Slow day at the office? Got a minute to spare and share some love before the year ends? Then go vote in the Rodneys, the public defender blog awards. Vote here today!

The 2007 Public Defender Blogger Awards, aka, The Rodneys, are now in full swing over at Public Defender Stuff. I’m flattered to see that the imbroglio was nominated for Best Writing in a public defender blog. It’s very sweet of whomever made that nomination, but the days in which this blog featured anything close to quality writing seem long gone. I still harbor tiny little glowing embers of hope that someday, and someday soon, I will be able to find a way to return to writing here with the frequency and relative substance that I once did, but for now I must face facts: This blog has been in slow decay since I started working as a PD and I just haven’t quite figured out how to balance everything out yet.

With that in mind, I hereby heartily support Scoplaw or Woman of the Law, both of whom far surpass me in style and substance. And, of course, congratulations to Scoplaw, who just was officially sworn in to the practice of law in Florida! Woot!

I would also nominate Woman In Black, whose posts are almost always both entertaining and informative, w/a good mix of personal and professional content that keeps readers interested and also gives them lots to think about for their own lives and practice. Highly recommended!

Recently the imbroglio began suffering from double-posts and other technical glitches. Those were solved by a PHP hack and an update to the Sideblog plugin that powers the “little imbroglios” in the sidebar. But those fixes caused a new problem: clicking on various pages (e.g., quotes or archives) would produce a 404 error. Not good.

For my own records, and in case anyone else out there experiences the problem: The 404s are caused by a conflict with the latest version of Sideblog (3.8). As i.ndustrio.us explains, when you create a page, Wordpress associates it w/the category you’ve chosen as your default category for posts. If that category is also the category you’ve designated as your “asides” category in Sideblog, then the page will not show up and will produce a 404. I imagine this will be fixed in future versions of Sideblog, but for now, the solution for me was to delete the old pages, change the default category, create those pages again, then reset the default category back to what it was. It’s a little cumbersome, but doesn’t take as long as you’d think.

(This moment of geekery has been brought to you by the letter S.)

I do not know why some posts are appearing twice. I do not know how to make the duplicates go away. I do not have the time to track this down right now. I do not like it. Please, someone, make it stop.

I’m thinking maybe it has something to do w/the fact that I can no longer post from ecto, either, which is also very not good. If you have any suggestions for alleviating these technical difficulties, please share!

UPDATE: Maybe this has fixed it.

UPDATE II: I failed to upgrade several plugins after the last Wordpress upgrade. Oops. I thought this blogging thing was supposed to be simple!

It seems the students currently attending my alma mater¹ are finding themselves w/far too much time on their hands.

Introducing Not the Bene at GW Law, a sort of blog/newsletter filled with satirical and humorous stories about the life and times of GW Law School. If you’re a recent grad, don’t miss the revelations about Prof. Friedenthal² or the lowdown on Mr. Cakelove.³

Best of all, the recent riff on the “Cart Lady” also links to a discussion board thread listing reasons to attend GW. Suddenly I can’t imagine how I could have ever regretted going there myself. [tags]humor, GW[/tags]

1. I think “bountiful mother” is really over the top as a moniker for a school you’ve attended. Perhaps that’s why only pretentious putzes ââ�¬â�� such as myself, apparently ââ�¬â�� use silly latin phrases like that.↩
2. To me Friedenthal will always be the kindly man who taught me almost nothing about evidence, but that may not have been as much his fault as mine.↩
3. I miss Cakelove and I think I was only in there twice. It’s not about whether I went there, it’s about the fact that when I lived in DC I could have gone there any time I wanted. Now I can’t. Nostalgia blows.↩

Check it out: You are now officially reading an award-winning blog!

Thanks to the apparent confusion and/or sustained inebriation of a majority of public defender blog readers, The Imbroglio took top honors in The Rodneys, the First Annual Public Defender Blogger Awards, in the categories of Best Design and Best New Public Defender Blog.

I’d like to thank the academy…

Er, um, thanks everyone. I’m humbled, really. And thanks also for the nod to Fight ‘Em ‘Til We Can’t as a runner-up in the category of Best Title of a Blog That Reflects Something About The Job.

