Made it Back ... But Got a Ticket

Advertising got all finished up, so I hopped in the car and went off. Its a pretty long drive down to KC and then all the way over to Salina. Now, I generally like to make good time and tend to let's say test the limits of the, uh, speed limits. Often I'm pretty good at noticing the fine folks in blue as they are carrying out their duties, but it just gets so damn dark 'round this time of year. He was following behind for probabally about three miles. I actually remember seeing these headlights in my rear mirror and thinking this guy was a complete jackass for tailgating me so closely.

Then to top it off I make the naive, dumbass mistake of pulling off onto the left shoulder. It was a three lane road with a bunch off traffic in both lanes to my right and I didn't realize it was that big of deal. Apparent it is very big deal. He was pretty pissed. I guess that that is supposed to be the most dangerous place on the highway to be, second only probabally stopping in the middle of the road or something.

I tell you what that will take the wind out of your sail real quick. I didn't even want to keep driving. You just get real paranoid and drop to granny speeds. O well, such is the life. Couldn't really expect to be getting away with that forever.

AMA Luncheon and Speaker - Brett Trout

Today the Des Moines AMA chapter hosted a luncheon featuring Brett Trout, a well-established patent attorney of the area, to speak on "The Legal Pitfalls of Social Media." They held at the Des Moines Golf & Country Club.

Let me start by prefacing that the facilities they are absolutly amazing. You reach the gates by passing through these large wrought-iron and brick pillared gates and take this long winding drive taking you through the beautifully landscaped and vast golf course. The club house is lavished in sophisticated decadence with a wealth of dark rich wood and elegant dim lighting. I mean, and this I found a bit too excessive a luxury, in the bathroom instead of paper towels there are shelves of properly folded cloth towels just for drying your hands.

Although, I will say with some home town pride, the Country Club pool I lifeguarded at back in here in Salina is leaps and bounds better. We have a 30' slide that twists and turns in thrilling spirals. They have a 5' tube slide with a 30 degree angle. Honestly the public pool here is probabally better.



But anyway, to the talk. Brett Trout is a just a fascinating guy. Not only is he the most recognizable patent attorney, if not just attorney period, within Iowa, the guy also speed races motorcycles and trains for MMA fights. That's awesome. That's living man right there man.

He explained alot of the legal issues companies come across when dealing with social medias such as twitter, blogs, facebook, etc.; issues such as plagarism, copyright infringement, slander, liable. Listening to it I am afraid to say that in all technicality I myself may be in violation of some of these issues. However, as he pointed out, legal recourse requires material harms have occured to the plaintiff, and in truth I have not put any strain on or taken away from any party in my actions. There are far bigger fish to fry as it were.

Anway if this is a matter that interest you, I know Brett would love it if you shot him a twitter or checked out his website.

www.bretttrout.com
twitter.com/BrettTrout

I'm DONE!!! (practically)

That's it. I'm all done. Well for the most part anyway. There's no more tests. I basically just have to show up tomorrow for Advertising and just stand there. Then I hope in the car and am gone. Ah dude, I can't even tell yah, man. I complete unburdened by any obligations or approaching deadlines; just free.

I've been spending most of time up in the reading room at the library forcing to memory through mind numbing, painfully deadening repetition of reading and rereading of facts and theories that I have lost any trace of enthusiasm for. Tonight I can just relax. I have this pile of books on my desk I'd been meaning to read that have just been piling up. I can read what I want at the pace I want. I can just lie in bed listening to music. Hell, I might go out and build a freakin' snowman or something.

Jethro's Wing Eating Champion!!!

I am the Jethro's BBQ - Wing Eating Champion!!!, for at least the basketball game's halftime event today. 10 wings in 30 seconds! Pretty good for a guy who wrestled 119 in highschool. The thing is though, Blake, the owner, who really is just an awesome guy if you ever get to meet him, really wanted people to eat the wing with the super hot sauce one them, so, while I was going at it, he kind of said to the group that more points would be award to whoever ate the most hot wings (not actually true but whatever). I then proceed to just devour the basket with all the hot wings, and, here's the thing, you don't really notice how hot those are when you're eating them so fast, but, once you stop, you just start BURNING. My mouth and the area around it were just on fire. Blake came up to congratulate me and award me the gift certificate, but I was in too much pain. I had to get to a water fountain; I need milk.

