Archive for November, 2006

Massachusetts Times

Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

I was back in good ol’ Massachusetts over Thanksgiving break and it was nice see­ing my fam­ily and a few of my friends from home. As for those of you whom I did not get a chance to see, I apol­o­gize but I will be back again for Christmas break and I will try to see you dur­ing that period of time.

I will be back out east from December 21st to January 14th; mark your calendars.

The Caffeine Nap

Monday, November 20th, 2006

A long while ago, I read about the con­cept of a caf­feine nap and then promptly didn’t give it another thought. Today, how­ever, I revis­ited the topic inad­ver­tently. Finding myself rather tired from last night’s min­i­mal quan­tity of sleep, I was wait­ing from about 1:30 for my 2:30 class and falling asleep. I had, in my pos­ses­sion, a mostly full bot­tle of Vault Zero, and by 2:00 my abil­ity to keep my eyes open had approached nil. Thinking that I might as well try to take a 15 – 20 minute power nap, I vaguely recalled what I had read long ago and decided that I might as well pound the remain­der of my bev­er­age before my nap. Surprisingly, I found the caf­feine nap to be dra­mat­i­cally more effec­tive than any other 15 – 20 minute nap that I’ve ever taken. I may just have to con­sider the option of caf­feine naps more seri­ously in the future.

Fortune Cookie: 2006-09-20

Monday, November 20th, 2006

Frequent con­ver­sa­tions will fill your
heart with joy.
Lucky Numbers 21, 4, 28, 36, 17, 2

Commentary: I cer­tainly do like talk­ing to people.

Getting out of Dodge

Saturday, November 18th, 2006

Well, not so much Dodge as Minneapolis but the point is the same. As I write this, I am in Chi-town vis­it­ing my friend Jamie. I’d been mean­ing to get out of Minneapolis in a “get away from it all” for a while sense and I’ve been want­ing to pull a big road trip for a few weeks. So, when I dis­cov­ered that I had an old friend 6 hours drive away, I found a bril­liant means of sati­at­ing my desires. As it stands, I haven’t been doing alto­gether too much her but relax­ing with a change of scenery and peo­ple is really nice. Of course, I’m not ter­ri­bly look­ing for­ward to the amount of work that I’ll have to do tomor­row night but it’s worth it so, so be it.

I am 28 United States Code Section 1332!

Wednesday, November 15th, 2006

YOU ARE 28 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1332!

You are not a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure at all: you’re the statute that allows the fed­eral dis­trict courts to hear diver­sity of cit­i­zen­ship actions! You were drafted with the idea that an out-of-state party may be unduly prej­u­diced by appear­ing in a for­eign state. Sometimes peo­ple may think that you’re strange, and they try to min­i­mal­ize your effects by requir­ing an amount in con­tro­versy and by being espe­cially strict on the require­ments for diver­sity. Also, attor­neys often use you for “forum shop­ping” and other unde­sir­able behav­ior. But there’s no get­ting around the fact that you’re so darned love­able! Your delight­ful quirk­i­ness enter­tains friends and law pro­fes­sors alike, and although oth­ers may grum­ble about your eccen­tric­i­ties behind your back, they’re always talk­ing about you, so you must be doing some­thing right. Let’s face it, the world could use a few more 28 USC 1332’s!

Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure are you?

Yet Another All Nighter

Monday, November 13th, 2006

As the clock ticks over to 6am, it occurs to me that I’m pulling more all-nighters here in law school than I ever did at MIT. I used to pull all-nighters every once in a while at MIT, some­times out of neces­sity and some­times just for the heck of it. All told, I prob­a­bly aver­aged one or two all-nighters for every few months dur­ing my under­grad career. So far in law school, I’m prob­a­bly aver­ag­ing one or two per cou­ple weeks. To com­pen­sate my lack of sleep­ing, I’ve taken up a fairly reg­u­lar nap­ping reg­i­men; Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, from the end of Contracts (10am) until lunch, I usu­ally take a nap in one of the chairs of the law school sub-plaza. It’s prob­a­bly not a good sys­tem but it works well enough and I’ve only got about a month left.

Contracts are Everywhere

Friday, November 10th, 2006

Today, I nego­ti­ated a new con­tract as a means of set­tling a dis­pute over the breach of an implied term in another con­tract. The entire event was decid­edly unin­ter­est­ing until it occurred to me to put the mat­ter in a con­trac­tual light. So, here’s what hap­pened (with analysis):

On account of the tem­per­a­ture being below freez­ing and my now hav­ing a park­ing per­mit for the garage across from the law school, I decided to drive to class today. Running late and hav­ing decided to drive to class, I forewent break­fast at home and decided to take advan­tage of the McDonald’s drive-through three blocks from where I live. Pulling into the drive-through, I spoke to the order­ing box and requested a Number 4 with a medium orange juice (I entered into a con­tract with the McDonald’s to exchange $3.85 for a Sausage Biscuit with Egg, a Hash Brown and a Medium Orange Juice). Pulling up to the win­dow, I handed the atten­dant $4.00, received $0.15 in change and pro­ceeded to wait for my food (I ful­filled my con­trac­tual duties). After a few min­utes had passed, my food had not yet arrived (McDonald’s breached an implicit term of the con­tract, specif­i­cally the implicit duty to pro­vide my food in an expe­di­ent man­ner, as would be expected by both par­ties to the con­tract). At this point, the drive-through atten­dant offered me two apple pies if I would pull to the side and wait a minute or so for my food (McDonald’s put forth an offer to con­tract with me to release them of the oblig­a­tions imposed by the breach of the implicit expe­di­ence term in exchange for their pro­vid­ing me with two apple pies). I accepted the offer of apple pies and pulled over to wait (I accepted the terms of the newly offered con­tract, waiv­ing McDonald’s respon­si­bil­i­ties imposed by the breach of the first con­tract). I was finally pro­vided with my food and two apple pies (McDonald’s ful­filled their con­trac­tual duties under the com­bined terms of the two contracts).

You might not notice it, but there are con­tracts all over the place, all the time.