The Blawgirl loves her a good chuckle (and referring to herself in the third person, apparently). And she also loves the clever things people do on April Fools’ Day. Here are what some pranksters have been doing around the world.
- A man and his emus. My favorite prank so far today has come from the dean of the University of Texas School of Law (via blawg Above the Law). Dean Lawrence Sager wrote an email to his students stating that he would be resigning his position at the law school in order to pursue his first love: raising emus. Sager writes:
“Some of my finest hours have been spent cantering across the Texas plains on the back of an Emu. They are stately, resplendent, Brobdingnagian birds, capable of carrying a man at full gallop the length of 30 hectares on a single hogshead of millet seed.”
UPDATE: According to Above the Law, the dean states that he did not write the letter, but he finds it very funny.
- All your CADIE are belong to us. Google releases CADIE, Internet-based artificial intelligence that has assumed control of the Google company and its goods and services. The setup is pretty elaborate, with CADIE, depicted as a boxy panda, developing her own YouTube page and blog.
- Twitter is the future. The UK’s Guardian newspaper published a story stating that it would go Twitter only.
- Scary clowns. Gizmodo.com has tons of scary clowns (that’s right. Clowns are effin’ scary) and appears to have been hacked.
- Be a Princess of Mars for only $99! Expedia.com is offering flights to Mars!
- New album from NIN. New NIN album ‘Strobe Light’ produced by Timbaland in Strobe-tastic, drum machine awesomeness. Posted by @trent_reznor on his Twitter page. The album is not free, mind you. It costs $18.98 plus a $10 digital convenience fee.
- The last Fark-tier. Fark will introduce a new social network beginning April 2 that looks eerily like some other social
network, I can’t remember which. - How much kyute is too much? A new breed of pet called the puppycat premiers on dogster.com.
- Disney park trifecta in So Cal. Orange County Metblogs broke news this morning about a third Disney theme park slated for Southern California (because the second one was sooo successful) that will be similar to Japan’s DisneySea. The Orange County Register’s Around Disney blog gave me a sad by calling up Disney mucky mucks, who swiftly called hoax. The concept is not too far fetched, as the idea of a third park has been kicked about for years, the Register states.
Find a massive, ever-growing (dare I say, extreme!!) list of April Fools pranks on TechCrunch.
I’ll update this page as I find things today!
Photo: snoshuu / Flickr and bonguri / Flickr
The Blawgirl crawls the Interwebz to find steals and deals for the frugal law student and the competitive bargain shopper. Find a new Frugal Finds 11:30 (ish) p.m. PST every Monday through Saturday! Also, each post is updated as I come across items. You’re welcome.
Alerts:
- Today only. Entertainment.com is offering its 2009 Entertainment Book for all cities for $15. With free shipping, that’s up to $36 off select books, according to DealNews. Entertainment Books contain hundreds of 2-for-1 and 50 percent off coupons valid at many restaurants, hotels, and services in your area, just select the right book for your city! An example: The Orange County (Calif.) book regularly goes for $40, but is being offered at $15 with free shipping!
- Drop by between 4 and 6 p.m. today 1 at Juice It Up and get a free 16-ounce Strawberry Wave. Find your nearest location here. (via OC Deals)
Gadgets and gear:
- Newegg.com is offering the Toshiba Satellite L305-S5933 Pentium Dual-Core 2.16GHz 15.4″ Widescreen Notebook, model no. PSLB8U-027025, for $499.99 with free shipping. (via DealNews via Newegg)
- More from newegg.com: A factory-refurbished Canon PIXMA IP2600 Inkjet Printer, model no. 2435B022, for $24.99. Coupon code “RC243510″ brings the price to $14.99 with free shipping! Find a Brother printer for as little as $47. Find more at DealNews.
- Cabala’s is offering a super cool 3-in-1 Full-Spectrum Lamp for $29.99. Shipping adds an extra $8.95, or pick it up at the store for free. The lamp can be used as a floor lamp, table lamp, or clamp-on reading lamp and features an adjustable goose-neck section. (via DealNews)
- If you’re still driving without a handsfree device, you can pick up the Samsung WEP700 Bluetooth Headset with noise cancelling for a slick $19.99 and get free shipping with coupon code “EMCLPPM27″. Offer expires April 6. (via CheapTweets via TechBargains)
- Walmart offers the Eastsport Dome Backpack for $9.88. You can have it shipped to you for 97 cents more or order it online and pick it up for free at your local store. Backpack features include a front-pocket organizer, two mesh side pockets, padded lumbar support, contoured padded shoulder straps, and more. (via DealNews)
Entertainment:
As a Browncoat, I had to throw this in: You can buy the entire series of Joss Whedon’s “Firefly” for $20 at Amazon.com! Or you can just watch it for free on Hulu.com, where you can find tons of old and new shows to watch for free! They also recently added a documentaries section that includes the popular doc Super Size Me.- iTunes free downloads. Free Peter Bjorn and John ‘Nothing to Worry About’ music video download. Top free app: Skype.