JETHRO'S BBQ

Finals

All right so the end of the semester is finally here and of course with that are the finals, which is kind of why I've been a little inconsistent in these posts for this month. So okay, just to give you an idea, last week I was going to have STAT 072 on wednesday but then there was the, as the National Weather Service puts it, "epic" snowstorm and class was cancelled; it just wasn't an option - so much snow. So now that is Monday even though the Professor has already gone off for vacation and is just going to have a proxy administor the exam. It's not really a test to worry about. You get to do all the equations through these programs on excel, so you're just basically plugging in numbers and recording the answers.

Marketing 101 was Thursday, which I completely overstudied for. I mean the test was hard, but I really just crammed to the point of overkill, and there was alot it just didn't ask about I thought would be there. Not the worst thing in the world to do, but not the best use of time.

Tuesday I have Blaw in the morning, which will be tough, but at least I have a good idea of the specifics to study, unlike freakin' Geography. The Geography is over Russia, South America, and Australia, because that's a combination that goes perfectly together. You got to know culture, agriculture, economy, physiography, climatology, and then just where basic shit is, and then above all you have to explain how all those things correlate and affect one another.

So ready for break

Boo Boo

*All right so a couple of weekends ago, a buddy of my found out about this traveling circus in the area. We got in the car and he drove me to this po-dunk in the middle of gawd-damn-no-where Iowa about 15 miles out of town. It was completely sketchy; straight up nomadic carny people. The ringmaster, or whatever, was this midget who I'm pretty sure was using coke or something. Anyway the reason we had gone there was they had this thing were you could box a kangaroo, and, if you lasted 5 minutes with the thing, you won $500.

First off let me say for anyone who has never been up close on a kangaroo, they are surprising tall. This wasn't too excellant of a discovery as I'm a pretty short guy to begin with, but actually did pretty well against him for the first minute or so. You know, I mean, a kangaroo can't really do combinations or anything or throw a hook or a upper-cut; they're basically like one of those boxing nun puppets with their punches. However, no one ever told me they could KICK! Apparentally I missed that day in second grade as everyone else I've told this story already knew that. I did not. The fella leans back and knocks me square on the head with his right foot. I black-out and wake up in the hospital with nine stiches in my head.

Thank God my buddy got me out of there and to the hospital before the those circus freaks started going threw my pockets. They're out now - took them out myself with some nail-clippers and some tweezers; suprising easy - and the cuts actually healed up pretty nicely.


*Except for the nine stiches and how I took them out, ABSOLUTELY nothing about this story is true. It was purely for entertainment purposes. I just really enjoy telling it and find it far more interesting than having a construction accident. I just prefer the idea of a world where you can throw caution to the wind one Friday afternoon and take off to go fight a Kangroo.

One Wristband

I have had this white One wristband on my arm for like 5 years now, and then like a week ago the thing snaps. It had snort of splitting around the curve of the O for a while now I guess. I feel really weird now without it. I can still feel it on my arm but it's not there. This is probabally the closest I'll ever being to understanding an amputee.

I should probabally explain what One is. One is is a grassroots campaign and advocacy organization backed by more than 2 million people who are committed to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa. Cofounded by Bono and other campaigners, ONE is nonpartisan and works closely with African policy makers and activists. It's a really excellant cause for people who are really in need.

I really to go get a new one. I'm starting to freak out a little bit without it.

So Much Snow

So, after a few very curious days that made it seems as though winter would be skipped all together and we'd head straight for Spring, we just NAILED here in Des Moines with a solid 24 hours of just straight snow flurries. We got like 2 feet, conservatively! The campus is completely covered. They had to shut down classes yesterday at 3:00 pm and all of today. Which is nice but I was supposed to have some finals today. It's not like those just go away. No there reschedule it screwing up my plans for getting out of here and on break.

It would of been better if we could of gone and played outside but it is just so freakin' heavy. It is just hammering us. It's like Winter is trying to make up for lost time or something. It's suppose to be better tomorrow, which will be good. Only wish I had all of my snow gear - snowpants, gloves, head-warm-thingies. You can only make snowballs with your bare hands for so long.

Spent about an hour clearing the snow away from car and making sure it get out of it's parking spot. Some of these cars you can't even see anymore; they're just covered in mounds of snow. This Nissan's got a lot better traction than the Ranger but it's so low to the growd I had to stop and clear the snow out from under it that had built up.

So much snow. I think we're might be pretty well covered for the rest of the year.