Hell no. Not gonna do it. Why should I? I love my nano but I’m an iPod minimalist. I upload songs to the nano and that’s it. No pictures. No calendar. No notes. When I charge the nano I don’t open iTunes – it charges whether or not iTunes is open. I have no need for the jukebox-style album covers. When I hear of features like "jukebox-style album covers," I think, "slow my computer to a screeching halt." No thanks.

So to all the Apple junkies who downloaded iTunes 7... suckers!!! (insert winky smiley face thing here). I hope you had a good reason to install it, cuz I can hear your hard drive grinding from here.

The Austin City Limits music festival has gotten cocky in its old age. They let you bring your camelback, but it has to be empty. WTF? No water allowed. Oh, but you can bring “two factory sealed water bottles up to 1 liter each.” I sweat two liters of water in five minutes. Two liters is a joke. Meanwhile, I’m betting a half-liter bottle of water costs $7. Someone out there in ACL-land is making way too much money, or getting a really good laugh out of this. Fuckers.

I just felt like channeling a little bit of the stuff that bugs me vibe.

The fun part is that I’ll be skipping class all of Friday and probably Monday since I won’t have read anything all weekend. Wait – I never read anymore. Looks like I’ll be in class Monday.

My dad is borderline color-blind. Red stoplights took yellow. Yellow looks orange. Purple looks green. And greens, unfortunately, look blue. So when I called my dad yesterday to ask about loctite to use on the threads of my bike’s self-loosening chainring bolts, I should have known what to ask. The conversation went:

Particleman: Do you know what loctite is?
Dad: Of course.
P: Do you have any?
Dad: Yeah, in the garage. Above the workbench on a shelf in a red bottle.
P: Red? Ok. But what color is the loctite? It comes in different colors with different bonding strengths, green, red, and blue. I need blue.
Dad: Yeah, the bottle is red but the fluid is blue.
P: Thanks. I’m borrowing it. Some bolts on my bike are coming loose.
Dad: Ok.

I just realized that the contact form at the bottom of this page and on the about page doesn’t work. You can enter your name, email, and message, and press the button, but I never get your message. I tested it out twice last night and, while it’s supposed to send me an email, I didn’t get anything. No email. No message. Apologies to those of you who tried to use it in the past and never got a response from me. I promise I’m not an asshole. I didn’t ignore you. The form (along with my comments) broke when I changed servers in May. Let’s see if can’t fix it.

In other news, I took one of the Danish exchange students out to get sushi with Heather last night, and then we got beers with my old roomie. She had a great time. I’m so glad my friends came out. I think the best part was when Heather and I asked her how she and the rest of Denmark feel about W. She was a little hesitant at first but came clean when Heather and I told her she was probably with the two best people with which to discuss W’s shortcomings. Good times.

And then at the pub, former roomie and I got the true story of how one Danish motorcycle gang fired a rocket at a rival motorcycle gang. Not a pistol. Not some semi-automatic thing. Not even a grenade. (Do gangs use grenades?) And how many years did the guy who fired the rocket get? Sixteen. Sixteen years for firing a rocket at people!!!

addendum: i found a news clipping. the end of this article says:

In Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the two sides deployed rocket-propelled anti-tank grenades and AK-47 assault rifles in their battles.

I just took twenty practice questions for an ethics exam that every lawyer must pass. The test is on Saturday. Out of the twenty questions I took, I ONLY GOT ELEVEN RIGHT. Either I’m stupid or completely unethical.

How to celebrate Thanksgiving in 10 steps, Particleman-style:

1. Get together with a small group of friends and order food from Boston Market.
2. Rent a few movies.
3. Stock the apartment with a wide array of wines and beers.
4. Start drinking at 3 pm.
5. Start eating at 4 pm.
6. Keep drinking.
7. Keep drinking.
8. Keep drinking.
9. Keep drinking.
10. Throw up in the bushes and pass out at 10:30.

To all my friends who have been asking me whether they should buy Windows Vista when it comes out, I wanted to make a public announcement: No. Don’t buy it. Stick with XP. Rule #1: never buy the first edition of any Microsoft software. Wait till they patch the hell out of it or release updates to fix all the holes and bugs. Rule #2: do your research. Read reviews. Don’t fall prey to the hype.

For 99% of you, XP is good enough, and you already own it. You won’t need to overhaul your computer to install anything and you already know how to use it. You will probably have to buy more memory to run Vista. For the law students among you, upgrading to Vista could cause problems if you plan on taking exams on your laptop. There’s no telling if ExamSoft will work. Also, there’s no telling if you’ll be able to take the Bar on your laptop. And if there’s one thing you don’t want to mess with, it’s your chances of passing the Bar. If you’re strictly a “type exams” kind of person like me, you don’t want to risk having to write all those essays by hand.

The other strange thing about Vista is its licensing. If you don’t activate the software, it will stop working. I don’t think Microsoft has ever done this. Activation is usually an option. Read the use terms yourself and see what I mean. The other issue is that you can only install Vista on one “device.” What’s a device? What happens if you get a new motherboard? A new processor? A new hard drive? That might be a new device, and you’d have to buy Vista again. This problem is not unique to Vista, but I was hoping they’d clarify the question for Vista. I guess not.

