Alaskablawg

Paralysis, a.k.a. Avoidance

As you may have noticed, I haven't posted anything in a good long while. Several reasons. First, things have been rather hectic at work as I wind up my tenure in state service. I had three major trials set for April and May so I was asked to stay until those cases were finished. However, they got moved and so we agreed that I would stay through the end of April to ease the caseload transition. Another attorney in my office transferred to another office and her replacement is not going to be here until the beginning of May. An attorney in the Anchorage office had some pregnancy complications that require her to take her maternity leave earlier than expected, so I've gotten several large Anchorage cases. Hopefully I can take some of them with me so I can have a source of income.

On the home front, we have recently had a 15 year old come stay with us. He is the son of some friends and he was having some personality issues with his parents. We agreed he could stay here and while the transition has actually been fairly painless, it has required a fair amount of work. He's a good kid, but our kids are 9, 7 and 2. The older 2 are girls, so it's as if we just skipped 13 years and got a teenager overnight.

Lastly, though, I've been suffering from paralysis or avoidance or something. Maybe it's short-timer's syndrome. Maybe it's burnout. Maybe it's merely procrastination. Whatever it is, I see something that needs to be done and rather than doing it, I fill my time with meaningless activities. While this has happened for short periods of time before this, I've never had a case this bad before in my life. It's kept me from blawgging for a while. But, I'm back now. Hopefully this means that my paralysis is ending. I'm getting rather behind.

Namagiqua

I talk in the post below about some changes I was considering. In case you haven't seen it, I've added a photo album to the site. It is listed as "Namagiqua" on the left. Namagiqua is Yu'pik for "I don't know". I picked that name because when Typepad wanted to know the name of my photo album, I thought, "I don't know." Anyway, I've posted some photos I've taken throughout the state. I am going to focus the pictures on Alaska life and scenes.

I know that some of them have been posted here before, but I've posted some new photos and added commentary/descriptions for them. I'll try to update as I'm able, but if a picture is worth 1000 words, and if an attorney bills at $250 an hour, then these photos are a bargain no matter how rarely updated!

Blogging Housekeeping for the New Year

I've done a bit of housekeeping for the new year, updating the blog roll, changing the template, and trying to update my author profile, but typepad is not letting me do that right now. There are some other changes that may be coming, but I'm going to wait to see how those develop before posting further.

As far as the blogroll is concerned, I've added some PD blogs I've been meaning to add, such as Audacity, Gideon's Guardians and PD Investigator. I've also added an interesting new blog under the Libertarian Sites, Ideas. The link comes from Randy Barnett over at Volokh (who should be on the Supreme Court). Ideas is written by David Friedman, a libertarian economist who teaches at Santa Clara University Law School. As a fan of his book The Machinery of Freedom, I've found his arguments thought provoking, even if I do not always agree with them.

For example, he considers a different argument against the death penalty. It's interesting to read the discussion provoked in the comments. Friedman is against the death penalty, but more on economic grounds (no, not money, but economics. For the difference, I would recommend reading The Undercover Economist). He finds unconvincing the potential execution of innocent people. I disagree with him based on that, but he raises an interesting point. I would highly recommend checking out his blog or his website for an intelligent discussion of issues related to law and policy, even if from a perspective with which you do not agree. Consider his post on gay marriage, for example, as a perspective that is generally not really considered from today's winner-take-all political process.

Lastly, and on a completely different subject, I have not been blogging much because of the holidays and my last trial. I have to say that the last trial was just wrong in so many ways that it is hard to fathom. It has caused me a great deal of soul-searching about whether I want to even keep doing this type of work. There have been a couple of other bad verdicts I know of recently and I keep wondering if it's worth it. Frankly, I look and wonder why I bang my head against the wall. Maybe I should just join some civil firm where I could make some money and not feel like Sisyphus always trying to roll that stone up the hill. In the past few weeks I've mulled this over in the back of my head. I've also been spending a lot of time with my kids, teaching them chess, ice skating, or just otherwise goofing off, and there may come a point in my life when my practice changes or varies, but it's going to be because that's where I need to go. It's not going to be because I quit. So, I put on the armor and get back in the saddle. And even if the rock rolls down the hill, I can hold up my head and I can look at my kids, knowing I have been true to my beliefs.

Blawg Review

It looks like I made Blawg Review for the Fish Porn site, below. It was listed under Humor, which is interesting because it was not really a particularly funny post, but hey, I'll take it. I would like to think that it was the superior writing that got me on Blawg Review, but really, I think that nobody outside of this state can believe that trout come so big. Either that or they really don't know what Alaska men find pornographic.

This is a state where, particularly outside the major urban areas (Anchorage, Juneau, Mat-Su and Fairbanks) men really outnumber women. One woman was told that she should go to Alaska to find a partner because the odds were good and she replied, "Yes, but the goods are odd." Considering what Alaska men find to be pornographic, that's definitely true. I don't know what that says about me, so I think I will just end this post.

Ecto

That last post would not initially load in typepad for some reason. I use a program called Ecto to manage my blogging needs (editing posts, inserting images, etc.) and so I have been emailing their technical support. It appears that the photos were too large and I was just not scaling them down enough to allow them to load. If a post doesn't load in time, Typepad will not accept it.

Anyway, it was very nice that the tech support at Ecto answered my emails promptly, even in the middle of the night. Also, they did not treat me like an idiot but rather gave me some good hints. And it doesn't hurt that Ecto is a great program. For those who have not looked into it yet, I would strongly recommend checking it out. It costs $, around $18 or so, but it is worth every penny. I tried to use typepad's posting system and it was not nearly as friendly. Macaddict found that ecto was the best choice for the money.

They also have it for Windows, but it really rocks on the Mac (Well, that should go without saying. Everything rocks on the Mac).

Alaska Legal Travel

Philosophical Lawyer, from Alabama, recently visited the Great Land and writes about it here, here, and here. Interesting posts. Enjoy.

A New Blawg

While I'm adding to the blogroll, let me welcome Midwest PD. It appears that it was just started last Friday. Welcome!

New blog

I've added a new blog to my blogroll: Flex Your Rights. It's dedicated to educating people about their rights during police encounters. Matt, from the Flex Your Rights Foundation, led me to it by commenting on the post below. I don't know that it's a blawg per se, so I put it under the Libertarian links. And just to get you started, why not check out this post about the meth rocket.

New Weblawg

I found a fairly new blawg from an LA attorney who just re-iterates why I do not want to practice in BigLaw. Say hello to Not Partner Material.

No recent entries

I haven't blogged as much recently as I wanted to. I was hoping to write some stuff for the Fourth, but that's kind of moot now. Last week was extremely intense and next week I'm re-trying a case I hung in April. Last Tuesday, I flew to Bethel. The flight left at about 6:00 a.m., so I left home around 3:45 a.m. I got home around 11:00. I had to fly back to Bethel on Thursday for another one day trip. I then went to Kenai on Friday to do a sentencing hearing on a murder case. I fly tomorrow to Juneau and should be back in town Friday. On top of it all, I've been having some problems with my ISP, but those appear to be straightened out.