On sekin thauwt

You know, I may come back to thisaheer blog thingy. The dang new Facebook layout is givin' me fits. You'd think they'd stop a-changin' it evry dang week, but they jus cain't. I guess they cain't hep themselves.

The truth about law school

So all my finals are over. Worst time ever. To all my readers who want to know what my life has been like in law school, I think this video sums it up better than I could:

Tribune falters

The Tribune Company went bankrupt before my former employer, GateHouse Media. Who knew? But it can't be long now...
The great part about the Trib company is that the $8.2 billion deal to take it private was financed in large part through a loan against the employee's pension plans. Of course, the employees had no say in this and now the equity that their pension leveraged in the company is worthless. Of course, that douchebag Zell will get a shot at recouping the $500 million he put in, while the employees won't. Ah, capitalism...

A funny thing happened on the way to Iowa City...

As many of my loyal readers (all 10 of them) know, I drive back and forth to Rockford from Iowa City every weekend to see Nicholas. It's a low-stress drive with no traffic, which makes the three-hour trip easy. And my trusty Ford Explorer is a comfortable way to travel, even if the price of gas is prohibitive. Thank you economic downturn, for the drop in oil prices!
But anyway, last night I was driving back when the engine started making a funny noise. A rattling noise. At first I thought it was exhaust, but when I pulled over to check, it sounded more like a valve pinging with the hood open. Being a moron, I kept on driving. About 120 miles into the trip, the truck lost power and I limped it off of I-80 near Bettendorf. I didn't make it very far toward town and it quit completely on a dark, lonely road. A cheerful tow truck driver picked me up about 11:30 p.m. and took my now useless vehicle to a Ford dealership. He dropped me at a nearby hotel. When I talked to the Ford mechanic the next day, he informed me that the engine block was now a 1,000 pound paperweight because the crankshaft wasn't moving at all.
Waah-waah-waaaahh.
So he wanted almost $5,000 to put a rebuilt long block into it. I took a pass and found a friend in the Quad Cities to point me to a reliable mechanic who's going to charge me $2,800 to replace it with a used engine. Thanks to the relative comparison, that price sounds like it's not so bad even though it's a disaster. Right now I'm waiting in the hotel lobby for a ride to the car rental place so I can get back to Iowa City.
Good times, good times.
Highlight of the story? When the tow truck driver pulled up and jumped out of his cab. Before he started working the hydraulic controls, he looked up and pointed out a cloud above us in the crisp night. The moon was creating an areola of light around it. Sublime.

Back to my old pursuit...

One narrative that's been overlooked here since the start of law school is the continuing implosion of my former newspaper.
Last Monday, the paper announced another 13 layoffs. These are in addition to the 20 buyouts they did in May. I have a hard time understanding how the financial outlook changed so much in four months that they had to cut payroll again. It's like a bunch of kids are running the newspaper business now. No planning, no vision, just reaction to crises.
I'm so glad I got out. But the sad thing is, nearly everyone I know is trying to get out -- especially people my age who've spent 8-10 years in the business. An excellent political reporter I know left a few years ago to pursue law. The best writer I've ever worked with, who became a city editor, is finishing her teaching certificate so she can change careers. Another talented reporter is considering PR work. My career mentor now works for a university communications department. A former newspaper colleague freelances exclusively after being laid off this summer. Last week I met a 3L here at Iowa who used to work for the Peoria Journal-Star. A law school classmate left the Des Moines Register.
Who will mind the till? Editors can try to put on a brave face, but it's a downward spiral because the revenue side of newspapers isn't going to improve. That means more payroll cuts, more reductions to the news product and fewer and fewer readers as the value of the newspaper diminishes. Oh, and don't put your hopes in the internet. It doesn't make money...

P.S. A single share of GateHouse Media, the owner of the Register Star, is trading today at 64 cents. A newspaper off the rack costs $.75.

