)
A guy from Houston was out hunting with his dog, when the dog stepped on the guy's loaded shotgun and shot the guy to death.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that police managed to get the dog to confess to murder after 36 straight hours of questioning during which they claim that the dog never asked for a lawyer.
So it seems that some guy in Poland discovered his wife was working part-time in a brothel. How did he find out, you ask? Well, it seems he was there as, uh, a customer. He spotted her during one of his visits, and was shocked to find her among the "employees," because she told him she was working part-time "at a store."
It also seems that the couple is getting divorce. Now, it seems to me that neither participant in that marriage has any right to get mad at one another. Sure it's horrible for a guy to step out on his wife behind her back to patronize prostitutes, and sure it's terrible if your wife goes out behind your back and becomes a prostitute, but if you're both doing those things at the same time, shouldn't it cancel each other out? Like in football -- when a team commits a penalty, it gets sent back a few yards as a penalty. But when both teams commit penalties on the same play, the penalties "offset," and it's like neither team committed any penalty.
The overrated Acorns just lost the BCS Championship game to the LSU Tigers. Go Tigers!
I guess that shows the folly of letting a team like the Acorns back into the #1 slot. You could almost hear the shrill "beep-beep-beep" as OSU ended up in the game through the shrewd maneuver of not playing any games for the last two weeks of the season, while just about every other team in the top ten lost.
The Tigers just went ahead of the Acorns, 17-10. Woo-hoo!
