Things That Just Work (And Things That Don't)

I've spent too much of this Memorial Day wrestling with my husband's ThinkPad in an effort to get it to connect to our wireless network in a way that would ease the minds of our respective law firms' risk management aficionados. I'm about done trying broker accords between XP and OS X. Any insights into the following will be greatly appreciated.

Whither WEP? When WEP's on, the ThinkPad's offline. Period. Only way it will connect is if our packets are lolling out the windows like so many Amsterdam call girls. (This is with an Airport Extreme and v. 3.1.1 of the software.)

Paper Please. Is it too much to expect the ThinkPad to see the fully compatible USB printer attached to the Airport?

Serendipity to the rescue, however. My misery always loves Dr. Weinberger's company, and he offers this splendid account of why he had to take back his daughter's Samsung-Napster MP3 player:

I had a bad feeling about the Napster from the moment I started installing the software. It kept adding layers and layers of cruft, forcing me to upgrade my Windows Media Player, bundling in a CD burner, forcing me to register at Napster.com...window after window of incomprehensible files and DLLs until I wanted to scream that it ought to take its over-educated, over-engineered supercilious ass to the mountains and take up goat herding. And, sure enough, although Windows recognized the Napster device, the Napster software didn't. After four hours of trying, I gave up.

Plus, while moments ago Googling "callgirl" and "call girl" to get the preferred usage, Belle de Jour, Diary of a London Call Girl, popped up in my search results. Would that this could last: she's presently number — you guessed it — 69 in Technorati's Top 100.

Sounds Terrific

Soundwalk audio walking tours presently cover just certain NYC neighborhoods, but look for more to come. (Spotted on CNBC World, and Time Asia has a nice article.) Downloadable as MP3s from eMusic, also available from Audible and iTunes, or buy the CDs and rip 'em yourself.

Mom-entary Flashes

Kids can teach you a great many things. Like who Hap Palmer is, and how certain of his songs can cling to your synapses like neural peanut butter. And that there's a mommy blog ring. (Thanks Jonathan and Eve). And that strawberry ice cream's not for breakfast anymore.

To name a few.

This 1/2 Year's New Blawg

Okay, so I've gotten a trifle blasé about those daily weekly bi-weekly formerly semi-regular updates to the blawgroll, and associated posts. This is not because I don't cherish each new legal weblog as though it were my very own firstborn...oh, wait, that is why! You'll thus rightly conclude from my coming forth with a "new blawg" post that 1) the baby's asleep (how do they get by on so little sleep??? I'm fairly certain no one's spiked his rice cereal with Red Bull...), and 2) Will Work For Favorable Dicta is a keeper. And I'm not just saying that to avoid a lethal splat from the Energy Spatula.

Feeds And Foods For Thought

Anthony Paonita has an article in Corporate Counsel on law related sites with RSS — Feeding Time — in which he notes my undiagnosed and untreated ADHD (though he generously refrains from calling it that) and somewhat spotty RSS feed. So although this may violate or ignore certain "garbage in, garbage out" principles, I just ran my existing RSS 0.91 feed through FeedBurner, with the desired effect of not breaking existing subscriptions yet giving new subscribers more options. The new feed is here, and if you prefer a stripped down summary version, it's here. Note the old feed still works. Your feedback (sorry) is most welcome. (In his article, Anthony mentions parenthetically but interestingly that "Corporate Counsel's Web site, corpcounsel.com, and its sibling site, law.com, should have an RSS feed by early summer.")

Visitworthy:

• Matt Haughey on Music Licensing and American Idol


• David Weinberger on Five Years of Cluetrain [Via Marc Canter]


• The Ninth Circuit Judicial Council on e-discovery


• Mary Bridges on this week's hearing in Capitol Records et al. v. Alaujan [Via Politech]


• Tom Blog's Blog


• Michael Lowe has a new project that should prove helpful should you ever need to expunge or seal Texas criminal records.