So now that I know that one blog looks good and another has a cool name, I guess I need to work on the content, you know, the actual writing. On that note, a special congratulations to The Wretched of the Earth for taking top honors in the Best Writing category and Best Blog That Deals With Actual Law Stuff. For my money, that’s the highest praise a PD blog could receive b/c great writing about the law and the practice of indigent defense are the most important and fundamental ingredients of a PD blog. So nice job, Wretched. You’re the top!

Finally, congratulations to all other winners and to all public defender bloggers. Like Skelly (winner of the category, Public Defender Blogger You’d Like To Be When You Grow Up) I hope there are dozens if not hundreds more of us in the running for these awards next year. [tags]awards, public defender[/tags]

Happy end of the year, everyone. Of course I’m thinking about a big end of year, beginning of new year reminiscence type post, and the fact that I’m thinking about it means it probably won’t happen or won’t be readable, in which case, and in the meantime, you should please do this:

1. Go fill out Kristine’s survey. Hurry, before it disappears! It’s fun! And fast! Yay!
2. Go vote in the Public Defender Blog Awards. Hurry, before your time is up! Voting ends on January 5th! It’s also fun! And also fast! Yay yay!

Whew. I better go to bed. All those exclamation points wore me out….

Public Defender Stuff has just posted an update to its already terrific Public Defender Blog Guide. The guide currently includes 27 public defender blogs, plus some honorable mentions by former PDs and others in the criminal defense sphere. It even includes a link to the imbroglio, for which I’m grateful, but I do feel I’m not really doing so well in the “public defender blogger” category. Too much about the job just can’t be blogged. I’ve come up w/an idea for a way to talk more about the job, at least indirectly. If it works out, I’ll let you all know.

Hint: Would any readers out there like to be part of a new group blog focused on montana criminal law (and especially defense)?

Sadness: My good friend Monica has retired from blogging. She has long warned me that this was coming, but that didn’t mean I was any happier when it actually happened. Adding to the sadness is that it has taken me so long to even mention it. Explaining her decision, Monica writes:

I’ve started a job that I can’t blog about, and as my career progresses, I don’t want to blog about that either. My life is changing, and I no longer want it to be so public.

Good points, all. With each week that passes where I can’t manage to update the imbroglio even once, I wonder if perhaps there’s a lesson there. Is my time for blogging over? And yet, there are so many great blogs by practicing lawyers that I admire and love to read. It seems possible, and a worthy goal to strive for, that I will eventually figure out a way to make that transition from law student blogger to lawyer blogger. The transition is taking longer than I thought, but… [tags]friends[/tags]

Best of luck to Monica. I always loved checking in on Buzzwords and I’m so glad were able to get to know each other through this medium and then to actually meet. As she says, we became good friends, and she is likewise one of only a handful of people with whom I’ve kept in touch since law school. It doesn’t matter that we went to different schools; we followed similar paths and her insights and inspiration along the way definitely helped me get to where I am today. I look forward to keeping our friendship going, and if this blog does continue, I definitely hope to post something from Alaska someday. Perhaps I’ll even be able to get Monica to guest post!

It doesn’t seem appropriate for the imbroglio, but I can think of a number of blogs where this CuteCaps widget would fit right in. Who doesn’t like puppies and kittens?

Reminds me of the Greg Brown song “I Don’t Wanna Have A Nice Day.” It’s not quite as curmudgeonly as you might think, but it is priceless. It suggests the following responses the next time someone tells you to have a nice day:

No no no no no nonononono… Why don’t you have one? Take two, they’re small.
Why don’t you have a day like a painting of a kid with big eyes?
Why don’t you have a day like a painting of a puppy with a ribbon ’round its neck, Sun goin down over the sea?
Why don’t you have a day like a painting of a kid with big eyes holdin’ a puppy with a ribbon ’round it’s neck’ standin’ down by the ocean with the sun…

So, um, have a nice day. Or have a day like a painting of a puppy with big eyes holding a kid going down over the sun by the sea. Oh, and enjoy the cute. [tags]widgets, music, greg brown[/tags]