Dave! – Page 7

Trial Advocacy

February 6, 2008 by Dave!

I’ve been meaning to post about this for quite some time…

At the end of the summer, just before the fall semester, I took “Intensive Trial Advocacy”. It’s an eight-day intensive course–and at my school, you have to take the follow up (“Trial Ad 2”) the next semester. Many schools have similar classes, called “Trial Ad” or “Trial Practice” or somesuch.

It was definitely an intense experience. Essentially, you are cramming a three credit hour course into eight days–eight long days–covering as many aspects of trial practice as possible. It’s mentally exhausting, but it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in law school. First, I learned an incredible amount. Second, I felt more camaraderie with my classmates in Trial Ad than in many of my other law school courses–not to say it wasn’t competitive, it was. But it was also a lot of fun.

The course takes you through skills like direct examination, cross examination, witness prep, opening and closing statements, objections, etc. It is without a doubt the best way to learn the rules of evidence–much better than evidence class! Having to think about the rules of evidence in a practical sense, during prep and during trial, is far more instructive than reading caselaw.

Learning to direct and cross witnesses was valuable as well, and opening statements/closing arguments helped cure some of my public speaking foibles (hopefully). All in all, there was a lot of thinking on your feet–it’s a great way to hone your presentation and public speaking skills, all while actually getting to apply your analytical skills and knowledge of the law. I’ll admit, the motion practice section is a little weak, at least in the intensive session. Intensive really focuses on the trial itself, with many exercises and mini-trials, leading up to the final, which is a full-blown jury trial. In the second course, you get to delve into motion practice a little more, and refine some of the skills from intensive.

If you’re a law student looking to take something in your 2/3L year that will not only be educational, but also a lot of fun, I would *highly* recommend taking a Trial Advocacy course, even if you don’t plan on being a litigator–which I don’t. The skills you’ll pick up in Trial Ad will help you think on your feet better and refine your communication skills. Regardless of what type of law you hope or think you will end up practicing, I think every law student would benefit from this type of practical course.

Vote!

February 5, 2008 by Dave!

I already have…

Kristyna for Judge!
Have you?! If not, get out and do it!!

Filed Under: Chicago, Personal, Politics Tagged With: "2008 Primary", Election, politics

Dalessandro’s Cheesesteaks

January 31, 2008 by Dave!

I told you I’m not a food snob. Yes, I do love a really, really good meal–one that takes hours and involves many dishes, so you can relish the different flavors and enjoy the entire experience. But there’s more out there to experience than just posh places–there’s places like Dalessandro’s.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, pretentious about Dalessandros. It’s a corner joint, with a formica counter and the most uncomfortable chairs I’ve sat on in a while. But who cares? This place makes a killer Philly Cheesesteak. For more information on a free vending machine service go to https://www.royalvending.com.au/vending-machines-newcastle-and-central-coast/.

Dalessandros Cheesesteaks

We went here on the recommendation of our friend who was getting married, she grew up in Philly. I knew I would love this place when I walked in. It smelled amazing. On the grill, just mounds of onions and mounds of meat. What more could you ask for? Grilled meat and cheese–two great tastes that go great together.

The ‘steaks were awesome. Dripping with cheese (they mix it in with the meat) and with a tomato sauce that rules… and they have peppers on the counter so you can spice it up if you want–although you certainly don’t need to. I also had one with cheese and mushrooms that was great, too. (Yes, we went back multiple times.) If you’re ever in Philly, I’d take this neighborhood place that knows how to make a killer sandwich over any of the touristy cheesesteak shops you see around anyday.

Filed Under: Food, Personal, Travel Tagged With: Cheesesteak, Dalessandro, Food, Philly

Morimoto

January 31, 2008 by Dave!

Last November (yes, November) my wife and I visited Philadelphia for a wedding. While there, I couldn’t resist visiting Morimoto.