If you’re curious, you can find the use terms to most Microsoft products here.

I messed up my neck pretty good this morning in the shower. It's happened to me before. I think I pinched or pulled something and its preventing me from moving my head up, and most any other way i turn it hurts. I end up having to turn my entire body to talk to people and I have to keep my head pointed sort of down, which, as you can imagine, kind of puts me in an awkward position when talking to women. Yeah, I've become "that guy."

I made my first ever appointment with a massage therapist for tomorrow morning and I can't wait. It's an hour. I hope she can knead this pinch or knot or whatever it is out of my neck so I can walk around like a normal person again. Chances are I'll be really sore when she's done. I'll probably need more sessions. Don't people get hooked on this stuff? And just so you know, I've already gotten one joke about happy endings. Don't think you're all clever and witty, someone beat you to the punch.

I should have decided to move EAST.

WTF.

[ click for larger version ]

I am cursed to have bad laptop luck. The laptop my dad fixed a couple months ago done broke again, and this time, the breakage was permanent. Fed up with buying laptops that consistently fail right when I need them, I resolved to never again spend a lot of money on a new laptop, which is convenient because I don't really have any.

I hopped on Craigslist while I was in Dallas over Spring Break and found an IBM X30 for $450. It's a tad low on RAM (256 MB) and it doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, but it's well-built and very, very light. At least i thought it was well-built until i cracked the edge of the case. I put it in my backpack after one class, walked to my next class, and there was a crack in the case waiting for me when I pulled out the laptop.

No matter. It still works. As for the RAM, I sucked it up and bought 512 more MB. It's a little quicker now.

The coolest thing happened today. I plugged my ipod in, loaded iTunes, and iTunes said:

So I said: "Huh. That's funny." I unplugged the iPod and performed a 'reset.' Then just to be on the safe side, I made sure all my music was still there. Lo an behold - it was all gone! Every last song! No where to be found! After spending weeks - no, months - honing the perfect playlist so that it had just the songs I wanted and none of the ones I didn't, it all went bye-bye. Now I get to compile the list for a second time.

*grumble*. apple, i shake my fists at you.

Contents of my fridge:

• salsa
• milk
• juice
• shredded cheese
• tortillas
• ketchup
• old root beer
• one bottle of sam adams
• strawberry jam
• eggs
• mayo
• butter
• parmesan cheese
• old phili cream cheese, possibly now rock-solid

And that's more than it usually has. I wonder what I can make using only those items.

Today was my last day of school, forever. Of course I still have finals and the bar to look forward to, so I'm no where near "done." And to make things more fun, my school decides to start the spring semester later than other Texas schools, thus making the semester end later. Pretty much everyone takes a course to prepare us for the bar. While students from other schools have a week off between graduation and the prep course which I shall not name, we get a whopping 36 hours to relax before we're plunged right back into class. A day and a half. Did we really need a five-week winter break? Four would have been plenty.

But wait - there's more!! There's a supplemental prep course that focuses on a certain area of the bar that some people - including me - opt to take. That course is one week and runs concurrently with the first week of the normal prep course. So the week after finals and graduation, I will be in class for seven hours a day.

I know you're thinking. It's one of two things:

1. Dude, that sucks.
2. Stop your bitching. You did it to yourself, remember? You're the one that went to law school.

I respond:

1. No kidding. Tell me about it.
2. Go to hell. When I'm defending your sorry ass for copyright infringement you'll change your tune.*

*note: i spent all afternoon studying for finals. i'm feeling a little punchy. i need a beer.

I saw Pirates 3 and Spiderman 3. They were both lame. I know, I know. You're saying, "We could have told you that before you spend $9 each on them." Thankfully: 1) Dad spent the $9 for me and 2) I knew they would suck. The problem with these movies is the same problem every other 3rd edition of a movie has - too much of what you don't want, and not enough of what you do - namely, fresh ideas. These guys are running on empty. Can't think of a good plot? Add more bad guys. Can't think of any more cool twists? Make the story more confusing and hope it looks like a twist. Ugh. At least Kirsten Dunst and Keira Knightley are hot.

I also saw 28 Weeks Later, which scared the shit out of me. I don't see scary movies. I don't like them. I don't like gore. It's not the violence that bothers me, it's the cutting-off-of-body-parts and heart-stopping screams and general twisted story-lines that make me squirm. Case in point: the last "scary" move I saw was Stephen King's "It" when I was 14. I didn't sleep for weeks and I have a permanent dislike of clowns.

For 28 Weeks Later, I sat in the back row and drank the beer that my friend and I snuck into the theater, and I still couldn't handle the movie. I basically buried my face in her shoulder. She called me all kinds of names. I deserved it. Whatever. That movie was messed up. I'm never going to think of London in the same way.

I rode my bike to class the other morning (in the 90 degree heat) and walked into the lecture hall to find it warmer than usual. Since my internal body temperature was already at 175 degrees due to the bike ride, I was especially disappointed to hear the administrator announce, "Sorry, some transformers blew and half of the power is out. There isn't enough power to run the A/C or the projector, so class is canceled for now. Please check the website for updates."

