Feeling very valued today. People want me.

I’ve been kind of quiet about the new gig, but basically I’m a field adjuster for a large claims management company. In my job at least, we investigate and evaluate claims and potential claims. On that line, I’ve been paged to work twice so far this weekend – I guess one of the things that goes with being the new guy is the joy of carrying the pager on incredibly beautiful days that just happen to fall on long weekends. Yesterday one member of a foursome sliced or hooked or something off the seventh tee into another member of his foursome. Today someone fell asleep at the wheel of his car and rolled it 100 feet down an embankment. Joyous conversations about injured body parts, the frustration of getting lost on an unfamiliar golf course while trying to take pictures and the annoyance of hearing the pager detonate in the locker room of my gym are the memories I’ll take from this Memorial Day weekend.

More importantly though, it is good to remember all those Americans over the last 200+ years who gave their lives defending this country, in good wars and bad, in winning efforts and miserable failures, in noble causes and arrogant posturing, simply because they were asked to. Remember them today, all of them from each and every conflict, simply because it’s the right thing to do. The debates about why they died can resume tomorrow.

Been drifting a bit. The mental health day didn’t help as much as it should have. Had to go into the office this morning to work on the TSP reports, then was paged to go out to an emergency incident thing this afternoon. Trying to sort some things out. Tough to juggle when you’ve lost count of the number of balls in the air. And on the ground too, being chewed on by The Pongo. Trying to enjoy the Memorial Day weekend, but smart enough to not go anywhere near the local beaches on a holiday weekend. This is one of those weekends where the smart locals just stay hidden. Unfortunate, because the weather is absolutely beautiful.

Dropped the balls today and took a mental health laundry gym “sick” day today. I’ll probably regret it tomorrow when I see office e-mail and have to check the various voicemailboxes, but it was needed and felt good.

*woof* *woof* Go look at the cute puppy.

Another stunning example of the new civil rights environment is coming out of Oregon.

As reported in today’s New York Times:

Citing a misidentified fingerprint, a United States federal court in Portland today ordered that material witness proceedings be dismissed against an immigration lawyer who was being questioned in connection with the deadly Madrid bombings.

The court said that “due to a misidentification by the F.B.I. of a fingerprint,” prosecutors had to drop the proceedings against the lawyer, Brandon Mayfield, who was arrested May 6 and held as a material witness in the March 11 Madrid attacks, which killed 191 people and injured more than 2,000.

A fingerprint that had been identified as his turned out instead to belong to an Algerian, Spanish officials said Thursday.

Mr. Mayfield, a Portland immigration and family lawyer, was abruptly released from jail on Thursday, after a closed detention hearing. After his release, Mr. Mayfield returned to home to his wife and three children, and they still did not know why he was detained, relatives said on Thursday.
. . .
United States authorities had been holding Mr. Mayfield, a former Army lieutenant and convert to Islam, because they said that a fingerprint lifted from a plastic bag filled with detonators found at the bombing scene was traced to him. On Thursday, Spanish authorities said that the fingerprints attributed by American authorities to Mr. Mayfield belonged instead to an Algerian, Ouhnane Daoud. They said the prints were of Mr. Daoud’s thumb and middle finger on his right hand.

More interesting were a few paragraphs deep within CNN’s report on the story:

Steven Wax, the public defender who represented Mayfield, said an FBI computer likely returned a number of possible fingerprint matches, and that his client could have been singled out for investigation and subsequent arrest because he is Muslim. “It’s a major civil rights issue,” he said.

Wax said Mayfield believes he was not only arrested, but also subjected to so-called “sneak and peak” searches where agents break into a home but are under no obligation to tell the owner. They are allowed under the USA Patriot Act. Mayfield may sue the government, Wax said.

After Spanish authorities cast doubt on the match, the FBI re-examined the print and decided it was not Mayfield’s, Wax said.

So let’s see – a couple of weeks in jail because the FBI misread some fingerprints and he’s only released because a foreign government and a public defender were there to provide accurate facts and bring them to the attention of a court. While Mr. Mayfield’s probably still a tad upset about the incident, personally he should feel lucky. Ashcroft et al still seem to think they have the authority to send people they think are terrorists into isolation at Charleston Navy Yard without access to evidence, attorneys or courts. I wonder if the FBI would have ever caught their “mistake” if their “evidence” didn’t have to survive independent scrutiny.

Now that I’m back in California I occasionally get out and do things with the Cal Alumni organizations, but due to the distances involved do very little with the University of Idaho. It’s really a shame because Idaho was a wonderful three years of my life, and my legal education has served me well. But I do read their alumni propaganda, Here We Have Idaho, when it shows up in my mailbox. [Ed: a link would be there if the fact that no issues since 2002 appear to be online wasn't such an embarrassment.] I was reading the Spring issue yesterday and stumbled on their six-page spread on the business of golf.