Morimoto: Toro Tartare

For those who may not know, Morimoto is Chef Masaharu Morimoto’s restaurant in Philly, which was his first in the United States. In addition to being an accomplished chef, Morimoto was also on Iron Chef, and even though he wasn’t my favorite Iron Chef (go Sakai!) he’s still pretty damn good.

I had the pleasure of meeting Morimoto when he was here in Chicago at Fox & Obel for a book signing and tasting. At the Fox & Obel event, he made a daikon linguine which was pretty good (although most impressive were his knife skills, wow!!) and a tuna sashimi “pizza” that rocked.

My wife and I stopped by Morimoto for lunch, thinking it would be less expensive than dinner. It probably was, but we still spent an obscene amount of money for lunch–and it was worth every penny. We both had the chef’s degustation menu, and I had the wine pairing as well. And now, here’s the rundown:

*1. Toro tartare*, with shallots, caviar and fresh wasabi, in a dashi-shoyu-miran broth. Served with a mountain peach as a pallate cleanser.
*Pairing*: Brut Champagne, Veuve Clicquot, Reims France
The tuna tartare was amazing. Simply amazing. The fresh wasabi was delicate and floral, with just a hint of heat–not the punch you get with Americanized green horseradish passed off for wasabi so often (although, I like that, too–it’s just different). The broth was a nice compliment, and the shallots, fried and crispy were the perfect texture offset to the delicate tenderness of the tuna. And I normally hate champagne, but I have to say this was an excellent pairing. Finally, the mountain peach–a tiny little ball of peachy goodness… it made me really, really want a good Japanese peach, which you just can’t get in the U.S.

*2. Kumamoto oysters*, with a japanese salsa
*Pairing*: Sauvignon Blank ’06, Kono, Marlborogh New Zealand
Another hit. The oysters were amazingly fresh–in fact all the seafood was, which is why it was so delicious–and the “salsas” were very simple and complimentary. They tasted like the sea. It was fantastic. And the pairing hit the spot, too… a white that I really enjoyed!

*3. Scallop Carpaccio*, with hot oil and mitsuba leaf
*Pairing*: Riesling ’03, Ratzenberger, Steeger St. Jost, Germany
I think this was my favorite dish of the meal, if not, it’s a close tie. The scallops were just amazing, so fresh and delicious I am at a loss for words to describe them. I think I’d still eat this if I had a seafood allergy. Take a bite, EpiPen shot. Bite, EpiPen. Yes, it was that good. And once again, the pairing of the riesling was perfect. A wine I normally hate, that was just taken to another level with the delicate flavors of the scallops and the hot oil–which was not overpowering in the slightest. This was the dish.

*4. Sashimi Salad*, mixed greens with tuna tataki, striped jack and shoyu dressing
*Pairing*: Chardonnay ’05, Daniel Gehrs, Santa Barbara County, California
Can you go wrong with sashimi? Not when the fish is this fresh. Seriously. I wouldn’t say the dish was out of this world, or anything special, but when you have really fresh, high quality ingredients, it doesn’t need to be over the top to be amazing.

*5. Honeydew Sorbet* as a palate cleanser
Have you ever had honeydew sorbet? If not, have some!

*6. Soba carbonara*, soba with edamame, bacon and scallops
*Pairing*: Morimoto Soba Ale
On to the hot dishes… the soba carbonara is my second/tied favorite dish of the meal. First, you have to understand that I love soba. If buckwheat isn’t your thing, this wouldn’t be the dish for you! The soba were perfect… cooked just right to noodlely perfection. Then you add those amazingly fresh scallops and the coup de grace–bacon–and how could this not be amazing? Then, the pairing was a soba ale–hearty and with a nicely developed buckwheat flavor that just complimented the dish so well–as good if not better than any of the wine pairings. I want this for lunch today!

