Saturday, March 31, 2007

Dead Phone

I went out for dinner last night with a group of people I go to law school with (soon I'll be able to say WENT to law school with). The evening, which was to be the last night of my cell phone's life, started out great with dinner at Raga on Broadway. The food was great, the company was great, etc. etc. Dinner ended around 7 or 7:30 and a small group of us ended up at Earls for post-dinner drinks.

At some point during the night I was standing at the sink in the bathroom and I got a text message or something so I opened it up (it's a flip phone) and turned to leave. The phone slipped out of my hand and landed on the hard tile floor, which really shouldn't be that big a deal because it's not like I haven't dropped it on tile, pavement, hardwood, or any other number of hard surfaces in the two years I've had it. But I guess this was one more fall than the poor little guy could handle, because when I picked it up the screen was dead. The light was on, but there was no display on the inside or the little outside window of the flip part.

Basically, the phone was broken. I got back to the table and tried turning it off and on about 5 times, pressing a lot of buttons, shaking it a bit, but nothing worked. Then I decided, and this seemed like a really good idea at the time, that it probably just needed to be smashed into the corner of the table a couple times. One jolt had broken it, so it seemed logical that a couple more hard jolts would fix it right up.

So that's when it really broke. I guess I maybe hit it a little harder than I should have, because when I was finished the phone looked like this:



As you can see the phone was pretty banged up new damage aside. I know that crack wasn't there after the bathroom fall, but I'm not sure when the side button made its exit. Anyway, I murdered my phone. I could tell it had power because the keypad lit up, but aside from that the screen was dead.

And I have to say, I'm pretty attached to my phone. So much so that when I woke up (read came to) this morning, I was acutely aware that something important was missing from my life. The first thing I did was head on down to the Bell Mobility store on Robson with my murdered phone to figure out what to do with it.

I really didn't expect much in the way of fixing the old phone, and even before last night's developments I'd wanted a new one. But I was hoping they could at least pull the numbers off my address book (Bell doesn't use SIM cards). Anyway, turns out they couldn't, so if I had your number before, it's fairly safe to assume I don't have it now. If you could email it to me that would be great. You can text it too, but put your name in there because a text from 778-123-4567 that just says "here's my number" doesn't help me out a lot.

So back to the phone. Contrary to what might seem fair and reasonable, my warranty did not cover my attempts at repairing the phone. It didn't matter because the warranty had expired anyway. But when the Bell guy was setting up my new phone he said (and later reiterated): "The warranty on this phone does not cover smashing it against things." Noted.

I ended up with a Motorola KRZR phone, which I have to say is pretty cool. It plays MP3's, can take pictures and video with sound, and lets me back up my address book to the computer. I can also take any song I have on my computer and turn it into a ringtone, so I've been doing that today instead of studying.

Check it out...


So hopefully I can get 2 years out of this one too. Because really, 2 years is pretty good. I was just getting to the point where people were saying "your phone sucks you need a new one," so it happened at the right time.

Alright it's time to study some... uh.... stuff. Tomorrow is April. That means exam season is here, so look for more blogging than usual as I think of things to do to avoid hitting the books.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Law Prom Pics

We had our class of '07 grad dinner and dance last Friday at the Four Seasons downtown. After spending a week procrastinating I'm finally posting some pics.

Some of the pics were blurry because the lighting was low, but here's what I got. Email me if you want a full size copy of any of 'em.

I'd put captions on but do you really need to read what I have to say about each one? Nah...




Wednesday, March 14, 2007

4 weeks and counting...

Four weeks from tomorrow is the last day of classes. I can't wait. Even though 2 of my finals are going to be painful. Very, very painful.

Administrative law is killing me. Killing me. Here's how a typical lecture goes:

The cases say the law on this issue is A, B, and C. We think this is a lie. We don't understand it. Nobody does. Just try to know everything so you can argue something. We don't know what standards apply in any given situation. But it will be on the exam.

Uhh... help?!

Professional responsibility: It's probably hilarious that I would be worried about this exam. But in my defense, it's hard to get anything from the classes. We just sit around in groups and talk about problems that we don't get the answers for. I should probably buy the materials and do some of the readings...

Immigration: I like immigration. It's one of only 2 courses this term that is somewhat interesting. And I'm exercising my assignment options so the exam is only going to be an hour. The other class I'm fairly interested in is...

Succession: Wills and estates. 3 hour exam. I haven't done a lot of the reading, but it shouldn't be too bad.

International trade law: It's boring. I get bored when I'm there. Quickly... and it's stuff that I should in theory find interesting. But I have a hard time getting through it. Happily it's fairly easy stuff, so I'll be able to pull it together...

So I wouldn't say things are looking any worse this term than any other term. And, for March 14, I'm probably a lot less stressed than I have been by this point in other semesters. Probably has something to do with me not having any papers...

We had our grad dinner and banquet on Friday and I've got some pictures to post... I'd do it now but I'm in class and the pictures are on my desktop. So... I'll do it later. Maybe tonight? Hard to say... soon though.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

It might not rain Thursday...

I know, it's hard to believe. But it's true. The Weather Network is forecasting clouds for Thursday, but no rain.

They probably messed up, and it really will rain on Thursday, but right now it's pretty cool to think that some time within the next week it will stop raining for a few hours.

Fingers crossed...

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

How is it March??

I haven't been blogging a lot lately. Partly because I haven't had time, mostly because I'm lazy. There's been a lot going on...

I moved last Monday. You know, moving really sucks. Badly. It took 3 days to get everything packed up and cleaned and then one day to move and another couple days to unpack and get everything set up. I had help with the actual move - which is great because I couldn't have done it myself.

I'll take some pictures of my new place one of these days... I've got some messy pictures the day I moved in. I'll post those first. But not now because I'm in class.

I'm in Admin law... too boring to even talk about. Let me just say this: I should have taken it last year. Or not at all. But it's good to have if I want to practice immigration law.

What else...

I got sick last week... I'm pretty sure it was food poisoning. It came on suddenly at about 2:30am and left just as suddenly about 24 hours later. I'll spare ya the gory details but it was pretty bad. And my stomach turns when I think about baked ravioli with meatballs (the last thing I ate before it happened). It'll be a long time before I eat pasta. Or meatballs.

Only 5 weeks of class left after this week. I CAN'T WAIT. I'm not even worried about finals this term (catch me in a month) and I don't have any papers. I'm just putting in time...

Our grad dinner is on Friday, which I may or may not be going to. I saw an email about it sometime around reading break but I hadn't talked to anybody and didn't know who was going. Well, apparently everybody is going so now I'm trying to get a ticket. I should know by tomorrow. If I do go, there'll be pictures.

And speaking of reading break, I stretched this year's week-long break into 19 days. That's a personal record. I can't take all the credit though... half my classes were canceled the week after reading break. As for me, I was moving, then I missed that day because I was sick, and I missed the day before reading break because I was doing something for my immigration law class. But yeah, 19 days. Not bad.