The articles’ focus is on UI’s Professional Golf Management program (32 students, one of only 14 PGA accredited programs nationwide), but also discusses the program’s relationship to other Idaho stalwarts, agriculture, timber and materials science (i.e., research on titanium drivers).

Golf is big business; I was just surprised to see a university program so tightly focussed on a single market segment. Given the traditional ties of golf and law, I wonder if I could have double-majored at Idaho (golf and law) as I did at Cal (political science and geography). When exploring the possibilities for the beach law site, a golf law site was seriously considered as well, and I enjoy the game even though I really suck at it. It would definitely be a niche market, but many attorneys do well in the niches, especially if they have some passion for their field and not just a marketing plan supported by the existence of a statistically underfilled consumer segment or some other MBA buzzword. Hmm, the possibilities.

From the New York Times:

SAN FRANCISCO, May 18 – Edging closer to a direct confrontation with Microsoft, Google, the Web search engine, is preparing to introduce a powerful file and text software search tool for locating information stored on personal computers.

Google’s software, which is expected to be introduced soon, according to several people with knowledge of the company’s plans, is the clearest indication to date that the company, based in Mountain View, Calif., hopes to extend its search business to compete directly with Microsoft’s control of desktop computing.

I like Google. I like their search engine and love the toolbar I use with IE. I’m very appreciative that they choose to give me money to run ads over at beachlaw. I’ve tried gmail, but honestly just don’t need another web-based e-mail address – I’ll stick to Eudora and the infinite addresses available through my web host.

This concerns me though. I would love to have a decent search tool incorporated into Windows, especially if it could index pdf files. I’m just curious when the other shoe will drop. All the Google products seem to eventually result in targeted advertising. Not that I’m above a little product placement here. I’ll admit to a vested interest in visits to at least two of the sites linked above. I just want to see what they’re going to do with it.

Yes, I had enough news today. Tired of hearing about idiots exploding Sarin warheads in Baghdad, rogue soldiers running amock in prison, and #$%@ loving couples in Massachusetts shoving their happiness and fulfilling relationships in my face. It’s all a great conspiracy to rip apart civilization as we know it.

Transitioning without a decent segue, I ended up at the zoo watching the pandas this afternoon when I was stuck downtown between meetings. The panda is cool – as a species he’s managed to take a major problem like being a member of a nearly extinct species trapped in a fake environment for people with flashing cameras and turn it into a lifestyle choice. He’s just kinda chubby and content, sitting in the shade and chomping snacks that people bring him. Every now and then they force him to try and breed. No, I don’t want to do that B’rer Zookeeper – don’t make me screw that other panda again. Then he goes back to snacks in the shade. I think they’re milking it. There’s probably a million pandas hiding in the chinese countryside all waiting their turns to go to some American zoo and get fat on snacks and pimped out. Endangered my foot.

Mankind could learn something from the panda. Things look a lot better sitting in the shade with a bunch of snacks. Be content, or at least look content, with who you are and where you are. Snack. And on that subject, I’ll bet there are a lot of great wedding receptions going on in Massachusetts right now. Snacks galore. Even as people would have us believe that civilization as we know it is going to hell in a handbasket (which is still not even close to extinction), there are snacks. We can be human and get all dramatic, or we can be panda and enjoy the snacks. Given the pathetic role models the humans are offering lately, I think I’ll follow the panda for a while.

No, I’m never really too busy to come here. I need this little space to blow off steam, and busy-ness certainly creates steam to be blown off. Corporate work, private work, website work, gym, a great canyon hike. It’s been a busy weekend. How do I recover from the weekend? I wish I knew. I was hoping the private practice would essentially be over soon, but the opposing party won another continuance, so I still have a litigation case until at least June. Pfft. I never knew it could be so much work trying to go out of business.

As of today, May 12, 2004, this little weblog/journal documents three years of our little journey. Or at least the portion of the journey that we wanted you to see. It was here for the departure from Monterey County. We showed you Pongo’s scars and Chuck’s prostate. At the encouragement of Shel the Tempter we whored ourselves for hits and visits.

For those who haven’t been here since the beginning, this was originally part of a long-gone Earthlink “free” site that dated back to 1996. Over time we moved from Earthlink (and the Organized Anarchy) to Howling Point (hosted by Dreamhost), from Blogger to Moveable Type, from pure HTML to a design incorporating PHP, and through gawdonlyknows how many commenting systems.

If you want to see where the journey has gone so far or try to revisit someplace we’ve been, feel free to tour the Roadmap.

There are a lot of reasons we do this. I’m aware of some of them, but others will probably only become known to me after years of therapy. Regardless, I’ll only stay as long as I’m enjoying myself. So far, due in no small part to the people I’ve met through here, the thoughtful conversations with people I’ve never met face-to-face, and the majority of the comments (DIE SPAMMERS DIE), I’m still enjoying myself. Thanks to everyone who has helped make this fun for us – thank you for being part of the journey.