Odds and Ends:
- Get a coupon good for a free ice cream e-mailed to you when you sign up for Baskin Robbins’ Birthday Club. You’ll also receive special offers and coupons, including a discount on a birthday cake. Offer expires April 30. (via CheapTweets via CouponHungry)
- Participating Ben & Jerry’s stores will offer free ice cream cones to everyone during its Free Cone Day April 21 from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. No purchase necessary and one cone per person.(via DealNews)
- At Quiznos retail stores, buy a Toasty Torpedo Combo Meal and receive another Toasty Torpedo sandwich for free with a printable coupon. All you have to do is play the Toast & Destroy game and register your email. Coupon expires April 15. (via DealNews) The game isn’t that bad. You’re a sandwich-firing toaster that has to blast through french fries, burritos and pizzas. Think Galaga whilst battling coronary artery disease. On a side note: I think it would’ve been hella funny for that other sandwich company’s spokesman Jared to come out as a Bowser, king-of-the-koopas-type boss. I challenge you, Interwebz Flash game geniuses, to make it happen for me.
On a side, side note: I think my nerd stripes are showing again with the Firefly, Galaga and Super Mario Bros. references. Crap.
Photo: Madelena Pestana / Flickr
Whilst poking around Facebook today, I came across a closed group called the UC Irvine School of Law Founding Class, which currently lists 26 members.
I’ve written previously on UC Irvine and how folks have speculated about their admissions, and the number seems pretty close to what has been discussed. Check it out for yourself!
By the way, I hate my mailbox. And chances are about 2,400 people who applied to UC Irvine are also learning to hate their mailboxes while waiting to hear back from California’s newest public law school.
Photo: Joe Gratz / Flickr
The Blawgirl crawls the Interwebz to find steals and deals for the frugal law student and the competitive bargain shopper.
Alerts:
- Ending today. Restaurant.com is offering a 70 percent off already-discounted, print-at-home restaurant coupons. Use coupon code ‘SAVE’. (via CheepTweets via techbargains.com)
- Ending today. Get a factory-refurbished Brother HL-2040 Monochrome Laser Printer worth $79.99 for $30 with coupon code “RC204020″ and a $30 mail-in rebate. With free shipping, you get an $80 printer for $30! Visit DealNews for the link to the rebate.
- Ending today. Get an HP All-in-One for as little as $69. Get the HP Photosmart C5280 Q8330A, with coupon code “HPC528030″ at Newegg. For more printer deals, visit DealNews.
Gadgets:
- Toshiba Satellite A355-S6925 16″ NoteBook for $600 with coupon code EMCLPPM66 through April 6. (via DealUniversity)
- Netgear WGR614 Wireless-G router for $16.99 and free shipping. (via DealUniversity)
- Canon PowerShot A480 10.0 MP 2.5″ Digital Camera for $119.00 through April 6. (via DealUniversity)
- 25 percent off and free shipping of Dell Studio desktops of $1,149 or more with coupon code “52KZSVRL0DVBMT”. Deal ends May 1. (via DealNews)
Entertainment:
- RedOctane is offering the Guitar Hero Metallica Wireless Bundle for Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, or PlayStation 3 (as pre-orders) for $99.99 with free shipping. The coupon code “GHMETAL20″ brings it to $79.99. (via DealNews)
- Free subscription to Spin magazine for your Vodka recipe. (via MyDealsBlog)
- Borders Rewards members can get 25 percent off today through Thursday with this printable coupon. (via OC Deals)
- iTunes free downloads. Angel Taylor ‘Make Me Believe’ (pop). John Cage ’4’33″ (whiskey tango foxtrot? hint: It’s four and a half minutes almost two minutes of silence!) Top free app: 3D Brick Breaker Revolution.
Odds and ends:
- CVS pharmacy online is offering 20 percent off everything March 30-April 1. From the CVS main page, you use coupon code CVS ‘spring20′ at checkout (via CheapTweets via FatWallet)
- Free full-size Pantente Pro-V Nature Fusion while supplies last. (via Frugal Freebies)
- Buy one get one free large or medium lattes at Seattle’s Best coffee! Visit JustPlainFrugal for the coupon link!