Screw you guys. I'm hot and sweaty. I need A/C, and I just rode here to learn about Criminal Law, or something. It was right about then when I heard some classmates chant: "RE-FUND... RE-FUND... RE-FUND...." Gotta love it when a bunch of to-be lawyers start bitching about getting ripped off.

I have this friend in Dallas. He's 26. He has two BMWs, a motorcycle, his own condo, and a bunch of random toys and gadgets to add "fun" and/or complexity to his life. He also has three degrees and is one of the smartest people I know. The other night, we had one of those conversations about life that makes you sit back and say, "I need a drink." Here are a couple excerpts cleaned up for your viewing pleasure. Words in [brackets] have been replaced for something less lewd. He gave me permission to post it. Names have been changed. Keep in mind Dallas Guy is more jaded than the average 26-year-old. He's a little on the bitter side for living in the same city his entire life.

(9:04:35 PM) Dallas Guy: so now where do I go?
(9:04:44 PM) Particleman: whereever your heart desires
(9:04:44 PM) Dallas Guy: if I had a plan I'd go do it already
(9:04:51 PM) Dallas Guy: or hell, if I had a goal
(9:04:56 PM) Dallas Guy: I can make plans
(9:05:08 PM) Particleman: tell me about your ideal week
(9:05:13 PM) Dallas Guy: I was always goal driven for everything my whole life
(9:05:19 PM) Particleman: regardless of location or cost of living
(9:05:24 PM) Dallas Guy: and now Ive met all my goals
(9:05:46 PM) Dallas Guy: my ideal week is one where I go solving
problems all day long and I never do anything repetitive
(9:06:09 PM) Dallas Guy: and then I go home and [sleep with] some hot chick that argues with me about politics and tries to put me in my place
(9:06:27 PM) Particleman: you want marriage
(9:06:47 PM) Particleman: and a cool job
(9:06:54 PM) Dallas Guy: but not to some dumb jewish chick that was raised to be a trophy
(9:07:14 PM) Dallas Guy: I want a smart ambitious girl that's out to prove her d*ck is bigger than mine
(9:07:45 PM) Particleman: but you didn't dispute the original statement
(9:07:48 PM) Dallas Guy: and the cool job, I think I know the route on
that, its just timing now
(9:07:49 PM) Particleman: you want marriage
(9:07:52 PM) Dallas Guy: I do
(9:07:56 PM) Particleman: you want it now?
(9:08:10 PM) Dallas Guy: not necessarily
(9:08:17 PM) Dallas Guy: in the next 3 years though
(9:08:35 PM) Particleman: thats what you think. you are totally in your quarter life crisis
(9:08:55 PM) Particleman: you are sick of the daily grind and are just waiting for the next cool thing
(9:09:55 PM) Dallas Guy: It's totally a quarter life crisis
(9:09:59 PM) Dallas Guy: in a bad bad way
(9:10:20 PM) Particleman: you bought the cars, the motorcycle, the toys, the crazy trips to far off places
(9:10:37 PM) Dallas Guy: that sounds more like a midlife crisis
(9:10:48 PM) Dallas Guy: thats what makes mine unique
(9:11:06 PM) Dallas Guy: most quarter life people are busy trying to find something stable to call home
(9:11:25 PM) Dallas Guy: I'm tired of the stable and craving anything else which is the midlife crisis
(9:12:26 PM) Dallas Guy: its like a desperate attempt to convert the fruits of my previous labor (salary, savings, freedom, etc...) into excitement for my otherwise uneventful life
(9:12:40 PM) Dallas Guy: only to be left with an uneventful life and lots of toys
(9:13:09 PM) Dallas Guy: I should probably talk to some 50 year olds about their midlife crisis
(9:13:17 PM) Dallas Guy: and their personal resolution to it
(9:14:05 PM) Particleman: i disagree. you have the new young-professional quarter life crisis
(9:14:36 PM) Particleman: your life turned into that of a 40 year old and it freaks you out. 9-5 job. house note. car note. traffic. monotony. boring job. you miss the excitement of being young(er) and without obligations and responsibilities
(9:14:59 PM) Dallas Guy: I guess thats it
(9:15:04 PM) Dallas Guy: so how do u fix it
(9:15:39 PM) Particleman: leave dallas. find a better job and/or move to a new place. just don't carry your problems around with you. and realize there will always be obligations and sh*t

...

