My blackberry keeps seizing and restarting so I decide to take it to the Sprint store near work. The Sprint store is busy and understaffed. The Sprint tech tells me to leave my phone and come back, so I decide to walk my dogs at a park near my office building.
I arrive at the park and get 10 steps from my car when a security SUV swoops down from a hill and informs me that no dogs are allowed on campus.
So I throw the dogs back in the car and unsuccessfully try to find parking near the Mississippi trail. I try Minnehaha park next, realize that I forgot quarters for the meters, and then end up back in Minneapolis.
The dogs and I eventually tumble into Loring Park.
The day is beautiful, but my inability to update my location on foursquare or to send pictures to twitter makes the walk feel uncomfortable. I am so used to instantaneously documenting and broadcasting my experiences that the inability to do so makes the experience seem less real.
The ability to share and archive what happens is as important to me as the original experience. It is the difference between seeing the tree fall in the forest and recording it. The record is what turns the experience from something ephemeral to something tangible, richer, and permanent.
Sure, I have plenty of pictures of downtown Minneapolis, Loring Park, and the basilica of St. Mary, but I feel like there was something lost by my inability to record the great day in the park, even if it was objectively mundane.
I already agreed to meet Katie (another twitter friend) at the Thursday night drag show, so I wasn’t going to join Naomi for Welfare night. Well, that was until I got into my car and my Beyonce playlist came on.
By the time I got near the Mall of America, I decided that it was time to update my shoe game and get my boomkats on.
After tweeting about visiting Kristin, I received a tweet from Bria (yet another twitter friend) to the effect of “You should have told me you were at Macy’s! I wanted to meet you!”
I didn’t know Bria and Kristin knew each other, but I told Bria that I was meeting Naomi at Welfare night and that she should come. So she did, and she brought her friend Luann (@LusciousLime).
There were beverages, Justin-Bieber lookalikes, a guy who dances ballet to everything, clumsy drag queens, and a severely handicapped wheelchair-bound girl doing her thing on the dance floor. Amazing.
We finally leave after copious amounts of dancing and blowing Jill’s cover, (she pretended to be Australian for 30 minutes instead of telling this girl she wasn’t interested.)
I drop Alesus off at his home and wait for him to get his bag from upstairs. I happen to have the dogs in the back of the car1 and decide to walk them while I wait for Alesus.
I walk the dogs around the block. We are pretty close to an intersection near Alesus’ house when I hear gunfire.
Super close gunfire.
Then a SUV speeds towards the intersection and turns off its lights at the stop sign. What the…
After a long pause, (in which the dogs and I hold our breath) the SUV swerves onto the street, parks, and turns off its lights. A cop car then appears down the block, but turns the wrong way.
I discretely dive into my car and call 911.
After sitting on the phone with the 911 operator for about 5 minutes, I get out of my car, grab the dogs, and walk by the SUV to get its license plate number for the 911 operator.
The SUV starts following me as I continue down the street, and another white SUV turns the corner and drives towards me.
The SUVs stop in the middle of the street and the drivers talk to each other. I keep the 911 operator aware of this, wondering where the hell the cops are.
I then hear a police siren, the white SUV speeds off and the other SUV does a quick 3-point turn, speeds back down the street, and parks by Alesus’ house.
I turn the corner, flag down one of the cop cars (they were searching the wrong side of the parkway) and I explain the situation the bored-looking officer.
Cop cars then swarm the area around Alesus’ house and they find the SUV, but the driver is gone.
I make my way back to my car and as I fiddle with my blackberry, a cop flashes his light into my car and I have to explain that no, I am not the shooter, I’m the one that called you guys, and no I can’t give you a super detailed description of the shooting.
Ugh.
I then book it back to Minneapolis and end the night eating White Castle2 with Alesus on the couch, flanked by dogs, watching Bethenny Getting Married.
And to think that we will repeat this craziness again tonight.
Goodness, summer. Goodness.
1 Okay, I know that bringing the dogs seems like a completely crazy-dog-owner thing to do, but the dogs sat at home all day while I was at work, so if it’s between sitting in the car while I’m at the bar or more sitting at home, I think they prefer sitting in the car with random mini-walks at pit stops. Just saying.
