I've been running Windows 7 for a couple of weeks now. Not on my main box--on the HTPC I've been setting up. On the whole, it has been relatively painless. I'm getting tired of security notification popups, but... c'est la vie, right? The price you pay for security!

Only... not.

WARNING: Massively geeky post ahead.

Short and sweet: holy monkey biker spit. As trendy as the HTPC is becoming in the hardware world, you'd think someone could write some half-decent software to go along with it. It took me less than a day to put together the hardware and I've spent almost a month getting the software right. I think I have it down though.

Importantly, I'm not a lawyer yet, but at this point it is only a matter of time and paperwork. The "Committee on Character and Fitness" gave me a thumbs-up and, thanks to BAR/BRI, I passed the Arizona state bar exam. So in a way, I've spent the last year "wrapping up" law school, even though I technically graduated 13 months ago.

Maybe it's time to redesign the site?

Just preparing to take the bar on February 23 and 24. That means I'm studying most of the day, then going to class from 6:00p to 10:00p every night except Sundays. The theory is that, once I've completed the bar, I will have more time for... well... anything. d^_^b

See you on the other side!

...to stop blogging, apparently. Sorry about that. So in lieu of meaty intellectual content, have a pair of pictures. They're worth a thousand words--apiece!--or so I have been led to believe. And while I recognize that two thousand words is nowhere near my usual rambling verbosity (can you believe spell-check lets me get away with that one?)... well, it's going to have to do. d^_~b

Unemployment at 10.2% means...

You know, I'm not really sure what it means. Maybe unemployment would have been ever higher without the stimulus and recovery plans.

But I doubt it.

The 1980s were a challenging decade. Recession, cultural upheaval, and probably the worst fashions in human history--and yes, I am familiar with the Baroque d^_~b. I was born in 1980, so my awareness of the world doesn't really start until about 1984, with He-Man, Superfriends, Transformers, and (early in 1985) Thundercats. I wasn't a G.I. Joe fan, but yeah, I watched that too sometimes.

Anyway, in 1986 we got The Karate Kid, Part II. Somewhere in there, the Disney Channel aired Unico in the Island of Magic, which both terrified and fascinated me. I would not see another anime--or even know it was called anime--until the 1990s, but my on-again, off-again love affair with all things Japanese is clearly another bit of memetic 80s detritus, washed up by the storm that brought MTV to our televisions--and Nintendo to our shores.