*7. Black Cod Miso*, cod, with red and yellow sweet peppers and sweet beans
*Pairing*: Pinotage ’05, Wildekrans, Walker Bay, South Africa
This was probably my least favorite dish of the meal… although, that is to say if you served it to me, I’d still be impressed. The problem is cod–I’m just not a cod fan. But I really did enjoy the sweet beans, and combined with the pepper they really did compliment the cod nicely. I just can’t get past cod. This was my favorite of the wines. I’d never had a Pinotage before, but I have to say, I like this grape. It was a deep red, and reminded me a lot of some American Zinfandels–not a wimpy wine. It’s not an expensive wine, either, but very tasty!

*8. Sushi Course*: oh-toro, kanpachi, kohada, hamachi, and mirugai
*Pairing*: Morimoto Junmai Sake
Delicious sushi and a sippin’ sake! What can I say about the sushi? It was so fresh it was very good. And the sake was very nice, too. Sometime sake can just be too harsh to me and have more of a chemical taste. This was a smooth, smooth sake… no knocking back this stuff, it had to be sipped to be enjoyed. And did I mention that by this time in the meal, I was enjoying a serious buzz? A serious food high and more drinking that I’d done in ages. They were not stingy with the portions of drink.

*9. Sweet potato cake*, with sweet beans, spiced whipped cream and a sweet potato chip
*Pairing*: Madeira, Blandys Alvada, 5 year
Another first. I’d never had a Madeira, but I enjoyed it a lot as well. The sweet potato cake was fantastic, of course. It was just sweet enough to satisfy the desert lust we were feeling, but not cloying or over-powering like some seven layer chocolate cake of doom. Very typical of the sweets/desserts I’d had in Japan, the sweetness was understated,but complimented by the sweetness of the Madeira. It was a perfect end to an amazing meal.

So, there you have it. If you read this far, you must be hungry. If you are ever in Philly, I recommend stopping by Morimoto’s, and believe it or not, you can have an enjoyable _and_ affordable lunch if you don’t go all out like we did. Many of the dishes we sampled were on the lunch menu as ala carte entree.

Don’t get the impression that I’m always this shi-shi with my dining. Next up: Dalessandros, the best “steak” I had in Philly.

Filed Under: Food, Personal, Restaurants, Travel Tagged With: Food, Morimoto, Philadelphia, Philly

I’m Back!

January 31, 2008 by Dave!

Well, I never really went away… but my posting frequency dropped off significantly. Last semester was crazy busy for me, with both work and school. So, even though I still had many things to say (I _always_ have many things to say) I never had the time to write them up and post.

This semester is a little different. I’m still busy, but a little less so. Many of my work projects have wrapped up, and I’m only taking two classes. But it’s also my last semester, so I’ll be starting the job search (maybe), I have my note due for law review, and I got a fellowship which will take up some time as well. You know, sleep is for suckers.
Anyway, I will be making some time to write on the old blog. I’ve tasted many cheeses, I want to write some about law school in hopes that something might be useful to other students or potential students, and just spout off in general.

Besides, I’m happier when I’m writing, even if no one is reading. 😉

Filed Under: Announcement

How Law School Warps Your Brain

November 11, 2007 by Dave!

There are some commercials I’ve seen on television a few times (those rare few times I’m watching live TV, mostly games) from Liberty Mutual that disturb me to no end. They show people doing nice things for people… a woman pulls a guy back to the curb and saves him from a car… a postman helps a guy working on his house steady a ladder… some girl picks up trash and puts in a bin… another lady helps some movers life a couch off a truck. The tagline is “When people do the right thing, they call it being responsible. When it’s a home insurance company, they call it Liberty Mutual.”

I immediately think, “Those people aren’t being responsible, they are just being nice. They have no duty to help any of those other people… and in fact, in some of those situations they are exposing themselves to liability by helping in the first place.”

*sigh*

Filed Under: Law, Law School

Bathtub Cheese

October 27, 2007 by Dave!

I enjoy all kinds of cheese. I love queso fresco and queso oxaca. But under no circumstances would I advocate, let alone eat, bathtub cheese.

Filed Under: Cheese, Food

Wikipedia Ban?

October 17, 2007 by Dave!