(9:18:24 PM) Dallas Guy: right after I bought my place i realized that this was the beginning of the end of my life
(9:18:35 PM) Particleman: nothing is that permanent
(9:18:54 PM) Dallas Guy: it's like the people at work. they all have the same life as me
(9:19:15 PM) Dallas Guy: they have a job, some random hobbies, some loans, and whatever
(9:19:22 PM) Dallas Guy: some are married, some have kids
(9:19:31 PM) Dallas Guy: but in the end it's slavery to a system
(9:19:48 PM) Dallas Guy: and we do it so we can buy bigger houses and fancier cars
(9:19:53 PM) Particleman: give me a break. slavery my ass.
(9:20:09 PM) Dallas Guy: indentured servitude sound better?
(9:20:21 PM) Particleman: you're useless man
(9:20:30 PM) Dallas Guy: I really think I would be happy living in a jungle
(9:20:36 PM) Dallas Guy: or the side of a mountain
(9:20:44 PM) Dallas Guy: killing sh*t to eat when I got hungry
(9:20:57 PM) Dallas Guy: and otherwise banging some [sexy] jungle chick
(9:21:16 PM) Particleman: can i put that on my website?
(9:21:22 PM) Dallas Guy: put what
(9:21:30 PM) Particleman: your jungle thing
(9:21:32 PM) Particleman: that's funny
(9:21:33 PM) Dallas Guy: sure
(9:21:53 PM) Particleman: lol
(9:22:00 PM) Particleman: my site is too clean for that
(9:22:06 PM) Dallas Guy: u gonna keep the [sexy] jungle chick
(9:22:20 PM) Dallas Guy: you can use nicer words

And so I did.

I went to Khan's Deli, a sandwich shop in Rice Village, on Monday to give them a try, and it was not a good experience. This is what happened.

I order a turkey sandwich and move to the register to pay with a credit card, when I see a "cash or check only" sign. It would have been nice if they put the sign at the "Order" counter to put people on notice of what the payment situation is, but whatever. I ask if they take check cards (I know it was a long-shot), and the guy, who appeared to be the owner, said no, but that i could walk to the Walgreen's down the street and use the ATM. I figure that since the sandwich guy hadn't really finished the sandwich, that i'd just come back another time when i had cash. At which point the owner called out to the sandwich guy, "Hey, this kid doesn't want his sandwich, he doesn't want to walk half a block to the Walgreen's to get some cash. He's one of those yuppies."

By this point I'm already at the door when I hear him call me a yuppie. We exchange some words across the restaurant and it doesn't end well. It was not what I'd call a pleasant customer experience.

I sent this story to one of my friends who took (and passed) the bar last year, and she had this to say:

You just had what we call a "bar encounter". This is something that you would normally let slip off your back and walk away; however, since you are studying for the bar, you take offense and eventually tell the guy to f@#k off. "Bar encounters" occur frequently during bar preparation. It is recommended that any "bar studier" refrain from contact with the general public and venture out only when absolutely necessary. Contact with "other bar studiers" is permitted, but the length of such contact should be kept to a minimum.

While that may be true, the owner had no reason to get all smarmy with me. The ironic thing is that his sandwich shop is located in Rice Village, which is about as yuppie as you can get in Houston, and his entire client base could be labeled "yuppie," so if it's yuppies he doesn't want to serve, he's going to have an empty restaurant.

9/11 changed the way we fly. New risks created new needs in the way of security for airports and airplanes. We have since become experts in a ritual of undressing and unpacking while standing in line we call going to the airport. We have also learned how to pack based on rules as to what needs to be checked luggage and what the security drones will want to see so we can make the experience as painless as possible.

On Friday I went to the airport at 8:30 am for an International flight that would leave at 10. I was tired and cranky and finally made it into the new terminal that looks like a giant shopping mall with everything from bars to fancy restaurants to a liquor store with no bottles costing less than 80 dollars. As I wandered to my gate with plenty of time to spare, I noticed a poster that said in big letters, "Why You Need To Get To The Airport Two Hours Early" and in much smaller letters a lot of text below it. As fate would have it, I was dying to know why I had to wake up at 6 am for a 10 am flight. When I got close enough to the poster to read it, I realized that it was a listing of every store, restaurant, and service at DFW airport very similar to the maps you see in malls. In effect, I have to get to the airport earlier so I can have more time to spend more money. As you can assume, this attempt to be cute in advertising was not exactly giving me the warm fuzzies, but it did get me thinking.

Have you ever looked at the list of items you cannot bring on an airplane? You can't bring tweezers, but you can bring, or even buy in the terminal, a nice pointy sharp metal pen. You can't bring wire, but we all have strong shoelaces. No liquids or creams, but as much powder as you want, and if you get thirsty, you can buy some water in the terminal. Fun science fact, most creams and liquids are made by mixing solids and water in factories, but I digress.

My point is this. The list seems arbitrary. If I want to hurt people, I'll find a way to do it, even if I can't bring my tweezers on board. Before someone calls Homeland Security on me, I am not saying we should do away with security. I do wish that the security measures made more sense and wasted less of my irreplaceable time. I also will not claim to know how to do this or what the right thing to do is. That s a very complicated problem and I do not think anybody is saying otherwise. Luckily it seems that there are some smart people working on it because there have been no significant attacks since 9/11. What I will say is that arbitrary and ever- changing lists of reactionary regulations are not making anything any safer, they are only making it harder for people to fly. Finally, for all the talk of taking security seriously, it's absurd to have an airport advertisement saying that the security measures exist for airport vendors to be more profitable. Does the airport really need to fuel my cynicism about the government beyond its current state?

-Evil I (formerly Dallas Guy)

Hey, if you had to study a book called "The Texas Procedure/Evidence Workshop," you'd need a beer too. Especially one with an alcohol content of 7.2%, which technically makes it "Malt Liquor."

