Women Drivers and Making Fun of Racism

Hello there!

Long time no talk, I suppose. Nothing much to write about, honestly. But yesterday was quite different. It may honestly have been my favorite law school class to date.

The class is “Criminal Investigation”, i.e. “Things You Need To Do When Trying To Arrest Someone.” It covers when warrants are needs, when you can perform search and seizures, etfc. Yesterday we were covering when cops are allowed to search cars, and which parts they may look in. Here’s a basic rundown: When a cop stops you, if he has probable cause, he may search the passenger compartment of your car, and any closed containers therein. They may not search the trunk.

We then reviewed a case where this concept was used, the facts are as follows: Cops saw a SUV full of black people behind them on the road. The cops turn right at the corner, and slowly drive down the street. The SUV stays at the stop sign for an “abnormally long” amount of time. The cops decide to pull a U-turn, and, seeing this, the SUV turns left and drives away “at a high speed.” The cops pull over the SUV, and the person in the front passenger seat “had a baggie of cocaine in his lap.” Cops searched the whole car, at the scene of the arrest, and found more drugs. All passengers were convicted and the search was deemed lawful.

At this point, the prof goes, “Now look back. The drugs were sitting in the guy’s lap. Let me tell you, this is bullshit. It would never, ever happen this way. But this all comes in before a grand jury, you can’t refute it, because you’ve got a cop saying this and your witness is a person with drugs on him running from the cops. He’s screwed. What do people think of this? How much does this happen?”

At this point, I knew I was in for a good time. You see, I go to school in Liberaltown, USA. Government and police, be damned! I closed the webgame I was playing, sat back, and prepared to enjoy myself.

One girl raises her hand, and you have to realize this chick is very liberal: “I think this happens all the time. It’s happened to me several times. Once I was pulled over because a cop said my license plate light was out. He told me to get out of my car so he could search it, because he smelled marijuana. I definitely had none on me, and told him he certainly did not smell any. He made me get out, leaned me over the car, cuffed me –

Prof: “Took you into an alley, pulled your pants down.”

Girl: “Um, and put me in the back of the car, and his partner, a woman, told me ‘You may as well let it happen, we’re going to do it regardless.’ While I was in the back of their car, I could see that my license plate light wasn’t out. They tore apart my car, crumpled important papers for work and everything. I couldn’t believe it. And I’m just some white girl.”

… just some white girl? Amazing.

Prof: “And I know I joke about the pants thing, but it happens. I worked in DC and it’s worst there, I think. I had boys come in and tell me these things, and they weren’t complaining, because they expect that kind of abuse, they were just telling the facts.”

A little later, another girl raises her hand and says, “But we still maintain some sort of power, I mean if we report these things, they can get in trouble. It’s what I would do.”
Liberal girl: “But there places where people can’t do that. They won’t get listened to.”

2nd Girl: “You can’t tell me there are entire populations of people who can’t go and report inappropriate behavior from police officers.”

She got laughed at.

Through the whole discussion, the prof was making racial jokes the whole time. He wasn’t being racist, mind you, but was an equal-opportunist when it came to the jokes. At one point he told a couple stories about minority lawyers getting pulled over and charged, and tearing apart the officers and departments that harassed them. Then he goes “I think minority lawyers should carry some sort of sticker on their cars. That way police can be all ‘Look! A black person! Oh shit! He’s a lawyer, back off!”

All in all, a good class.

~ Nick
Set sail from sense, bring all her young.

M$

Recently, my Xbox 360 broke. Microsoft would require that I pay $150 for the repair, which wasn't guaranteed to work, or I could attempt to fix it myself. Turns out, I fixed the problem, only to cause another, likely un-fixable problem in the process. Needless to say, I was quite upset, and felt slightly screwed by M$.

You see, the error in my box was not at all uncommon. It had something to do with an over-heating of the ANA/HANA chip. Now, I'm sure most of you have heard of the "Red Ring of Death", an error which Microsoft will fix for free. The three-ring error that many people get is a miscellaneous error that is not diagnosable. It is caused by a bad heat-sink in the 360, as well as flexing of the motherboard. The error that I got, however, was easily recognizable by the 360's software, and because of that I only got a 1-ring error - which Microsoft does not warranty and will not fix for free.

My problem with this is that the two errors are caused by the exact same thing - namely the poor engineering of the 360, and the errors in the case and the heat sink. I decided to try to fix the error myself, and in the meantime bought a replacement 360. My thought process was this: If I succeed, my brother would buy the new xbox, and I would be none the worse off. If I failed, I'd have my replacement xbox, and gain a controller and a game. If I sent it to M$, however, they might fail, in which case I'm out $150, left with no xbox, and just lose money.

