December | 2006

In re: Greetings from Belfast

Posted on December 29, 2006 by ed

So to those who’ve been complaining (all one of you) sorry for the delay over the holidays. Had a great Christmas up in Michigan (shocking that they can produce a nice christmas, and such a horrible football team)

Anyway, a small update on my trip to Ireland, only have a few minutes here on the computer and the timer is ticking away, so its really pressure to write. Flew in alright from JFK via Shannon to Dublin, at least I did, my bag was apparently not brought the whole way and may have spent some time in shannon. No worries though, we continued on and hit the road in our suprisingly huge car by Irish standards, a Ford Mondeo, and in what seemed like no time arrived in Belfast where we had decided to begin our trip.

Things of interest, there is no border crossing between Ireland and Northern Ireland, nothing, no sign, nothing the only thing is a sign saying that the speed limit is now in MPH instead of KM/H. (It may be that the sign would constantly be prone to graffiti, vandalism, ‘Get out of Ireland’ slogans, etc.)

The hockey team here (only a few players are of course Irish, apparently most, including Theo Fleury are Canadian, American, or Eastern European) is named ‘ TheCoors Belfast Giants’ yet no Coors is sold in the stadium (Harp, Guiness, etc. are sold thankfully) yet Coors ads abound, and coors is barely sold here, strange I say. Time running out, more on the game soon!

Filed under: Misc, Travel | 1 Comment »

In re: Hitching is the way to go (in Cuba)

Posted on December 17, 2006 by ed

Cuba whether or not you believe official statistics has an extremely low crime rate (especially if you compare it to nearby islands and central America), as well as having an amazing literacy rate. Of course the island has plenty of problems and poverty is one of them. That poverty has helped keep hitch hiking as a standard mode of transport even for middle class folk. ‘The Correspondents Diary’ at the Economist has an interesting post on his experiences providing rides for people in Cuba and his sadness that it doesn’t exist here as a safe and legitimate means to get around.

“We’ve lost the ability to hitch-hike in America; driving around Cuba reminds me of how much we’ve lost. It’s a wonderful thing to talk to strangers about their lives. And because I’m already doing them a favour by giving them a ride, it’s one of the few places where they won’t ask me for money. Instead, they’ll want to return the favour. I had dinner at one hitch-hiker’s house; another wanted to show me around his village.” See post here at the Economist.

Filed under: Misc, Travel | Leave a Comment »

In re: Law School Exams

Posted on December 14, 2006 by ed

Its when I start writing posts about Google Patent Search when i realize I’ve had enough studying for my Wills, Trusts & Estates exam as i can take. I’ve read through commercial outlines, listened to a 6 CD set on the subject as well as reading through my semesters worth of crappy notes. I remember in college hearing from a professor how in law school we’d buy books (on our own, off the syllabus) that were about the books we had on the syllabus and before I knew it he was right and I was that person. Its not even good students who do it, its rather the reverse, but like Dumbo grasping at a feather I always feel I won’t be okay without the commercial supplements to our casebooks and dive in often at the last minute with books with in series such as ‘Examples & Explanations’ — Sounds fun?

Exam time isn’t fun, its tough trying to prepare for your one evaluation for the year, on a test format you aren’t even completely clear about. Surrounded by stacks of notes, outlines, highlighted and underlined books, you never know when you’ve had enough, but you come back the next day to the library and sit the entire day, neglecting the world around you, under fluorescent lights reading about testamentary capacity, or lapses in residuary estates.

Anyway, I think its about time to go, it rambling here and its probably not the ringing endorsement of law school that I want this to read as.

Filed under: Law School, Misc | Leave a Comment »

In re: What has Google done for you recently?

Posted on December 14, 2006 by ed

Google has had great success (read profits) from advertising on their search engine, but they haven’t been standing still and their ‘labs’ have been creating plenty of other products (spreadsheet app, word processor, and online photo hosting to name a few I’ve checked out) For those interested in IP Google has taken to harvesting the public domain in the form of Google Patents (not their ones, but the US repository of patents) It also starts off the opening page with five random patents, kinda cool I say.

Of course the USPTO already has a website and database of patents you say, why do we need another? Well the official website isn’t exactly the most user friendly and the search process can be a bit tedious, Google has made a much more visually appealing site with easier searching, of course Google Patent still has problems, including that it is several months out of date. There are other sites that offers patents as well including PatentStorm and Free Patents Online

Filed under: Internet, IP, Law | 1 Comment »

In re: Zingerman’s of Ann Arbor – does it have an illegitimate Columbus child?

Posted on December 13, 2006 by ed

At first they just seem like some coincidences, but the more you look at the menus of Zingerman’s (an Ann Arbor institution) and of Katzinger’s (some would say a Columbus institution, but clearly with less national fame than the former, and clearly the ‘original’) you would think they have some affiliation. They both have two kinds of pickles that you can choose with your sandwiches, they share a certain style to their sandwiches and they both have ridiculously high prices and they both have two sandwich sizes (okay, that’s not that strange). Anyway, after looking at their menus (Zingerman’s sandwich menu here, Katzinger’s here), and seeing the similarities, I noticed a post on Chowhound, on their midwest forum that said the two were corporate cousins (see a recent Chowhound thread on Zingerman’s). Despite the lack of love shared between Columbus and Ann Arbor, I though, hey its possible they do seem similar, but I figured I’d delve deeper and then I found out apparently they aren’t. That’s right, its just coincidence? At least corporately they are different, they each have their founding stories (Zingerman’s has led to an empire, at least locally and through mail order). Then later on I saw posts in the Chowhounds forums that at least in Zingerman’s eyes Katzinger’s wasn’t such a coincidence and that at one point a lawsuit was filed (and apparently lost by Zingerman’s) but I was unable to find evidence of this – although I did find a story that mentioned another Zingerman’s lawsuit against a deli.