I have never felt like i knew so much about the law than i do now, and yet i have never felt so unprepared for a test. For anyone considering law school, please reconsider. I haven't slept in three? four? weeks. I don't even remember graduating. I don't know what day of the week it is when i wake up most mornings. Eating is the highlight of my day. Well, eating has always been the highlight of my day, but now it's, like, my sole purpose. I was put here to eat and study law. Or maybe it's eat law.

My classmate today really summarized it well. I said that my brain was like a shelf: for every piece of information i put on the shelf, another piece falls off. He said, "Shelf? SHELF? I only have a ledge. Screw shelf." You heard it here first. Screw shelf.

Some of the dreams I've had lately, likely resulting from the stress and insanity of the Bar (more on that Bar thing later):

Dream 1

I'm in a physics class taught by none other than an aged Samuel L. Jackson. He has long gray hair and he's wearing a lab coat. We had a homework assignment. One of the problems (#30) was particularly difficult. It asked: "Is there any way to be in two places at the same time?" Dr. Jackson asked, "Did that question drive you guys crazy or WHAT! Who has an answer for me?" A tall-ish girl stood up and said, "I have an answer. You can be in more than one place at the same time as long as your presence is only known by one all-powerful being at a time." Meaning, I suppose, you can be in more than one place at a time as long as for each place that you are, only one all-powerful being (God?) knows that you are there. Maybe this is possible because you could be in separate universes, each of which has its own all-powerful being? Who knows.

Dream 2

I arrived at my apartment after being gone all week and everything is gone. The structure has been mostly dismantled. All that remains is the frame of my little garage apartment. I walk around the remnants wondering what the hell went wrong and where my stuff is. I find that most of my belongings are in a gigantic hole next to my apartment. At that moment, I find a strange middle-aged woman giving me dirty looks. I ask what happened. She looked at me incredulously as if I should know. She didn't speak English (or perhaps couldn't talk), so she directed me towards a small piece of wall that remained on my apartment where she had apparently scribbled her response to my same question asked by someone else. I guess someone else had asked where the hell my apartment had gone.

She scratched out a few things and modified the previous response (which was in English) to help answer my question, and I gathered that my landlord was no longer the landlord, that I had a new landlord, that she (this woman) was a tenant of the new landlord, and that I had not paid my rent. I argued that I had paid my rent to my old landlord and she looked surprised. She shrugged and walked off to her apartment, which appeared to be underground down a flight of dingy carpeted stairs whose white walls were covered with various markings.

Those are just two of my dreams. There have been other strange ones, but those are the only ones i can remember clearly.

As for the Bar, the new rule I'm following with myself and my friends is that I will not talk about the Bar. It was too stressful, too difficult, and too long. I'm glad it's over and I hope I never have to do it again. If you plan on taking it any time soon, let me know, and I will tell you everything you need to know.

I'm in Isla Mujeres off the coast of Cancun with Pajama Grrl and Evil I and we're having a blast. the water really is as blue as the pictures. We rented mo-peds to ride around the island yesterday and it resulted in a spectacular crash by yours truly. I clearly have no concept of how to regulate speed on a motorized two wheeled vehicle. I'm not even that great at regulating speed on a non-motorized two wheeled vehicle, to be honest.

The first problem was that my scooter kept stalling on me, so they gave me a new one. By the time the new one was fueled up and ready to go, my friends had already ridden off, so i hauled ass to catch up with them, found myself on a sandy road and accidentally gunned the throttle instead of pulling the brakes. You see, i have a habit of twisting the grips on my bike when riding, so when i twisted the grips on the scooter, it did exactly the opposite of what i wanted it to do. When i realized i had speed up and thay i was heading right for a parked go-kart, i turned the wheel and slammed on the brakes, thus causing the rear wheel to depart from its normal course and slide away from beneath me, sending me right-shoulder first to the ground.

It was glorious. Yes, i was wearing a helmet. But I was also wearing shorts and sandals, so my leg and toes are pretty torn up. Thankfully, i didn't lose a toenail.

But now that i have gotten the hang of riding motorized two wheeled vehicles, i kind of want a motorcycle...

Next on the agenda: more beer, more beach, more Mexican food, and more Neosporin to help my cuts heal.

Yesterday morning I was driving around in my snazzy V8 BMW when all of a sudden I got a call with an offer. My father who has a similar car was selling his and asked me if I wanted to take the wheels from his car to put on mine. This was a great offer because his wheels look way better than mine.

I go to the tire place and tell the guy to switch the wheels on the car and he does so and I pay. As I am leaving my dad makes a joke like "I hope you tightened all the lug nuts." I drive off in my snazzy car make it barely a quarter mile and my car starts to shake in a bad way. I turned on my hazard lights and started to slow down when my rear driver's side wheel went air born. It flew down my lane, then across the street of oncoming traffic, bounced higher than I could have ever imagined, and landed on the roof of an SUV. Then it rolled off and knocked the mirror off another car. Now my poor baby is out of commission, and if the tire place refuses to pay or is uninsured or something, all of this will end up on me and my rates will go up. Furthermore, it wasted my Saturday afternoon, and this is the type of thing that is only really funny when it happens to someone else or it's way after the fact. In my case it happened to me and I am still pissed off.

