I am literally writing this entry

Welcome back. I begin this re-iteration of this webpage with what I’ll call a NAQ: Never Asked Questions. No one ever asks me a damn thing about this web page, and while that doesn’t BOTHER me per se, I’m just going to ask them myself.

Q: Why do you call this Hobbsblog III?
A: Great question! I started writing this blog back in 2000, when I saw the writing on the wall on the end of the early adopter period of weblogs. I figured if I didn’t start it soon, when I did start it people would be able to figure that I was just doing it to be trendy. Now there’s enough time for people to forget that motivation and realize I’m doing it for no good reason whatsoever. But I’m digressing from your fantastic question. I started it on the blogspot servers and then had some trouble uploading data, so I switched it to the current site in early 2001 and called that Hobbsblog II, just to be cool (again. Are you noticing a trend?). At the end of 2003 I neglected it and the code got wonky, so now I’ve switched out the basic code template and am resolving to actually write entries a couple of times a week. Hence III. As for Hobbsblog, although I have an undying motivation to be cool, I sure as hell can’t come up with a good name, so I just called it that and haven’t ever had the inclination to change it. I usually just call it HB instead just to be inscrutable.

Q: What do you do in real life?
A: I am a law student entering my last semester. As of now I still don’t have a job. So let me use my never read blog to pimp myself. I am a top quartile student at a top-twenty law school. I am a fantastic writer and great oral advocate and have experience working for two full-service law firms. I can get any prospective employer references and recommendations. In fact, allow me to use a sports analogy to tell you about my skills. Terrell Davis was a running back at the University of Georgia in the early 1990s. He was overlooked in most of the pre-draft workouts and hype when he entered the NFL draft, finally being picked in the sixth round by Denver. He ran for over a thousand yards each of his first four seasons, becoming the first player ever to run for 7,000 yards in such a short amount of time, and led the Broncos to Super Bowl wins twice. I am the Terrell Davis of the law school world. I haven’t been hired yet (most of the big firms have already hired all their entering associates, so that’s not great), but I’ll be the best lawyer my class produces. I research better, write better, and talk better than anyone else here. I am the man.

(please excuse the hyperbole. I’ve been told to not undersell myself in interviews, and I’m practicing.)

Q: Are you a nerd?
A: Uh, define “nerd.” I’m married and consider myself fairly social. I can’t code worth a damn. Comic books don’t do anything for me. On the other hand, I have played Dungeons and Dragons in the past, which is usually the acid test of geekiness. So yeah, probably.

Q: Do you have any insights to offer?
A: Honestly, no. If you’re reading for that purpose, you might as well go away. Hell, the only people that read this are my family and people that come here by way of Google searching for stories about John Ritter’s scrotum or Daler Mehndi. In the last year all I seem to write about is about how much the Bush administration stinks or about law topics. That’s alienated half my readership (my sister-in-law, Krista). I’ll try not write as much about that stuff with HBIII, but that won’t be successful.

Q: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where are the stories about Daler Mehndi or John Ritter’s scrotum?
A: (sighs). Use the search function to the right.

Q: Do you have any amusing pet peeves or other funny stuff that irritates you?
A: I don’t know. Stuff that annoys me includes:

• Intersections that disallow ‘right turn on red’ for no apparent reason


• Cheesy romantic comedies like “Serendipity”


• Regional sports telecasts that make me watch bad Big Ten matchups instead of the Oklahoma Sooners.


• Misuse of the word “literally.” Yesterday I was watching the Colts-Chiefs playoff game and Dan Dierdorf said “Peyton Manning is literally carving the Chiefs’ secondary to shreds. Funny enough, John Clayton wrote in his wrapup of the same game, “[Manning] literally put the Chiefs defense in the electric chair and kept playing with the switch.” Uh, no he didn’t. Not that it constitutes a real pet peeve.


• Misplaced apostrophes. (In the first draft of this, I had it as “misplaced apostrophe’s” for effect, but I couldn’t stand the idea that someone would see that and think I did that unintentionally.) If I see a misplaced apostrophe I assume the author is an idiot. Fair warning.

More to come.