I decided that since that doesn’t often happen (and, okay, I confess that I’m cheating because today I won’t have time for writing anything new, at least until nightfall), I’d post that “extra” personal reflection bit here.

It’s a one-page piece I wrote in the “Personal Statement” section of a scholarship application. Law school is not cheap; I need all the help I can get. (Oh, if only people would click my Google Ads or the Click to Give donation button in the left column of the main page of my site!)

Caveat, Disclaimer, or Whatever: I have been told that you are supposed to toot your own horn when trying to convince a scholarship committee to invest in you.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve thought about being an attorney. I cannot say that it has been a burning desire, but it has been an often-considered desire. Until I reached the age of about 44, perhaps no other desire in my life was more often squelched. Having come from a somewhat lower middle-class background and generations (so far as I can tell) of uneducated people, it never seemed realistic.

As a child, I had learned to dream of what I could be; as a child with “realistic” parents, I had been taught the difference between dreams and reality. Becoming an attorney was always in the former category. (Added to that, most of my family members, including my grandparents and parents, often derided attorneys. Until I finally entered law school, my father never had a nice thing to say about them.)

Somehow, in spite of being taught to be “realistic” about my life’s opportunities I had, through a mixture of good fortune and ability, managed to be successful in my life. Always interested in learning, I was the first in my family to go to college. Not knowing exactly what I wanted to study, I studied everything. For this reason, I was in college longer than most students; in 1995, I was virtually pushed out of the nest by my professors and graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy.

Upon graduation, I realized to my shock and surprise that there were no employers advertising in the Bee for philosophers. I had put myself through school by running a medical transcription business out of my home and, fortunately, my use of computers for this task (and a lucky introduction to the Internet at the university, before the World Wide Web was invented), plus other fortuitous events, put me in a position to help with an Internet start-up called Cybergate Information Systems. From there, I embarked on an exciting — not in the Heald College way, but really exciting — career in technology.

By the year of my 44th birthday, I had become the Director of Information Systems for Valley Yellow Pages and had built several networks, including VYP’s first bicoastal (later reduced to statewide when we sold our Florida operations) network. During that time, the corporate attorney (Jim Varon) became a close friend. Jim was older, wiser and from a background that drew the line between dreaming and reality differently than I had been taught. Occasionally, we discussed what I would do next with my life. One day I told him that I’d always wanted to be a lawyer but lamented, “Even if I start law school now, it’s 4 years. I’ll be 48 before I graduate.” Jim asked me how old I’d be in 4 years if I didn’t go to law school.

About a month later, I took the LSAT.

Initially, I thought I’d be interested in technology law. I was very successful with technology, not only with my job history, but “extracurricular” activities including teaching, doing technical reviews for publishers such as Microsoft Press and, finally, writing a chapter for a book on Windows 2000. I quickly learned, however, that my primary interest is the Constitution, civil rights and criminal defense. Since June 2004, in fact, I have been clerking for attorney David Mugridge (SJCL 1985); currently, I’m a research assistant for Jeff Purvis, the James K. and Carol Sellers Herbert Professor of Constitutional Law at San Joaquin College of Law, as well.

In my “free time,” I write — virtually daily — for several websites, including my own Unspun™ and a new site I’m developing for my future criminal law practice. The past two years, I’ve served as an officer of Delta Theta Phi, first as Clerk of the Web and currently as Dean. In addition, I enjoy (much more than I knew I could!) participating in activities of the SJCL Alumni — I’ve played both Scoopy the Bee and Santa at the last two Christmas events for the Marjoree Mason Center — and naturally have assisted with the community involvement of Delta Theta Phi. With the help of the fraternity, I recently saw one “dream” I had become reality: We sponsored a Legal Practice Forum on “Practicing Criminal Law in the Central Valley.” I also enjoy teaching and I therefore tutor SJCL students on weekends whenever asked. (I do not charge for this. I consider it my contribution to their dreams.)