I have installed an air conditioner on a car before and have charged many car air conditioners for people legally after a 5 minute "training" from the sales guy at autozone. I figured home units could not be much harder so I was not deterred by the "safety concerns." I have researched what is involved in doing it at home and would like to share my findings.

#1: Freon is probably less dangerous than half the cleaning chemicals in your house. The biggest danger is that you may forget to breathe oxygen if you are in an enclosed space or that it is a compressed gas and it could blow up in your face (maybe, i suppose its possible, but it would be a special event). Either way I ain't skeerd.

#2: EPA regulations do not actually force you to repair slow leaks on small home units (as long as they really are slow leaks on small units)

#3: With approximately 100 dollars in equipment, you can probably service and install your own AC units. At 75 dollars minimum per service call, this seems like a decent investment.

And now (drum roll please) for the best secret of them all

#4: In order to service the units, you do need an EPA cert. If you are interested in getting one to call your own, it costs 25 dollars. It is a 50 question open book multiple choice test that you can do online. You have 3 hours and unlimited chances to take it. I took a sample test for fun with no preparation or even a printout of the book and scored 29/50. The score I need to pass is 42/50. A sample question was "You dehydrate the system to A)Remove oil B)Remove water D)remove freon"

Just thought I would share.

I picked up my car from the insurance company today (the one whose wheel had flown off in a prior post) only to be disappointed.

1. The wheel that flew off was nowhere to be found, and the spare was still on the car (i.e. no spare wheel). I had to drive halfway across town to get these because I did not want to leave the car and come back tomorrow again.

2. There were 2 lug bolts (the things that hold wheels onto the car) missing.

3. There was a plastic cover that goes on the bumper to cover the towing hook missing.

4. There were 2 new grease stains inside my car.

I am thoroughly pissed off with this situation. I called the insurance company to complain and as soon as they suggested another shop I suggested I would take care of it myself and fax them bills for the parts. They seemed ok with it so I am a little appeased. They are also going to send me a mobile detailer to clean up the inside of my car.

Why can't Darwinism be a more efficient killer and just get rid of the dead weight?

I almost forgot to wish you all a Happy Happy Chanukkah. Tonight is the sixth night, so don't forget to light your candles (if you are so inclined).

In other news, I have been the sad victim of yet another one of my infamous neck strains. I seem to have a habit of pulling the muscles that connect my neck, shoulders, and back together all at once. It normally happens when I get stressed out over something and crane my neck in the shower because the shower head is too low. It happened during finals last semester. It happened while I was studying for the bar too. Just ask my classmates. I walked around like I was wearing an imaginary neck brace. The strain makes it painful for my to tilt my head upwards. Most of the pain is in my right shoulder and the right side of my neck. Just lifting up a drink with my right hand causes pain. Thankfully, I also have a left hand, so I can still drink.

Tonight I am very excited to lie down on my heating pad. My parents have had it since the 70s (and you can tell). It's awesome. I lay it on the pillow and rest the sore part of my neck on the heating pad. It's almost as good as a massage.

That I am posting about neck pains and heating pads is testament to how lame my life has become. For those of you wondering how Particleman is fairing in his newly adopted city, you now have the scoop. Neck pain, heating pads, and drinking. And Chanukkah.

Oh wait - one more thing. Remember that Beatles band I talked about a few months ago? We finally recruited a lead guitarist and drummer. Our first show is January 14th at a comedy club. We're an opening act. We're playing some old stuff and newer stuff.

I went to Austin this weekend for my Dad's birthday. My folks drove in to Austin and we all met up at my sister's house. We went to The Cheesecake Factory for lunch on Sunday and we brought the kids with us. Maya (4) and Max (2) were in full effect in the restaurant. Max busted out with a toy fuel-tanker truck that looked awfully familiar. It was emblazoned with the brand "HESS" which no longer makes gasoline, so I was wondering how my sister managed to get him a Hess truck. At that moment, my dad said, "You know where that truck comes from, right?" I answered no. He responded, "That was your truck. And those were your dinosaurs. We kept all of your toys, and they're Max's."

That was the coolest feeling. To know that my toys had survived all these years in some box in my parent's attic and were now passed on to my nephew really gave me the warm fuzzies.

At the exact moment this thought occurred to me, Max became possessed by a spontaneous and apparently uncontrollable urge to release the truck from his grip and send it on a direct crash course with the marble floor, thus permanently freeing the rear axles from the body of the truck.

Eh, it was just a plastic toy. Oh well. My dad thinks he can glue it back together. He can usually fix anything.

Does blogging from a blackberry on public transportation in Guanajuato make me a douche?

Ford says it owns the copyrights to all pictures of its cars - even pictures owners take of their own cars. Link from Slashdot.

You know, it's funny. You come home from a long day at work and find that your shower looks kind of different, and then you remember that your landlord finally agreed to remove the nasty, rusty, grout-falling-out shower doors while you were away at work hunched over a desk in an office building. And you suddenly get too lazy to drive to Target to buy a shower rod and shower curtain.