Third day: Time for drastic action

This orientation week is GRUELING. I'm told by other 1Ls (1st year law students) that this is the worst week of reading we'll have all year. Supposedly this is coming from the upperclassmen, but it may also be wishful thinking on our parts. But seriously, I cannot imagine taking this level of abuse for another year. If this is how the workload is, nobody would ever go to law school. Tonight we have 58 pages to read. Folks, we're not talking about US Weekly here. We're talking about flippin' legal history and half a dozen case summaries. The case law is written by judges and read by lawyers, so it uses completely unfamiliar jargon. Know what a demurrer is? Neither do I. Did I mention we have a final exam for this 1-credit immersion course? On Saturday morning?
In light of tonight's near impossible task, I see no recourse but to salvage the overripe Missouri peaches I bought from Hy-Vee by baking a cobbler.

Why I'll never shop at Macy's

The battery on my Fossil watch died this week, so I went out to the department store formerly known as Marshall Field's to get it replaced. When I first got the watch years ago, a Field's clerk adjusted the armband with a special tool for me, so I figured they had the equipment to take the back off and install a new battery.
But Marshall Field's is dead. Department store chain Federated bought the Chicago icon a few years ago and turned the entire chain into Macy's so it could save money printing gift boxes.
Anyway, the clerk at Macy's said they don't change batteries. What?! I was pretty frustrated by that, so she directed me to Dakota Watch Co., one of those crummy kiosks that clutter every square foot of the mall. The friendly clerk manning the display was in the middle of eating her dinner, but she replaced the battery on my watch for $17 with a 2-year warranty.
So a kiosk that sells $39.99 watches in the middle of the mall can provide better service to me than one of the oldest department stores in the country. Lame. No wonder department stores are dying...

Low-dollar deal

UPDATE: Today (Wednesday), we learned that last month was our newspaper's worst drop in profits in year-over-year comparisons in 10 years. The economy is terrible.

A share of stock with my company is now worth less than a short cafe latte.
Hoo boy. Pretty soon I'll be able to buy the whole corporation company by taking out a title loan on my Ford.

Touch of gray

Today I was over at Meegan's apartment discussing how we were going to handle Nicholas' transfer of placement when she looked at the top of my head and exclaimed, "You've got a gray hair!"
Actually, I had several. This caused her considerable glee.
I guess at the tender age of 31, my world weariness is finally catching up with me. I can't say I'm too surprised. Between the divorce, work stresses, caring for a hyper 5-year-old boy, trying to sell a house and getting ready to move, I think I've earned every one of those three gray hairs.
I've never been somebody who wanted to cling to youth. I've always wanted to be older, ever since I was a first grader hanging out with my sixth grade cousins. They seemed so sophisticated and grown up. I want the respect and wisdom that come with age. Meegan would tease me that I was an old man in a young man's body. Well, looks like the body is catching up with the soul.
So next week I'm going to get my will made up and start shopping for cemetery plots.

Great plan, guys! Lemme know how it works out

The start-up company that bought my newspaper a year ago is about to implode. GateHouse Media was formed four years ago when two bottom-feeding newspaper chains -- Liberty Group Publishing and Community Newspapers -- met in a dive bar five minutes before closing time. They were too drunk to see straight and went home together. Because they both specialized in raping small community newspapers, it was a perfect match.
The new company's CEO, Michael Reed, was lauded as a savior to the flagging newspaper industry. The fledgling company created a "hyperlocal" strategy: delivering content in small markets where newspapers still own the advertising dollar. Using cheap borrowed money, GateMouth gobbled up small dailies, including Gannett's Rockford Register Star, which became one of the largest papers in the new chain.
The company IPO'd at $18 a share in 2006 and a New York hedge fund, Fortress Investment, held a majority of the stock, which paid dividends -- a sweet gimmick attract shareholders.
Then the magic faded. Ad revenue tanked. Thanks to the mortgage meltdown, free-lending banks got kinda stingy with their dough. A year ago, GateMouth was trading near $20 a share. This week, its share price fell below THREE DOLLARS. That's an 86 percent free-fall in value.
If its stock chart were a ski hill, you'd break land speed records going down the slope. And then you'd crash and die...
Last quarter earnings showed a 4.2 percent slide in same-store revenue. Operating margins were barely wide enough to slip a credit card through. That's bad news when you're $1.3 billion in debt and promising your shareholders a dividend payout every quarter.
So long story short, analysts are now predicting the dividends will evaporate so the company can pay its own bills (including $24 million in debt service payments). And with them the last few shareholders will vaporize too since they were only hanging on to the penny stocks for their dividend anyway.
Did I mention that this media company shaved payrolls at nearly every paper it bought in the last year? We lost six people in my newsroom through buyouts. Now we've got one editor for every two reporters.
So one of three things is going to happen: GateMouth is going to start sloughing off its newspapers to stay afloat or file for Chapter 11 protection and slough off its newspapers to appease creditors.
Man I'm glad I'm getting out of this @!#$*& business.