- Two-piece chicken and biscuit meal for $1.99 at Popeye’s Chicken. (via FatWallet)
- OK. Had to follow up the fried chicken entry with this: 2-year adult membership at 24 Hour Fitness All-Sport, All-Club for $299. Word on message boards, however, is they try to sell you stuff when you go in to register, so put the blinders on and don’t give in!
Photo: Experiment 33 / Flickr
Gizmodo is a great technology blog that also throws in some interesting geek-related news (think Playstation, Xbox, Super Mario Bros., the Princess Leia slave girl outfit, etc.). If you’re looking for reviews for laptops or gadgets, this is a great place to get feedback.
The thing about technology, however, is that it can be pretty expensive. Gizmodo’s answer? Its daily Dealzmodo post, which lists technology, and sometimes fast food, discounts and rebates.
Here’s the latest posting: Gizmodo: Gadget deals of the day.
The site also recently listed an offer for $200 of the $999 white MacBook. You can find out about that offer here.
Thumbnail: Steve Wampler / Flickr
So you’ve gotten into the law school of your (or your parents’) dreams, and you’ve already done the dance of joy to The Killers’ ‘Human’ (or, like in my law school admittance fantasy, to Justin Timberlake’s ‘Sexy Back‘). If you’re not currently in work or in school, you’ve got four months to kill before they lock you in and throw away the key. What do you do?
In the tons of the articles I’ve read regarding the summer before your 1L semester, law school students and administrators have pretty much the same advice: relax homeslice. So, I will. But I am also of the mind that these next four months will be the stuff of fantasy (like chocolate cake that subtracts calories as you eat it … mmm) six months from now. As a result, I’ve compiled something of a 0L Bucket List: a list of things that I or other 0Ls may want to do before we take the plunge.
- Learn a new language. You may not achieve full proficiency (or even be able to ask for the women’s loo) before the end of the summer, but it may be fun to take a language class at your local community college. Or you can take a gander at the BBC’s Languages page, which has some snazzy interactive videos to help you learn French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Portugese, Chinese and snippets of other tongues.
- Go on a trip. If the price tag for college hasn’t already sent you looking for pennies underneath your sofa cushions, and you can bring yourself to part with several C-notes, you may want to consider taking a trip. And since you’re going to law school with the hope of changing the world someday (yes, I read your personal statement), it might be fun for you to go on a volunteer vacation. There are several programs out there that recruit people for one to three week stints for projects stateside and abroad. Through GlobeAware, which offers programs to 15 countries, you can take a one week trip to Brazil for about $1400. Or you can volunteer in the good ol’ U.S. of A with the Sierra Club, which lists dozens of volunteer trips on its Web site.
- Read a book. If you’re a bibliophile like me, you may want to knock out a couple of those quick reads. Judging from Boyfriend’s account of law school, most of your reading in the fall is going to be dense and done either at home or in the law library, so why not take that book tote outside to the local arboretum or park? You may also want to read some law school related books, like Scott Turow’s ’1L: The Turbulent Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School.’
- Spend time with the people that matter to you. Time is to law school as fabric is to a hirsute, male, thong-wearing beach goer in Brazil: There is never enough of it, and you hope it stretches out enough to cover all the, ahem, ‘material’. Which is why it is all the more important to bank as much good will as you can by scheduling outings with your friends, family and significant other, or even going on a summer trip with them before the time leech that is law school sucks all the time away.
- Start a blawg. You’re going to be writing a lot in law school, so why not brush up on subjects, verbs and dangling thingamajigs by starting your very own blog. It’ll get you into a daily habit of reading and writing something, and could turn into a fun little hobby when the fall rolls around. This blawg is powered by WordPress and hosted by a hosting company, but you can get a WordPress-hosted, out-of-the-box blog at WordPress.com, or at Blogger.com, for free.
Watch for future blog posts on the 0L Bucket List!
Photo: I Can Has Cheezburger
By now, most of you have heard of Twitter, the micro-blogging service where you write what you’re doing in 140 characters or less. If not, you’ve been hiding with fellow luddites under a rock somewhere, or in North Korea, or under a rock somewhere in North Korea.
I, personally, am a fan of the site, and was delighted when I came across Twistori. The site pulls tweets, individual posts from Twitter, with the words love, hate, believe, feel and wish, and posts them in a beautiful stream of love, hate, beliefs, feelings and wishes. It’s Twitter as art (twart?).
Maybe, maybe not. But a technology blog reported that Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick dangled the threat of prosecution in front of boys who had been swapping photos of their classmates via text messaging, or ‘sexting’, the practice of trading risque text messages that may even include nekkid photos. Dood. Kids in my day traded Yu-Gi-Oh cards or pogs.