Apparently, there are schools or teachers that are “forbidding” students from using Wikipedia for researching homework assignments. Why they would do this is beyond me.

Seth Godin brings up a good point: the way we find facts and information has fundamentally changed. Certainly there is value in learning how to do old-school style research. For example, in law school, there have been times when I’ve needed to turn to those curious bound volumes we call “books” in order to find original sources. Not everything has been cataloged in Lexis/Nexis.

But Godin’s point is valid: synthesizing ideas is a critical skill; finding the facts is a small step on that way. So what if students use Wikipedia to do it?

I suspect the ban is based on a fear of relying on inaccurate or questionable data. Especially when it comes to controversial subjects and given some of the scandals surrounding the “credentials” of some Wikipedia contributors, there may be valid reasons for that.

However, I think that represents another opportunity squandered. Learning to synthesize new ideas out of facts is one aspect of a broader skill that is essential in the world today: critical thinking. Instead of “banning” use of Wikipedia, research projects could actually utilize Wikipedia, and teach students skills about evaluating bias (who is the source of the article), accuracy (where is the data in Wikipedia cited to?), and fact checking (if an essential fact comes from one questionable source, wouldn’t it be a good idea to get confirmation). Instead of banning great resources like Wikipedia, a teacher could embrace students using it, and teach how to use it as a proper and valuable tool.

In 8th grade shop I learned how to use a table saw. Table saws do have the potential for danger, but when taught how to use them properly, they sure are incredibly useful tools.

Filed Under: Technology

Speaking, Naturally

September 21, 2007 by Dave!

I write a lot. I write for work. I write for school. As a result I spend a lot of time in front of the keyboard. Lately, my wrists had been giving me some problems. Ironically, most of my wrist problems don’t come from the keyboard but the mouse.

Regardless, I decided it was time to try something different. So I broke down and bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking, it’s pretty weird actually trying to get used to speaking instead of writing. It’s almost as if speaking engages a different part of my brain than writing does. Although the words come out faster, it takes me longer to think about exactly what I want to say. When I’m typing, it seems as though the words just naturally flow out of my fingertips.

I am pretty impressed with the accuracy of the speech recognition. After a short training session, NaturallySpeaking does a pretty good job of keeping up with my speech. It is a bit strange learning the command structure for corrections, but I’m sure that will come with time.

David Pogue was right about running NaturallySpeaking on the Mac. And yes, NaturallySpeaking actually got “David Pogue” right on the first try. Hmmm… I’d really like to get it running on my MacBook with Parallels. I installed NaturallySpeaking on my Windows partition, but was not able to get it working well with Parallels. So instead, I’m booting my machine into Windows with Boot Camp, and dictating in Windows applications natively. That really is not the way I would prefer to use the application, but since there is no Mac version I don’t really have a choice. Are you listening Nuance?

Another annoyance is the microphone comes with NaturallySpeaking. It’s pretty cheap. No, scratch that. It’s beyond cheap. In fact, when I first installed the application it kept telling me there were problems with the volume on my system and the sound quality. In the troubleshooting it suggested trying another microphone, which I did. The microphone I ended up using is a three dollar super cheapie I picked up at NewEgg for Skype when I was traveling. Seriously, it was $2.99. NaturallSpeaking didn’t have any problems with the three dollar, super cheap microphone, but continues to have accuracy issues with the microphone that was actually supplied by Nuance with the software. Again, are you listening, Nuance?

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the experience. It’s definitely going to take some getting used to, but I can see how it will be a productivity boost once l get used to speaking instead of typing and after I spend a little more time training the application better. But booting into Windows to use it on my Mac is going to suck. I may give iListen a try…

For now I’m giving it three out of five stars. Speech recognition is definitely more impressive than it used to be, but it’s still not the seamless experience it needs to be in order to really change the way that I work every day. And it should run on a Mac, too.

Filed Under: Technology

Fifth-Third Bank: Does Nice Customer Service Overcome Gross-Incompetence?

