Still recovering from a mild tryptophan coma. Two full thanksgiving dinners and a three day pumpkin pie binge left me pretty much incapable of complete sentences, much less a full post. Should be swimming off some of the turkey and stuffing, but instead, just watching others swim. Baby steps…

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It’s been more than five years since Howling Point proudly presented Ultrasounds Of A Prostate. Now we regret to show you, via excessive and overflowing linky love, Henry: Portrait of a Would-Be Chad Killer over at the Untitled Chad Darnell Project. Go wish Chad well.

That’s the sounds of business skidding to a halt for the holidays. It happens every year, but I’m beginning to suspect this year will be a bit deeper than the last few. Business transactions that weren’t complete can wait until after the first of the year. New ventures will wait and see where the economy’s at after the first of the year. And family law clients will all have emergencies, but few will pay until after the first of the year. Junior’s X-box always gets priority over the lawyer’s X-box.

Time to revamp some websites and shake some hands. Be the social marketer butterfly. See if that yoga’s paid off and I can keep from bouncing too hard off the walls.

Big Game week is upon us. The only football game that really matters, ever, will start in a few minutes when Cal and Stanford meet for the 111th Big Game at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. We did Big Game dinner with the local alums at The Linkery on Thursday, and though Spinner had met the alums before the look on his face when it came time to perform the various drinking songs was priceless. Seeing the local matriarchs who probably graduated well before The War doing their Grrrahs (complete with bear clawing motion) was a little too much for him. Even with all that though, I won’t pretend to be much of a football fan – just a Cal fan who tolerates football as a means to financially to get us through to the sports where we win. Want the better views of the blue and gold? At least rugby, water polo, rowing and swimming are all considerate enough to visit those of us in extreme southern California.

Interesting article in the North County Times on the San Diego courts’ efforts to deal with reduced funding at a time when the need for the courts’ services is greater than ever. Sure, reducing staff through attrition is on the list, as is reduced window hours. More importantly though is what’s not on the list: e-filing, electronic files, and a decent online calendar and docket system being at the top of my list. I regularly use the online systems in other counties, Ventura and Riverside in particular, for my current caseload. Both counties provide much more information without the need for a clerk’s time or effort, though neither yet come close to the federal court system of storing all filed documents electronically. Unfortunately my guess though is that the local courts won’t be able to pull together the start-up capital for any decent move forward until times are good again, and then they won’t have the incentive to do so.

Bit of a funk here. Unseasonably warm here – 84 as I type this. Dry air, probably with a touch of smoke from Los Angeles and random other sites, is doing a number on my sinuses. Making no progress on a writing project despite a deadline. My new wetsuit is back for warranty repair or replacement and my old is still suffering from shrinkage. I keep drawing unhelpful tiles in Facebook Scrabble. Bored with swimming laps lap after lap. So I’m here. Entertain me internet people. Please help me forget my frustrations. Anyone?

Poor Focus On The Family has hit financial straits and is being forced to lay off 202 employees, about 20% of their workforce. I probably should feel some sympathy, but not this time. They just spent $500,000 trying to take away my health insurance and other spousal benefits, not to mention make me a second-class citizen in my home state. I probably should be feeling sympathy and charity, because I was raised that way, but the word that keeps coming to mind is karma. Karma’s a wonderful concept. Maybe if you’d focussed more on your families, and kept your nose out of mine…

Wow! Amazing how quick a Monday can turn from sucky and bleh to really, really good with one simple click of a link. New Star Trek trailer here or here. [via Kama]

I was beginning to think the morning was turning into a disaster. On the rare occasions we tolerate a theater environment, we normally go across town to the well-regarded Ultrastar Cinemas. They were an early adopter of exclusively presenting movies digitally, have good seating and reasonable matinee specials. Today though either their scheduling was botched or their manager couldn’t/wouldn’t handle a group overstaying its welcome. We were kept waiting in the lobby until the scheduled showtime, then sent down the hallway to the scheduled theater to find it occupied by a group doing its Sunday morning meeting, and were eventually herded to another screen back near the lobby. Being nearly first in the queue for our original screen left us near the back of the herd for our final destination, with seats that matched even on a Sunday morning matinee.

But once the movie started the irritation subsided. Quantum of Solace rocked. The pace was fast – certainly faster than any Bond movie I can remember. The story was solid though, and without naming anyone by name, very timely in its slam on certain American agencies at the end of the Bush era. Not that I indulge in escapist fantasies like Bond films for reality, I’ll even say they nailed the portrayal of rural Bolivia on the altiplano, though the city the producers called La Paz clearly wasn’t. Not even close. I’ve since learned they substituted Panama City during filming.

Really liking that, as in Casino Royale, Judy Dench’s M is becoming a more central and complete character instead the empty suit it was with prior Bonds. I think seeing more of the M-Bond relationship certainly adds something to an appreciation of the Bond character. If you want to catch the cool gadgets this time around, forget Bond himself and keep an eye on M.

Having spent the day doing website maintenance (WordPress 2.6.3 and some new plugins), and getting in a bit of tanline maintenance (90 degrees poolside) why don’t I feel like I’ve done anything today? Don’t want to hear anything about the Christmas banners being back in the rotation either. It’s not too early.