To fix the xbox, I stripped it down to all it's component parts, sanded down parts of the internal metal case (to reduce to flexing), and modified the clamps for the heat sink to get it to displace the heat better. I also had to heat-gun the motherboard in order to reset the solder near the chip that was malfunctioning.

When I finally turned it all on, turns out I fixed the xbox - there were no more graphics errors. But in the process, I somehow made it so that the controllers won't connect.

I read up on this error, and it turns out that this is a common problem even when Microsoft fixes the boxes. So, those people are missing an xbox for 6 weeks, then have to send it away for 6 more, spending like $300 in the process.

It's possible that I could still fix this problem, but unlikely. Perhaps I'll update this post when I find out for sure.

Needless to say, all this was very frustrating. M$ put out a crappy product that was not designed well, and it cost me $200. Honestly, I'm still frustrated about this, but the other day, I realized something: There's a reason that I immediately bought a replacement box.

It's a great product.

Especially since the new dashboard update, the 360 has become an amazing console. I watch all my TV through it, streaming from my computers. With TVersity, I can watch Hulu, Youtube, and others through the 360 on my TV. I stream my music, through it when I want to chill. With the netflix support, I've discovered new shows, and watched new movies I'd never had an interest in that turned out to be really good.

Then, the other day, I was a little bummed that I since I don't get cable, I couldn't watch the Inaguration. I got home that night, and the first screen that pops up on my 360 is an announcement that I could watch the Inaguration streaming through my 360 for free.

The Xbox live service costs me $50 a year, but moments like that are what you get. It really is a great service, and I hope that Microsoft continues to provide good online support and expanding their features.

Now if only they could get their hardware right...

~ Nick
technology has won and it cannot be undone

Just Stay Awake

Almost a month since my last blog post? Yuck.

I just haven't felt anything worthy of writing about lately, to be perfectly honest.

My classes this term are fail, and it's depressing me. The problem is that the classes I AM interested in have crappy teachers, and the classes with engaging teachers are subjects I don't really care about.

My IP classes are copyrights, trademarks, and IP Licensing. My copyrights prof is this old guy that drones on in monotone, and it's depressing, and my copyrights prof is this new kid who teaches solely from the book, so it's boring as hell and not at all helpful. To make matters worse, the classes both run from 4:30 to 7:30 at night.

My trademarks class os okay, but like my copyrights class, I feel like I know most of it already. I took an IP Survey class last term, which is like trademarks, copyrights, and patent "lite". In both trademarks and copyrights this week I've skipped half the reading because I've already read the cases.

Criminal investigation seems like it could be cool, but so far we're just going over what qualifies as a legal or illegal search. The prof is engaging at least, but the only reason I really care about this class is that the subject is on the Bar exam. Well, that and it makes me understand some things in "The Wire" a little better.

Finally, we have "Legal Profession" (read: ethics for lawyers and judges). Another boring subject, but an important one since most every state requires you pass an ethics test before you can even take the Bar exam. The professor is actually really funny, too, and supplements his teachings with on-point clips from "The Simpsons" which breaks the time up.

- - - - -

I just took another sip of my coffee. Yes, coffee. Four days ago, I'd have told you I hate coffee. Like, really despised the stuff. But these three hour night classes are killing me. For my Monday class, I brought a 12 oz. latte to class, in order to stay awake. Tonight, I'm on my second cup, this one being a 16 oz.

On Monday, I despised the drink even as I drank it. Tonight, though, I find myself anywhere from nuetral to welcoming the taste. I don't know how that switchover happened so fast, but I suspect it has a little to do with my need for caffine, and my lack of caring where it comes from.

I think the only other time I think my taste buds have shifted so rapidly is with scotch. Mmmm, scotch.

The reason I'm so tired is that I'm actually working out again, and dieting as well. I'm hoping to really stick with it this time, because James is doing it with me. We talked last night, and I determined that to stick with it, I either need a prize, or a sponsor.

In the past, I'd had wrestling to incentivize myself, then most recently my father giving me a car for graduation if I lost a certain amount of weight. Other than that, I've never been able to stick with a plan.

Now, though, James hounds me to workout, we have set days we go together, and we eat good foods.

Shit, I think that I'm only 30 minutes into the 3-hour class, and I just ran out of coffee. Plus, I haven't heard a damn word the prof has said.

~ Nick
they laze in dawn-light fire