You know you’ve reached a new level in your career when you receive an invitation to a training course that exclaims: “Walk the Red Carpet with the Stars of Criminal Defense!”

The scary thing is that part of me wants to go.

Once upon a time, I lived in San Antonio. I lived across the street from a great little pub called The Flying Saucer. I went to The Flying Saucer a few times per week. The waitresses at The Flying Saucer were generally kind of cute. As such, my friends and I made sure to hit on as many of these waitresses as we could. I even went out with one of them. Good times. Long story, that. Anyway, moving on.

Last week, I went digging in the pockets of a jacket I don't wear very often and I pulled out this receipt, almost exactly four years after I received it. After looking at the name, I realized that I have no recollection of Jillian-Marie, which means she may be the only Saucer waitress my friends and I didn't hit on. She was a lucky girl.

I therefore present you with this fossil, this ancient record, this snapshot into the life of a 24-year-old Particleman. On Monday, February 16, 2004, Particleman was likely recovering from a weekend of drunken nothingness and decided to go to the Saucer with his fellow apathetic workmates. He dined on chips and queso, Franzniskaner, and Young's Double Chocolate stout. Particleman then likely returned to his abode, having stumbled across the "street" separating his apartment complex from the pub, located his bed, and fell on it, waking up the next day in the same business casual attire he wore the day before. After a shower, and maybe a shave if he could bring himself to it, he dragged himself back to his cubicle, where he diligently worked on documenting the software documents and running the document website at the Massive Insurance Company.

This concludes our exploration of Particleman's social life, circa early 2004.

I'm off to Austin this weekend to see the kiddos, aka M&M aka Max and Maya aka my niece and nephew. It will be a good trip. I need a break. Work has been rough the past couple weeks. I inherited a monstrous case and it was my turn for it to overwhelm me, and overwhelmed I was. I might take my bike to ride around the beautiful hills around my sister's house. Outside is calling me. Clarity is calling me. I need to clear my head. There's a lot of crud in there and I'm hoping a change of scenery will help. I feel kind of broken. Maybe Austin can fix me.

Oh yeah, it snowed here in Dallas yesterday. I woke up and found an inch or two of snow on my car. Fun.

Happy weekend.

All the necessary food groups in one convenient, tasty package. Cheese: protein. Crackers: carbs. Wine: alcohol.

I went biking after work on Wednesday in an effort to whip myself back into shape. It's been a while since I've ridden the ol' bikes on a consistent basis and I figure I am all out of excuses (rain, cold, work, band, lazy) so I was determined to get a lap or two in at the lake.

The first lap was great. I hauled ass and went faster than I normally do. Since the sun was still kind of up, I thought I could get one more lap in before it set entirely, so kept riding. About twenty minutes into the second lap, something strange happened. Well, it I wasn't so strange because I experienced the same thing a couple summers ago when I was an intern here, but I didn't expect the same thing to happen since it's not really summer yet.

What happened was this: swarms of tiny airborn bugs descended on the lake. It was like the Ten Plagues. Determined to drive me away from their feeding grounds, they bombarded me with their presence. They made noise as they hit my helmet and glasses and bike. They were too small to see with the fading light, but as soon as the sun was completely down and my bike light was the only thing illuminating the bike path, I could see them streaking past in the night. I had to duck my head as I rode to keep from eating or snorting them. It was hilarious. One of them got caught in my ear. That wasn't a pleasant feeling.

Today, I went for a ride in the beautiful 75 degree three o'clock air with The Evil I. After he complained of nausea and impending hurlage and headed home, I kept riding for another lap. Somewhere along the way I found myself in a strong head wind. While I was huffing and puffing up a hill, a bug much larger than the tiny insects from the other evening set itself on a direct crash course with my mouth and quickly got lodged in my throat.

It happened so fast I hardly had time to come to terms with the fact that I had just eaten a bug. Thankfully, he didn't go all the way down, but had just gotten caught in the back of my throat, so I hocked him right back out. Bastard. I'll show you. Then I vigorously rinsed my mouth with water, cursed at nature, admired the pretty trees, and rode on.

I bought Apple iWork a while ago out of spite for Microsoft and I'm starting to miss Excel. There is no equivalent of Excel's "Freeze Pane" in iWork's Numbers. This makes working in large spreadsheets much more difficult. I also don't see the use in moving the "Worksheets" bar to the side of the application, where it takes horizontal space away from the spreadsheet itself.

Apple, please give me Freeze Pane, and please nix the side-mounted Worksheet tab.

Thanks.

particleman

My parents and friends are without power. I spent most of my life in Houston and I don't remember any hurricane causing this much damage, and Ike wasn't even that severe of a hurricane. If all goes according to plan, I will be in Houston this weekend helping my parents clean up and get things back in order. Thankfully, their house wasn't damaged.

In other news, um, I have no real other news. Except for that the summer is over and it's officially been one year since I started working full-time as a lawyer. It's been a great year. Challenging, but great, and I'm looking forward to the next year. A lot of interesting stuff is happening with copyright law and music law, stuff that no one except copyright law geeks like me care about, but here's one thing that you guys might appreciate: Lars Ulrich Fine with Metallica Album Leak.