Upon graduation and for the next stage of my life, I look forward to making the dream of becoming a criminal defense attorney, in private practice, a reality. Although there are still times when I pinch myself and/or wonder if it will ever really happen, I’ve learned that dreams are what drive life.

And to that I might add, “How old will you be next year if you don’t follow your dreams?”

I have actually been a paid writer; sometimes even of things “unobnoxious.” My writing ranges from professional technical writings, such as the chapter I wrote for Glen Bergen’s book (Migrating NT4 to Windows 2000 Exam Prep), to legal briefs written and used for actual court cases to sometimes interesting fiction (even poetry!) to these obnoxious blog entries for which I am, so far, unpaid. Someone once noted that my work runs from the sesquipedalian and obtuse to the abecedarian and perspicacious. (Well, okay, they might not have used exactly those words.)

Sadly, some of my work has been lost, such as my numerous childhood stories of Snoopy and the Red Baron; my article “Creative Marketing Tactics for MT Service Owners” which appeared in Vol. II, No. VIII of MT Monthly, the professional medical transcriptionists’ journal in 1994; and my “Democritus & the Moderns: A Comparative Study in Perception,” delivered before a Classical Studies Annual Forum at California State University, Fresno, in 1991.

In order to showcase the range of my work and provide writing samples to those who might thereafter offer me a law clerk position, I’ve created a new page on this site:

Feel free to check out the page if you want to see “another side” of the guy who runs Unspun™ and, as usual, comments are welcome and invited from anyone except Nick. (Just kidding, Nick!)

And don’t forget to check back tomorrow to read about Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1 Cranch) (1803) and the problem of “activist judges”!

I know it’s April Fool’s (still), but that’s got nothing to do with this article. Although it may turn out to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek (and I don’t know that yet, because it’s not written), it’s all true!

Periodically, I experience this drive — from some unknown source — to be famous, rather than infamous. One result of this drive is that from around the year 2000 to around 2003, I worked with a couple of publishers. One (Microsoft Press), you’ve probably never heard of. The other, The Coriolis Group, purveyors of Exam Cram and Exam Prep books, is now defunct; that is, they’re out of business, gone, passed on, hiding in Davy Jones’ locker, paid the debt which cancels all others, with most of their assets having been recycled. (Of course, one has to wonder how successful Que Publishing will be with it, when they’re too stupid to even create links for the series on their website.)

Anyway, in that time, I was the technical editor for a couple of books such as the semi-error-prone Windows 2000 Server Exam Cram.

While working with Microsoft Press, I pulled out of a project with the “author” Melissa Craft (Faster Smarter Network+ Certification) because the book is, frankly, not worth the trees that died to print it and the “author” was not interested in correcting her mistakes even after I quoted from such sources as Stevens, Comer and Perlman to show the error of her ways. (I did, incidentally, also work on a couple of fairly good books, one of which is pictured in this post!)

But that’s all beside the point.

Recently, I contacted the editor with whom I worked at Coriolis to ask about the permissibility of posting the chapter I wrote for the Migrating Windows NT4 to Windows 2000 Exam Prep (with CD!) on this blog. My desire was (is) to present an example of my professional writing. She responded by telling me that the contract I signed does not preclude my posting the chapter here and that, nevertheless, the fact that Coriolis is out-of-business caused the copyright to revert to the author. For this chapter, that’s me.

The chapter took me approximately 15 hours to write. I enjoyed it immensely. Glen Bergen of Microsoft Canada was terrific and I deeply appreciate the opportunity that both he and Hilary Long (the aforementioned editor) afforded me.

I was, incidentally, paid the princely sum of $1000.00. Heck, I don’t get paid a nickel to write for this blog!

Someday, I’ll create a permanent page/set-of-pages for the chapter. In the meanwhile, you can download this approximately-12-megabyte PDF file and read it here. (Remember! It’s 12 megabytes. Consider your link speed; download may be slow!)

I hope to return you to my regular vitriolic (but not meretricious!) political ramblings before the weekend.