2 For the sake of brevity I left out the extended White Castle hilarity that involved several rough-looking blazer-wearing middle aged men getting out of cabs and urinating on the side of the restaurant. The point is Wednesday night in Minneapolis = class.
Internet privacy is like a living room window: people occasionally glance over if the curtains are open but most of us do not shut the curtains for fear of someone trampling across the yard and peering in.
We are more likely to shut the curtains when the living room is a mess, when we are naked, beating our step-children, or otherwise having a private moment, but most of us don’t barricade ourselves in our homes for fear of being seen from the street.
The same reasoning applies to foursquare. Most of my friends are horrified by foursquare. An application that uses your phone’s GPS to broadcast your location to the internet seems absolutely crazy to them.
But like the curtains on the living room window, you are in control of when, how, and with whom you share your whereabouts, and you’re screwed if Johnny is looking for you either way.
The updates from Foursquare can be sent to facebook, twitter, and your friends’ phones. You can chose when and where your updates go for each check in.
Foursquare also gives you stats on your check ins, if you are into that.
My favorite part about checking into a location is that it forces me to be conscious about what I am doing. I can’t con myself into believing that I am sticking to my diet if I just became the Major of Burger King.
So for all my burger loving people with open curtains, here are 5 privacy tips for Foursquare:
1. Foursquare is best for PDAs. While it is possible to update foursquare via text message, the application is pretty useless unless you have a PDA (Blackberry, iPhone, Android, etc.)
2. Shout! An under-utilized feature of foursquare is the ability to send a “shout” with your check-in. An update that you are at McDonald’s is not as interesting as an update about the twitching-bow-legged Miley Cyrus lookalike in front of you.
3. Home locations: Foursquare allows you to add locations, like your house, but if you are going to check in at home then don’t enter your exact address. You can enter an arbitrary location and position it near your home on Foursquare’s map. For example, my apartment is at “Somalia Ave, and Mexico St.” This also applies to your friends’ homes.
4. Routine: Most of us have a set schedule, but the world doesn’t need to know that you pull into your driveway at 4:45pm every day. There is no need to check in the moment you arrive somewhere. For example, you can check at work during your lunch breach, as you leave for the day, or even “hide” your location by unchecking the “tell my friends option.”
5. Interact: if you had a good experience at a venue then update the venue’s page and say so. That makes the service more valuable for everyone and is a great way to effectuate change. Did the service suck at the restaurant? Say so. The terrible review will cause savvy venues to address service issues and prevent others in your community from reliving your bad experience.
Those were my tips. Does anyone else have any useful foursquare tips/habits?
Staying connected: The blog allows friends and family to catch up on my life on their time. It is less jarring and harassing than a phone call or the pain of “scheduling coffee” with people who I don’t see as often. The blog also cuts the mundane, preliminary “what’s going on with you lately?” portion of conversations and allows us to jump into deeper topics…sort of like doing the reading before class.
A resource: Blogs are the new autobiographies and how-to books. I had very few surprises during my first year of law school because I read law school student blogs (such as this one, this one, and this one) and their advice was far more valuable than any “how to” book on law school that I wasted my money on. The experiences I write about help others considering going to law school, becoming a resident assistant, dog owner, blog author, etc.
PR & Journaling: The blog allows me to chronicle my experience and curtail rumors about major events by allowing people to read my account of a situation and form their own opinion. It’s like a constant interactive press conference, minus the vicious reporters and “oh shit” looks.
Twitter: Twitter lets me instantly connect with friends, professionals, and others. Twitter is less harassing and time consuming than an IM conversation, and a great way to meet new people, especially other law students and lawyers.
There is a lot of noise on twitter that I don’t subscribe to. I don’t follow people who only retweet news stories, stock prices, quotes, or “deals” that no one cares about. It’s like subscribing to junk mail. And to that I say, “Bitch, boo, bye.”
Twitter, is not (for me at least) a popularity contest to find the most followers. The important part about twitter is connecting with real people. And if I also happen to get a coupon from a local pizza place then that’s just an amazing bonus…
Foursquare: The ultimate way to connect with locals.Foursquare uses my phone’s GPS to locate me and attaches that location to my tweets.
Foursquare also tells me who else is at my location and has allowed me to connect with coworkers and neighbors who I would otherwise not have met. There has been a recent stink over privacy concerns, but it’s simple to give the address of a nearby park or public place when you’re at a friend’s house or at home.
