the daily snivel

This was what I thought as I was walking down the street today, heading back to work, as a young man glanced admiringly at the iPod I held in my hand, while I glanced admiringly at the hand of his girlfriend, which he held in his.

Which reminds me -- I'm long overdue to write about my various misadventures in on-line dating. Keep an eye out for that one. I promise to do that soon.
 

My iPod was delivered today!

And with my Evidence law exam in just about 24 hours, it's as sorely tempting a distraction as any you could imagine. I wrote my Tax law exam yesterday morning, and found it reasonably straightforward. That was the exam I was "looking forward to," if such a thing can be said, since it was (oddly enough) a law school exam I have a really good chance of getting an A on (or even an A+). It was mostly a matter of getting the formulas down right -- capital cost allowances, doubtful debt reserves, eligible capital property depreciation, and of course the dreaded half year rule. The only really worry about that exam is that pretty much everyone did well on it. The class average on the midterm was probably around 80%, so we're probably going to be curved pretty sharply. My sister was in a different tax section this term, and they had a much harder time of things, complete with an eight-hour take home exam. So you can be sure that the Dean will be shuffling us all together and curving out the abnormalities. Oh well. Maybe I'll still come out of it with an A-. Even that would be swell enough.

My iPod is beautiful. It really is small and elegant, and is fully worth every one of the $370 Canadian clams I paid for it. It's currently holding all 1,540 songs in my music library (with about three more gigabytes to spare for future ditties), as well as my contacts and calendar. It will even double as an external Firewire hard drive, but I'm obsessive enough with backing up my data that this is probably a handy feature that will probably go overlooked for now. The interface is mindlessly easy to use. All the controls are touch-sensitive with no moving parts, so you simply scroll your finger along the control wheel to move through menus or songs, and there's a "button" in the centre of the wheel for selecting. There are also a couple of buttons for It sorts music by artist, genre, song, and album, as well as importing all your iTunes playlists. It also comes with a couple of games, like solitaire, as well as being able to display text notes and the aforementioned contacts and calendar entries.

And, of course, I really want to play with the thing, but I've got studying to do. As a sort of appeasement to myself, I plugged it into my speakers, and it is currently rocking through my library o' songs as I slave to build a decent summary of hearsay, privilege, spousal competence to testify, cross-examination, the right to silence, and everything else you hear about on police and lawyer shows.

I'll have more after my exam tomorrow. 

I've been dirt, dirt, dirt poor since last spring, and I've had to be extremely careful with my finances. I didn't get my summer job with the CBCN until the end of June, so I had to rely heavily on the generosity of my friends just to get by. I haven't spent any money on clothes, CDs, gadgets, knickknacks or anything else beyond food and rent and utility payments, but even with student loans and my continued employment, I was nearing the end of my ability to support myself.

My financial situation has recently improved, just ever so slightly. I won't go into the details, but the important thing is that banks treat you a lot differently when you're in law school. So, as long as I continue working and being careful with my income, I'm not going to starve or wind up a homeless person who drinks perfume samples. I've been able to pay back a little of the money I owe my friends, and pay some bills, and generally worry less about every single cent that comes into and out of my life.

The one thing I've been extra good about is paying down my Appleloan. I got my iBook through this program last year, and paid it down with the modest sum I earned on an investment from the inheritance from my grandmother (I spent the first half of it on dental care and getting my teeth back up to code) and my employment income last year. It was actually fully paid up, and so the $2000 principal on my beloved computer was reduced down to zero.

So, since I'm still working, less starving, and very responsible with my bills most of the time, I decided to splurge, just this once.

I bought an iPod.

I mean, just a little one. Ten gigabytes. And I got it with a pretty hefty student discount. It hasn't arrived yet, but I can't wait. I see them everywhere these days, and I've been wanting one for literally months. Since before I even switched to Macintosh. I have too much (legal) music to port around on CDs, and I walk everywhere these days (I've even been too poor to buy a bus pass), so music means a great deal to me. In the spirit of the latest nonsense surrounding the iPod battery (non)issue, I splurged on $70 Applecare, which means that anything that goes wrong with my precious over the next two years (including the battery) will be replaced free of charge. As I've remarked recently, Applecare on portable devices more than pays for itself.

Luckily, I have all this studying to do while I'm waiting for it to arrive.

So, speaking of music, I must once again point you to the fabulous ditties located at www.bradsucks.net. Brad's latest project is entitled "Outside the Inbox: Songs Inspired by Spam" and is a compilation of songs by himself and other independent artists that have been inspired, as the title suggests, by the spam they've found in their inboxes. I was listening to it while in the University of Ottawa Brian Dickson Law Library studying for my evidence exam yesterday (they have zippy internet access ports for people with laptops there), and was thoroughly entertained. My favourite song is entitled "My Parents are Gone for the Weekend" and it is modeled on those spam messages allegedly from girls wanting you to look at their smutty webcams. All the music on Brad's site is distributed freely, so please do give it a listen. Share and enjoy. 

With December comes a time of year that I've always been of mixed feelings about. Not only is Christmas a bittersweet time for me (my birthday, and the anniversary of my father's death, both fall on the December 24th), but December also brings exams along in its chilly clutches.

Fortunately, this year I only have two exams -- unfortunately, those two exams happen to be tax law and evidence law. By no one's reckoning are these two going to be easy, and given that they're on the 10th and 12th respectively, time is running out for me to become an expert. Still, I can at least be thankful that my tax midterm (accounting for 40% of the final grade) came back with an A+ on it. In fact, it scares me a little that I did so well. This is tax law, after all. On the other hand, I guess I'd rather be eerily good at understanding the legal mechanics of calculating and regulating taxation than woefully incompetent. And hey, working out that capital cost allowance and dividend tax credit will sure come in handy when I'm doing next year's taxes, right?

Cough.

Meanwhile, my bedroom continues to be an unfortunate mecca for rodents, as I discovered at 6:30 am yesterday morning when my cat was tormenting a mouse it had cornered under my bed. I awoke to discover the poor, horrible little thing hiding in one of my shoes. In my attempt to rescue it, I tipped the mouse out of my shoe, at which point George took after it again, swatted it heavily several times, picked it up in his mouth and dropped it on the floor, and eventually left it stunned atop my (growing) laundry pile. I was then able to put the dazed mouse in a glass, whereupon it revived, ran up my arm, and was gently ushered back into the glass so that I could release the little thing outside. It was a frosty morning to be sure, and the mouse probably just ran back inside the house through whatever access point allowed it indoors in the first place, but at least now it has a fighting chance. If it comes back in here and still gets its little wretched self eaten by my ultra-proud-of-himself cat, then we know it was meant to be.