Oh, the agony

My left wrist is aching thanks to the ailment that is the bane of every desk jockey: carpal tunnel. A colleague called it the wuss' disease.
But people, it HURTS. I couldn't get to sleep last night it hurt so much.
I wonder if my precious, precious Treo is contributing to this inflammation. Typing messages with my thumbs on a keyboard smaller than a business card can't be good for the nerves in my arm.

So much for that idea

I said I was going to buy a new car to save money on gas. Note past progressive tense of "go." Upon further investigation, buying a tiny car that gets twice the gas mileage of my Ford Explorer will not save me money at all. In fact, it will cost me much, much more.
How can this be, you ask. Well, it seems that every buffoon in America who bought an SUV over the last six years has decided to dump it in favor of more fuel efficient models. So the trade-in market is glutted with gas-guzzling trucks. My dealer will give me $500 less than what I owe on my Ford. Nice. That means I'd have to come up with about $1,100 now to cover the loan payoff, plus tax, title and license fees.
Then I found out that insuring a motorized skateboard built in 2005 is far more expensive than insuring a loaded SUV built four years earlier. Like about $130 more every six months.
So being the industrious fellow I am, I calculated what it would cost me to buy the little car versus to keep the big Ford, which will be paid off in 18 months. And guess what? Over the course of three years of law school, owning the Kia would save me $2,500 in gasoline, but still cost nearly $3,700 more than keeping the Ford thanks to the extra payments and insurance premiums.
Guess I'll keep the road hog. So much for reducing my carbon footprint. Can't say I'm too sad about this. It's much more fun to drive down the highway in the Explorer.

Bye, bye comfort and luxury

I have to buy a new (used) car. My 2001 Ford Explorer is getting way too expensive to fill up -- I'm going to hit $75 a tank with gas approaching $4 a gallon. Did I mention it sucks down petrol at the rate of about 14 miles a gallon in the city?
I'll probably be driving back and forth regularly to see Nicholas after I go to law school, which is a 175 miles one way. So I'm opting for an economy car.

A part of me died to write that.

You see, I thought I had given up little cars for good when I bought my honking SUV two years ago. My 6'2" frame fits inside it comfortably. I can haul stuff. I can stomp on the gas and it moves. It's fun to drive in the snow. When I commuted back and forth to the suburbs every day, I drove a Hyundai Accent and then a Saturn SC2. While the Hyundai was acceptable because it had some headroom, I hated the Saturn because it was too low slung.
But the cold, hard reality is that I'll need a commuter car again to trek between Iowa City and Rockford. Blecch. Here's the hatchback I'm considering, a 2005 Kia Rio Cinco.
There's pros and cons to this deal. Here they are...
What I'll get:
Twice the gas mileage.
Warm feelings knowing that my carbon footprint is diminished (yeah, I wasn't really losing sleep over that one anyway).
A CD player that works consistently (who cares, all my music is MP3s now anyway).
What I'll have to do without:
Cruise control
Power windows
Tilt steering that actually accommodates my frame.
Power door locks
Stretching out my legs while driving.
Power mirrors
Acceleration
Power seat adjustment
Cargo room and a roof rack
A quiet, smooth ride
Antilock brakes
Less expensive insurance rates
Enjoyable driving

Givin' ain't easy

Gave my pint of O+ today. A few lessons learned:
1. I don't care how old you are, when a nurse sticks a needle the size of a coffee straw into your arm, it HURTS.
2. Don't stand up quickly after depositing a pint of blood from your body into a plastic bladder. It makes the nurses nervous when you say that you're dizzy.
3. Don't drink three bottles of apple juice in rapid succession after giving blood. Because it might as well be prune juice when you drink that much of it.
4. In fact, don't give blood at 9 a.m. at all. Wait until after lunch when you've been eating all day.

For the last time

I have to go to work now. On a Saturday. I hate this part of my job.
But... this will be the last time I will ever have to work for a newspaper on the weekend.
Yes.