If someone was really going to rob you or stalk you, they would (and could) do it without the assistance of Foursquare. This is why the new Taser X3 is super affordable and comes in cute “fashion colors.”
My facebook account is constantly updated with posts from my blog, Foursquare, and Twitter. This is incredibly convenient because people just have to look at my facebook page to see where I am, and what I’m up to.
Giving my friends this information makes my life easier because my friends know when I am available. The running-updated schedule makes people more likely to respect my time and less likely to pester me when I’m busy. The updates are also conversation starters and invitations for my neighbors to join me at local cafes and bars if they are in the area.
My social media connectivity never feels like a “big brother” or exhibitionist situation because all of these applications require an affirmative action to update. This makes a true, unintended, overshare uncommon. Which is why you won’t know if I’m constipated at a rat-infested 7-Eleven restroom unless I post it (which I won’t, don’t worry.)
My life is made easier by sharing more information rather than less. I got used to living in the proverbial fishbowl as a resident assistant in undergrad, and living in the fishbowl is rather comfortable.
I share what I want to, and I find that perpetual connection with others is far better to being out of the loop.
Note: Best Week Ever (BWE) is a summary of the prior week.
So how does a three-day school week feel? This sums it up:
I had two oral arguments on Monday. My moot court section has an odd number of students, so I volunteered to argue off-brief.
It was slightly awkward waltzing in and arguing for the other side: “May it please the Court, forget everything I said one hour ago! These guys are so totally not guilty, and US Americans…”
I made a point of not being snide or pissy with the Sprint customer service reps. It is embarrassing and stressful enough for a worker to look incompetent in front of a customer. Exasperating someone’s discomfort is not going to make them provide better service.
My politeness also allowed me to adopt a sense of moral superiority while watching the parade of rude customers that came into the store.
The worst guy was a very short man with a baseball cap who walked in with his arms folded:
Chipper customer service rep: “Welcome to Sprint! How may we help you today?” Napoleon: (dramatic pause)“I have been a customer for over 15 years! I demand service! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME??”
I felt like I was on the set of a CBS sitcom, and it was hilarious.
We eventually got my blackberry working, and I spent the rest of the week playing foursquare and connecting with more Minnesotans.
Foursquare is this stalkerish, twitter-like application that uses your GPS to pinpoint your location and broadcasts the location to your facebook and twitter streams.
You can leave to-do tips for other users, and even see who else is at your location. This is awesome because when I “check in” at work I am instantly connected to new coworkers.1
My workweek started on Wednesday. I’m not sure if this was a good idea.
I had the same problem last week: I went to work on Wednesday after an exhausting school day and I got behind on cases.
I did not want my quota to suffer, so I spent the rest of the week playing catch up and worked for free on Sunday.
Several of my coworkers had the same problem. You get behind, feel guilty for being behind… stress builds, productivity decreases, you wake up the next day with more to do than the day before…
I refused to get on the hamster wheel this week. I have always met my employer’s productivity quota and I’m not going to walk around like Raggedy Ann because I failed to live up to my artificially heightened expectations for one day. Cue Portia Nelson.
Friday was epic, Saturday was calm, and today is my day of work and homework. It is like prepping before cooking the feast. The more work I get done today, the easier my mini-school week will be. We’ll see how this goes….
1 My connectedness level has increased with the blackberry. I have never been so up to date on my email. I think the best part of the PDA experience has been meeting more Minnesotans. I hate to use the term “networking” but that’s essentially what’s going on.
My @dennisjansen account is for friends, news feeds, and celebrities that I follow closely. It also updates my facebook status, so my tweets are less frequent.
I update my @dennisjansen more frequently, add people more freely, and use the account to interact without cluttering up my friend’s facebook feeds.
I’ve taken the approach of adding everyone who adds me on @dennisjansen, and this is a mistake, because not all twitter-friends are created equal.
Here is an example of the types of tweets I see through @dennisjansen:
These are the types of tweets that I see on @dennisjansen:
Needless to say, I have to wade through a lot of crap on the @dennisjansen account.
The point of the @dennisjansen account is not the amount of followers, but the ability to interact/network with more people. All off these marketing, news-aggregating, all around crappy twitterers are cluttering my feed, and some weeding is in order.