Am I the only person who wanted desperately for Sarah Palin to say "hockey mom" at the debate last night? That was all I wanted to hear. "I'm a hockey mom."

Unfortunately, I was too busy drinking at a happy to pay much attention to the TVs showing the debate. Oops.

I've been getting slammed with comment spam the past few days. I disabled comments until I find a suitable spam-prevention device. Apologies for the inconvenience.

I went to Las Vegas for the first time. For a bachelor party. And I lost some money at a variety of establishments in and around the strip. I will not comment where I left my money and how I left it, but let it be known that Las Vegas is a money pit. A wild, crazy, and fun money pit. And it just so happens that I'm going back for Valentine's Day. The Girlfriend's birthday is February 13, so we're flying to Vegas to see Billy Joel and the Beatles Love show and to generally lose money together. Because losing money with your special someone is much better than losing money with a bunch of strangers.

Maybe this time the blackjack gods won't curse me hand after hand.

I'm not one to normally complain about customer service. I know that's how most of these stories start out, but this story is bad. Really, really bad.

I was on a family plan with my parents and decided to go solo. T-Mobile let me apply my two years of loyal patronage and upgrade to a new phone for $50 and keep my awesome rate plan of unlimited minutes, anytime, for $50/month. Not a bad deal.

I called T-mobile and ordered a black Nokia xpress music phone. T-Mobile sent it to my parents house in Houston instead of my house in Dallas. After a few phone calls with T-Mobile and UPS, we finally got the phone to my house in Dallas. Except that someone had to be home to sign for it, and after three attempts, they sent the phone to their warehouse. T-Mobile would not ship to my place of work, where I spend my days, like most people, because they had to send the phone to the billing address on the account. Fine. I go to the UPS warehouse, rip open the package, and instead of a black Nokia phone, I see a white Nokia phone. Wrong color. Great.

I call T-Mobile and explain the problem. They apologize and promise to send out the right phone immediately and that I should expect a text message with the UPS tracking number. The package with the new phone will have a shipping label to slap on the package so that I can send the other phone back.

Days pass. No text message. I call T-Mobile again and ask what the story is. Turns out they misinformed me how their "process" works. The process is that I have to send the phone back first, call them with the tracking number, and they will then send me the right phone. Ridiculous. Why I have to assume risk of a lost phone for their mistake is beyond me. They should send me the phone back and wait for me to send them their wrong phone, and should i keep the old phone, they should then have the right to charge my account for the extra phone. That's how it should work.

I follow their process. I take the white phone to a UPS store, ship it, call T-Mobile again, give them the tracking number and shipping charge which will be credited to my account, and they promise to send the black phone.

The new phone arrives, and this time, I don't need to sign for it. It's sitting on my porch. I rip open the package and see - another white phone.

I call T-mobile (6th or 7th call by now) and again explain the problem. The customer rep again apologizes, and promises to make it right. Except - you guessed it - I have to go to a UPS store to ship the old phone back, though I don't need to so before they ship the right phone.

Let's hope they finally get it right. I never had any problems with T-Mobile until this ordeal. And because of this ordeal, I have to tell you, if you have any plans of buying a phone from T-Mobile that you have not seen with your own eyes, do not bother. Buy your phone from someone else. T-Mobile is awful and this customer service experience has been a huge waste of time. I've heard good things about Verizon. Give them a shot.

I'll keep you posted on any new developments.

T-Mobile sent another white phone. This is the third white phone they sent. When I asked them to just cover the cost of the phone, since, you know, I've been waiting a month for the phone and I've had to make three trips to UPS to ship the phones back, they said all they could do was reimburse me for the shipping. Fantastic. All the lunch breaks I spent talking to them and driving to UPS are apparently meaningless.

My solution: I'm going to a physical T-Mobile store to get the phone. I figure if I can look at it and make sure it's the right phone, it will be the right phone.

Let it be known. T-Mobile customer service sucks. Their ordering process is awful. Expect nothing for your wasted time. Expect nothing from their "Customer Loyalty" department. Expect plenty of apologies, but nothing in the way of compensation for your time and effort. T-Mobile clearly does not care to hold on to long-time customers.

The winter has forced me to take my cycling indoors. This nifty bike trainer has been providing what paltry amount of exercise I am able to wring out of myself in these lazy winter months.

Also amusing is my special concoction of bike trainer equipment. No, not the metal contraption attached to the rear wheel. I'm talking about the ancient and perfectly-sized textbook holding up the front wheel so that it is level with the raised rear wheel. That textbook is none other than my Constitutional Law textbook. I know, I know. Shame on me. It contains our Constitution. Not to mention it was one of my favorite classes in law school. But after many years of sitting unopened on a shelf in my study, it now sits unopened underneath my bicycle wheel. Is that so bad? At least it's serving a purpose now.

Apologies to my Con Law professor. And all Con Law professors out there. Maybe I should have used my Civil Procedure books. Man, that shit was boring.