Julian Sanchez of the Ars Technica blog writes:
“In a letter sent to parents in February, Skumanick declared that both the boys caught swapping the photos and the girls who’d been photographed would have to submit to a reeducation program or risk being charged with a felony.”
Rather than take that risk, parents agreed to the program, but some other parents, after seeing the photos, didn’t think the images of their daughters clad in white bras were really all that pornographic. The ACLU agreed and, you guessed it, lawsuit!
“In a lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of the mothers of the three girls, the civil liberties group argues that photos merely showing minors in their underwear or topless so clearly fall outside the statutory definition of “pornography” that Skumanick could not possibly have any “reasonable expectation of obtaining a conviction.” Rather, the mothers charge that Skumanick is using a frivolous threat of prosecution to bully parents into accepting his childrearing “assistance.” The plaintiffs are asking a federal district court to issue declaratory ruling that the photos are protected speech, not obscenity, and to enjoin Skumanick’s threats as a violation of their parental rights.”
Read the more about the fun legal stuff in the article here!
UPDATE (3/31): A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order that prevents the prosecutor from charging the students as child pornographers. Read the article by Ars Technica’s Julian Sanchez here.
One of the local rags, The Orange County Register, recently published an article about a local incident of sexting. In this case, a middle-schooler sexted nekkid photos of herself to at least one friend, and somehow that photo made its way to, like, 10 people. Never in a million years could I have predicted that would happen.
According to the Register’s Jaimee Lynn Fletcher, the group of students who circulated the photos were punished with in-house suspensions, where they attended school but could not go to classes.
Here’s a rule of thumb, people. Never ever send, post, Twitter, etc. a photo of yourself that you would not want shown on national television, to a future spouse, or to a future boss. Somebody somewhere is going to find it and your goodies will be out there one way or the other for all the world to see.
Whether you’re dealing with the stress of applying to law school or the nail-biting of waiting for admissions (or, boo, rejections), I am of the mind that looking at cute things is as good, if not better, than taking aspirin.
If you don’t know me, let me explain: I am a sucker for all things cute, with special attention paid to puppies, kittens and baby elephants.
I’m one of those annoying people who stops folks out for a stroll with their dogs just so I can pet them (the dogs, not the people). And, yes, I know they come from evil, evil puppy mills, but I can’t help but smile and play with the puppies at the local pet store.
Today more than ever there is no shortage of sources for cute on the Interwebz, which makes my fluffy-puppy-LOLcat-baby-heffalump loving heart glad. LOLcats have their LOLs, and all’s right with the world. If you want to join me on this cute odyssey, here are a few places to start your search:
- Cute Things Falling Asleep. I think the name is pretty self-explanatory. This site is a collection of videos from around the Interwebz, mostly YouTube so far, of puppies, kitties, penguins, babies, elephants, etc., falling asleep and looking oh-so-adorable doing so.
- Cute Overload. An overload of mind-exploding and heart-bursting cuteness.
- I Can Haz Cheezburger. LOLcat central. If you haven’t been exposed to the wonder that is a LOLcat (a cat photo with a caption written in LOLspeak) this is a good introduction. And if you’re not familiar with LOLspeak, the site also offers a handy primer and a link to the LOLspeak wiki.
- I Has A Hotdog. The sister site to I Can Haz Cheezburger, this site has photos of dogs and puppies, or “goggies”, captioned in the LOLcat style.
- The Cute Project. A site with the laudable goal of collecting all the world’s cuteness in one place. World peace, one kyute at a time.
Photo: I Has A Hotdog
According to a note by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky published March 9, the school received 2,500 applications from applicants vying for 60 spots in the the UC Irvine School of Law’s inaugural class. In a “Visions of Change” note, which can be found on the law school’s Web site, Chemerinsky states:
“The admissions process for the founding class continues. We have received more than 2,500 applications for the 60 slots in the first-year class. This is the best ratio of applications to slots, an obvious measure of selectivity, of any law school in the country. We have admitted a number of students, received acceptances from some, and are continuing to process a large number of applications. By every measure, the applicants are tremendously impressive and we will succeed in our goal of having an outstanding entering class of students.”
I discuss some of the glawsip regarding how many of those slots may be open here.
Chemerinsky also discusses the hiring of two new professors: Christopher Leslie, a tenured professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law who specializes in contract law and antitrust law, and Tony Reese, a chaired professor at the University of Texas Law School who specializes in intellectual property law.
Thumbnail: Okinawa Soba / Flickr
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