We all know that guy or girl. Over at The Shark I have a post addressing annoying social networkers. I included 5 easy ways to avoid joining the irritating crowd. The post is here.
So the night started with me tweeting my personal phone number and my reluctance to meet Steve’s crew to 1660 people. 1
Why hello, this is called overshare.
I got over my shyness and made a guest appearance at the19 Bar.2 Steve and I engaged in the usual amount cattiness and ignored the squirrelly guy smiling wildly from across the bar. What a shame! I forgot to bring my walnuts to feed the wildlife…
After the 19 I walked Harley3 around the block near my apartment. Harley and I ran into a pair of trannies4 off of Lyndale. Of course one, Tranisha, had to stop and talk to the dog. Her friend kept walking:
Tranisha: “Oh look! A puppy! What is his name?” Me: “Harley.” Tranisha: “Oooh Harley! You have a face only a mother could love!” Me: “Awe…he’s not that bad.” Tranisha: “Well. Heh. I think you should paint his nails with glittery colors! And get him one of those rhinestone collars!” Me: “I don’t know about that…” Tranisha: “I had a friend with a poodle, and he would dye that poodle pink all the time with food coloring! And that thing got so mad that it would not come out of the house for days!” Me: “Well dying your dog is a big process…and blow drying afterwards must be horrible…” Tranisha: “I think the dog knew it was pink. And it didn’t want to be gay. You can’t make your dog gay!” Me: “I suppose.” Tranisha: “You have something hanging out yo’ pocket.” Me: “Oh, that’s the doggy bag.” Tranisha: “Oh! To pick up his shit? I wish I had that! Doggy! I wish I was you! When I die I want to come back as a dog and have you pick up my shit!” (I’m speechless… NO clue how respond to that one) Tranisha: “So what’s your name?”
My name? My name is hells-to-the-nah.
Earlier this week I was at the 19 Bar with Jack and we had a definite hells-to-the-nah moment. There was this bulky Asian guy with a skunky-looking spot-bleached Mohawk-rat-tail going on. (I know that’s a mouth-full, but it was an eye-full too okay?)
Skunky was making rounds and harassing everyone who even remotely made eye contact. So of course when I came back from the bath room Jack was all, “OH MY GOD THE SKUNK TRIED TO TALK TO ME!”
Me: “What happened?” Jack: “The second you left for the restroom the skunk came over and stood by the table and SIGHED! He didn’t talk, he just sighed. I didn’t make eye contact and tried my best bitch-please look. And he would not go away! I had a sigh-machine latched to the table for like TWO minutes!”
Oh my goodness. So of course about 20 minutes later, Skunky had to make his move on both of us. Skunky sashays up and:
Skunky: “Blab la bla yardar yardar.” Me (looking unamused): “Oh. Well, that happens.” (I then look away hoping he would go away.) Skunky: “Are you two a couple?” (Jack and I exchange a panicked look.) Jack: “UH YES! YES WE ARE!” Me: “Uh. Yes. What he said…yes. We are. A couple. Dearly and all that…” (Jack and I then clasp hands to show Skunky our new-found devotion.) Skunky: “Awe…for-ever?” Me: “For-eva eva!” Skunky: “UGGGGGGH That’s a so sad.”
He then storms off and clings to some unamused 50-something.
Skunky and Tranisha are good examples of what we call “a hot mess.” A hot mess is someone who displays socially unacceptable behavior so often that his or her “friends” no longer attempt to correct it.
When I accidentally tweeted5 my phone number I got dozens of (much appreciated) direct messages to the tune of “WTF JANSEN?!”
The significance of perfect strangers6 direct messaging me like that implies that I have some sort of reputation for propriety. Sure, the mere existence of social media scandalizes a good portion of the legal community – and a personal blog like No.634?Gasp. But there are standards, and when standards are established and transgressed, people notice.
It’s time to worry when people7 stop noticing flubs and let the tragedy go on. No one stopped Skunky, and Tranisha’s friend kept walking down the block as she started talking to me… this is the difference between a tirade from Courtney Love vs. one from Courteney Cox. It’s expected from Love, but shocking from Cox.