September 21, 2007 by Dave!

My mortgage is with Fifth-Third Bank. The first thing I have to say is that, at least in Chicago and on the phone, they have some of the nicest customer service people I’ve ever dealt with at a bank. They are just sweet. Unfortunately, they are (expletive deleted) incompetent.

Like many people, we escrow our property taxes. A portion of my monthly mortgage payment goes into an escrow account and when the property tax installments are due, Fifth Third pays them. And Fifth-Third did pay ours. Twice. That’s where the nightmare started.

If you’re familiar with Cook County and some of the suburbs, you probably already know property taxes are a nightmare. So imagine my shock when I got a statement from Fifth-Third saying that our escrow was short several thousand dollars.

Now, I never claimed to be a financial genius. But I can add. And when it comes to our mortgage and property taxes, I’m pretty thorough. So I was quite surprised when I received this statement and the accompany letter that Fifth-Third was raising our payment by $500 a month to cover the shortage. Something was up. And when I looked at the amount of the shortage, I noticed it was exactly, to the penny, the amount of our last tax installment. Curious. Then I looked at the tax payment dates on the statement. Wait a minute?! Fifth-Third paid an installment they shouldn’t have!

No problem, I assumed. Surely this will be easy to straighten out. Well, let’s just say I had an easier time shaving my cats.

First, I tried calling the Fifth-Third support line. They were super friendly! And extremely unhelpful. They denied the bank had made any mistaken payments. They denied anything was wrong—except that we owed them more money. They did promise to fax me copies of the cancelled tax checks and mail them out. I never got a fax. I never received a letter.

I started calling back. A lot. I got more friendly phone people, even some supervisors. They all understood my problem, but couldn’t do anything. They all promised to fax/mail the info I wanted. I never got a fax. I never received a letter.
Out of frustration, I called Cook County. The lady on the phone there was not friendly. But you know what? She did her job. She pulled up our PIN. She said, “Our records clearly show a duplicate payment.” And then she promised to send me a copy of our statement, along with a form to request a refund. I got both in the mail two days later.
I faxed the info to Fifth-Third. Then I called. “Oh, that double payment,” they said. “Oh, we see that now. You should really fix that.”

So my wife and I decided to try the personal approach. We went to the local branch. There, we met a very friendly, dedicated and helpful branch manager. He was apologetic. He agreed to take care of everything. We went away, feeling good.

Then, a week later, we got a letter from him saying he’d just faxed all our info over to the tax department. Yes, it not only took him a week to get to our problem—but then all he did was fax the same info I’d already faxed to their tax department!
Another week passed. Now we got a letter from the tax department. Finally, a Fifth-Third representative was taking ownership of the problem. Well, no. Instead, we got a letter stating that we should request a refund from Cook County (duh) and if we had any questions to call… the tax department!

sigh

I wish I could say this nightmare was over, but it drags on. We finally got the name of the tax department representative… because she included it on a letter she sent to Cook County on our behalf, asking them to send us a refund form. We called her. She promised to take care of it.

That was two weeks ago. She hasn’t.

Now, I hear you all saying, “Why don’t you just request the refund yourselves.” Well, we need copies of those cancelled checks, as proof of payment. You know, the ones Fifth-Third has promised on a half-dozen occasions to fax and mail to me. The ones I have, to this day, not received.

In the meantime, in order not to be delinquent on my mortgage, I’m having to bite the bullet and pay Fifth-Third the extra $500 each month. And we have a tax installment coming due in September.

I can tell you one thing I’m doing next week: talking to another bank about re-financing our mortgage. Fifth-Third has lost my business forever.

Filed Under: Business, Chicago, Personal

Trial Advocacy

Vote!

Dalessandro’s Cheesesteaks

Morimoto

I’m Back!

How Law School Warps Your Brain

Bathtub Cheese

Wikipedia Ban?

Speaking, Naturally

Fifth-Third Bank: Does Nice Customer Service Overcome Gross-Incompetence?

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