I haven’t been to Zingerman’s in a while, but this Christmas I hope to drop in and have it again if I can wiggle it into my family’s Christmas plans while we are up in Michigan for the holiday, and as for Katzingers, the first time I had it I was disappointed, considering the prices it wasn’t that good, but I will give it another shot and then hopefully be able to gauge how skilled a rip off of Zingerman’s it is.

Filed under: Business, Food, Misc, Ohio | Leave a Comment »

In re: one red paperclip

Posted on December 11, 2006 by ed

I hadn’t heard about ‘one red paperclip‘ til recently (surprise as its right up my alley!) a story of how a Canadian man started trading with a red paper clip and through a series of only 14 barters ended up with a house in Canada. He has a blog oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com that shows each barter and its quite interesting / funny. Also some economics lessons here…

Also checkout Steve Roach & The Art of Law’s (former OSU Law Student) post on barter and Section 1031 Exchanges and Coins

Filed under: Economics, Misc | 2 Comments »

In re: The inreblog.com smoking debate…

Posted on December 8, 2006 by ed

In case you don’t visit the comments you have missed a little debate following my post “In re: Head for the border – Ohio smoke free as of today” that touches on some of the issues of smoking bans you can see them here.

Filed under: Health, Law, Ohio, Politics | Leave a Comment »

In re: NFL Network, Time Warner, you’re both greedy.

Posted on December 7, 2006 by ed

I wrote earlier how last week I noticed the Bengals game was blacked out here on a Thursday night broadcast on the NFL network. As I mentioned it turns out all games on WOW!, my cable provider will be blacked out as they haven’t agreed to pay $0.7o/per subscriber, compared to $0.20/per subscriber without the eight games. Time Warner, who also is in Columbus as the major cable provider doesn’t carry the network at all, because they have been fighting over whether the channel would be a basic channel everyone would have to get, or as part of a sports package, that for an additional fee subscribers would get.

See Columbus Dispatch story ‘For many, game is no-see TV‘

The two sides have turned this argument public, putting up websites arguing that they are right and the other is just greedy. The NFL has a site www.iwantmynfl.com and Time Warner Cable has www.nflgetreal.com. The difference of where the channel is huge, as if it was a basic tier channel they’d have everyone sharing in the cost and really raising the income for the NFL. Of course the NFL just says they want everyone to have it saying on their website

“WE DON’T WANT YOU TO PAY MORE MONEY TO SEE IT!

NFL Network is not trying to charge consumers money; in fact we are working hard for just the opposite.

We have been working hard to ensure these games are presented as part of your basic cable lineup like popular channels MTV, TNT, USA and ESPN without ANY additional costs being passed along to you.”

But at a cost of $137 million for Time Warner (if they put it as a basic channel) someone is going to pay for it – Oh, what about ads? Clearly ads will pay a lot of that, I actually have no idea if the ads for Time Warner would ad up to a large chunk of that cost or not, I’d have to be guessing that they don’t and most of the programming on NFL Network is going to be garbage that won’t get any ratings and these Thursday games as long as its listening to Bryant Gumbel aren’t gonna get great ratings either. So I just wish I had my Browns v. Steelers game tonight on WOW, but it doesn’t look like its gonna happen, and in reality I am glad as I don’t want to pay for a whole year of a channel to see ONE game on ONE night. So lets all just keep on being greedy.

Filed under: Media, Misc, News, Ohio, Sports | 2 Comments »

In re: Head for the border – Ohio smoke free as of today.

Posted on December 7, 2006 by ed

As of today the state of Ohio, the entire state, not just some neighborhoods have gone smoke free. I think this is great, I love going out and I love coming home not smelling of smoke (and its not just smelling of smoke, its smelling of smoke so much that your clothes need dry cleaning, you need a shower and you can taste it the next morning). Anyway, some of my favorite bars in Cleveland will now be smoke free which will be a great change.

I also wonder if anything here in Columbus will change now that the state law will provide a bit more enforcement (eventually, they have 6 months to workup a plan) As of now there are a number of bars I don’t like to be in because they happen to be as smoke filled – if not more so – then they were before Columbus went smoke free. The problem was in Columbus there is no one to enforce the laws and certain bars, not naming names…B Hamptons, Mickeys, Zenos…among others switched to the infinitely covert system of providing ash trays in the forms of plastic shot glasses of water (B Hamptons) or even more clever the empty altoids tins at Mickeys.

Filed under: Health, Law, Misc, News, Ohio | 18 Comments »

In re: Finally we turn to bipartisian decision making?

Posted on December 6, 2006 by ed

The Iraq Study Group which consisted of 5 democrats and 5 republican and was co-chaired by James Baker of Sr. Bush fame, has finally released their findings and has made 79 recommendations. Among these include moving to include Syria and Iran in diplomatic talks in stabilizing the region and changing the roles of US troops in Iraq. The reason I mention this is to me it seems like these types of group thinking are the things that should have gone on BEFORE the war. Not that Cheney y Bush would have changed their minds and tempered their lust to go into Iraq, but discussion, debate and getting input from various sides can usually be classified as a good thing.

Filed under: News, Politics | Leave a Comment »

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