The point is that people (friends or strangers) will have your back if you show them that you care about propriety. They will have your back even during your messy moments as long as they feel that you are not a lost cause. That type of notice is important – and we should thank them – because friends keep us from becoming the proverbial hot mess that gets a nickname or a TMZ feature.
1 It wasn’t a huge deal since my number is on dennis-jansen.com. But still, oops. 2My neighborhood dose of tragic..Steve and I are catty, but not cruel. The worst nicknames were “Starvin Marvin” for a 6’2 guy who was all of 112 pounds, and “Zelda” for his elf-ish looking friend with the ridiculously huge blond hair. 3 I worked for 10 hours yesterday so I had to take him on a super-quick walk before I went to the bar too…we went for the longer walk when I came back… 4 By this I mean transsexuals – as in, men who had surgery to look like women…but you can tell it’s a man. And actually, Tranisha REALLY looked like the one from the famous-TMZ fight…but there’s NO way… nonono… 5 And to be fair, I think it was a twhirl issue… but nonetheless… it was my fault for not double-checking. 6 And some non-strangers like @butterflyfish@iamfrankanthony and @hugobell were among the first… 7 Hot messes aren’t lonely. They frequently have entourages, but some crews laugh with you, others at you. Just as Nicole Kidman’s entourage is different than Flavor Flav’s.
I spent the past two weeks packing my big-honking golf umbrella, printing out offensive amounts of paper in the library, and screaming along to “Big Fun” in my car.
Week #10 was a lopsided week because my Thursday-Friday class was moved to Tuesday and Wednesday. This meant that on that Wednesday I had all of my classes1 including legal writing.
For Wednesday, we had abnormally large reading assignments for CivPro and Corporations, and of course, that was the day that spring briefs were due.
I was up most of Tuesday evening and went to bed immediately after school on Wednesday. I pretty sure I flew home. I slept for about 15 hours. It was amazing. I smile every time I think about it.
I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at work, making up hours that I didn’t put in at the beginning of the week.
That weekend Stella and I went to the 90’s and watched the drag shows. Nina D’Angelo came out in a fat suit and gave a Cher performance. Stella and I were seated in the audience. Obese Cher got off the stage and sat on our laps. Yes, it was a hot mess. And yes, there’s video footage.
When Stella and I got home we saw that some of our housemates had trashed the living room and kitchen:
We were NOT amused.3 Lets forget that happened. Ugh.
Week #11 started with my first oral argument. My opponent and I had the same concept of the assignment, so there was no bloodletting or surprises. It was a fun experience, although I somehow managed to wear a blue-black suit top with my very-black slacks. This is how I get my reputation for keeping it classy…4
Last Monday’s oral argument was our “practice” argument. The real one is next week, and my suit will match. I promise.
This past week was somewhat unproductive because I violated the sanctity of my sleep schedule. If I miss even a few hours of sleep, I get into a zombie-like state after 5pm. Lack of sleep is a self-perpetuating thing because when I am tired I am more likely to stay up unnecessarily instead of going to bed…which means I’m tired the next day and…yeah.
I reconciled with my bed this weekend. A full 8-hours is non-negotiable for the next few weeks.
1 8am – Legal Writing, 9am Civpro, 11am Corps, 1:25 Crimlaw, 2:20 Property. 4pm – a comfort McFlurry then bed time.
2Crabby to put it mildly. Half of us couldn’t make eye contact with the obnoxious guy from Crimlaw. I’m surprised that no one raised their hand and ask for a gag order: “CAN WE JUST HAVE HIM NOT TALK FOR ONE CLASS PERIOD?”
3 The mess wasn’t completely cleaned up for a few days. This was the topic of much griping around the house. It was an interesting social study too. Turns out that mostly the minorities and women in the house were pissed off about it. Some of us noted that…
4 If that wasn’t bad enough, the suit jacket and pants had two different types of pinstripes! My room wasn’t well lit enough for me to catch the mistake before I got to school. (Yes. I literally got dressed in the dark…)It was one of those fashion mistakes that wasn’t glaring, but really irks everyone who notices it. But given how many students have no concept of appropriate formal wear, it wasn’t a big deal.
4 Yes, I know I just said “when I’m tired, I stay up.” That may sound stupid, but it’s true. I stay up so late because I’m vegging in front of a computer or book…
