Getting hired

From Employment Digest, an article on getting hired.

Frugality

Leftovers are funny things; my family sometimes goes to restaurants for holiday dinners, in which case there are no leftovers. Which I miss. Other times, someone cooks and there may or may not be leftovers, depending on the type of meal.

One of my friends throws everything out the next day because she's afraid of food poisoning. Very afraid. Me? I'm not so worried about it, while thinking that leftovers do create curious rituals. One that I remember from childhood is turkey bits on bread with gravy. You know, the small bits of turkey that have been rescued from the carcass. With leftover gravy over bread. Not toast. Bread. Mashed potatoes and stuffing are optional if they're still available.

I do try to use leftovers so I don't waste money and frequently cook more than necessary to generate leftovers; I package them in lunch-sized portions for later use.

One of my duties is to Redact

One of the things I do from time to time is to redact information from documents. Right now I have about six projects on my desk to review and redact if necessary, so naturally, I think this is a great cartoon.

Court-Appropriate Clothing

At a Symposium of Judges, a Debate on the Laws of Fashion

By JOHN SCHWARTZ,

Published: May 22, 2009

Lawyers, note well: Briefs might be long, but skirts cannot be brief. Neckties must be sober, not silly. Violate these laws of fashion, and you might incur the wrath of — or, perhaps worse, a glassy stare from — the judge.

That is the message from a freewheeling panel discussion among judges this week in Indianapolis.

The sartorial discussion was part of a general exchange of views among judges and lawyers during the annual Seventh Circuit Bar Association meeting on Tuesday morning, but its impact is reverberating far beyond the conference room of the Westin Indianapolis as lawyers around the country join an online gender battle.

The topic was first raised by a federal judge, Joan H. Lefkow of the Northern District of Illinois, as the panel discussed good and bad trends in courtroom practice. Judge Lefkow said some women should dress more appropriately in court. According to an article in the National Law Journal and from the accounts of others in the room, she said one lawyer had shown up for a jury trial in a velour outfit that looked for all the world as if she was “on her way home from the gym.”

While the lawyer won her case, Judge Lefkow suggested to the judges and lawyers in the room that unseemly clothing in court was the kind of issue that should be the subject of quiet conversation in law firms.

That simple comment gave way to lively contributions from other participants, who quickly shifted the subject from schlubby to sexy.

Judge Michael P. McCuskey, chief judge of the Federal District Court for the Central District of Illinois and a member of the panel, said that at moot court competitions in law schools, he had seen participants wearing “skirts so short that there’s no way they can sit down, and blouses so short there’s no way the judges wouldn’t look.”

A member of the audience, Judge A. Benjamin Goldgar of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, joined the minicolloquy, saying that titillating attire was “a huge problem” and a distraction in the courtroom and that “you don’t dress in court as if it’s Saturday night and you’re going out to a party.” In the spirit of sexual equity, Judge Goldgar added that he was also unhappy with lawyers who sported loud ties, some with designs like smiley faces.

Judge Virginia M. Kendall of the Northern District of Illinois then got a supportive laugh from the audience when she said that giving clothing advice to young women in a law firm might not be as big an issue if the firms had more women as partners in the first place.

As the story made its way around the Internet, readers rushed in to fire shots of their own. At the Web site of the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal, one woman parodied the male judges’ comments: “I’m sorry, Sugar, I’d love to listen to what you’re saying, but I have a penis. As such, I am only able to use one sense at a time.”

She added: “What garbage! Poor men can’t control themselves, so women have to respond.”

That sentiment was countered by a comment from a man: “Yes, please ladies, by all means use your sexuality to get what you want (after all, that’s the only excuse you have for dressing in the manner described in this article).”

In an interview, Judge McCuskey allowed that “it did end up being a spirited conversation,” and said he had intended to say that the problem “starts in law school” and should be dealt with there.

In the panel discussion, Judge Lefkow, whose own taste in clothes tends toward the elegant, suggested that women wondering what might be appropriate for courthouse wear should browse the Web site Corporette. The site calls itself “a fashion and lifestyle blog for overachieving chicks,” and features fashion tips (“This week’s Suit of the Week is the lovely Albert Nipon pique dress and jacket, currently on sale at Neiman Marcus”) and polls (“Are fishnets appropriate for a conservative office?” Short answer: no.)

On Thursday, the site posted a Twitter message stating, “Wow — we’re honored that Judge Lefkow gave us a shout out!”

Judge Lefkow declined to comment, as did Judge Goldgar and Judge Kendall.

Law professors who deal with issues of feminism expressed scorn over the talk. In an interview, Susan J. Koniak, a law professor at Boston University, said she found the discussion about revealing clothing absurd. If clothing in court is such a distraction, she said, “we should just have a bag when we walk in, a burqa.”

“Men, women, everybody.”

Source: New York Times

Other Funding for Houses

Some programs are for updating the house, either for new infrastructure or for cosmetic updates to make the exterior prettier. This can be important in more run-down neighborhoods.

There are grants and loans for garages and insulation; these are important, not only for safety in the case of the garage, but for energy efficiency, which is another thing for which tax credits may be available. I do plan to have my new house, whenever I get it, audited for energy efficiency. Additional insulation, new windows, new doors, new hot water heaters and crazy things like caulking gaps or adding weatherstripping can help a lot. I would do it for the savings on heat bills alone, and not worry about whether you exceed your tax breaks; because face it, at some point, what with income limits for these programs, some people whose income qualifies for tax credits, will end up getting all the credit they can and having no tax liability for a given year.

I'm not linking to programs as they vary with state, county, city and neighborhood. It's important to learn about programs in your area before searching for a home as these sorts of funds may make a difference to you.

How to Speed up your PC

The New York times discusses five controversial ways to speed up your PC.

Mine is getting slow, but may be because I have a ton of pictures on it. I have an external hard drive, but that isn't doing me any good right now; first, I dropped it and had to get a new case because it just wasn't working, then my USB port burned out and I have to figure out where I may best put the hard drive so it may connect through another port and I can reach it, if necessary.

Mortgages

When calculating the cost of a mortgage, it's important to realize that insurance and taxes will be included so the end result may be more than you pay in rent right now. We were told to calculate what we could afford for a mortgage and to save any additional amount from discretionary income, to be in the habit of making a full mortgage payment.

In my case, the sale prices of houses would not mean a mortgage payment that's higher than rent; that's because I know I can't afford much and am looking at the low end of the spectrum. I know too many people who have gotten in too deep with bad decisions. There are mortgage calculators available on most real estate webpages so if you start looking at options, it's easy to see if it would at all be a possibility.

In one case, a classmate bought a house before graduation, based on a clerkship that paid well but in the end, it was unsustainable on her post-graduate income; in another case, a veteran didn't go to the VA first, but instead headed for a Countrywide mortgage, with no downpayment, featuring a 5-year ARM with a penalty, back in the day you could still do that, and a 15-year balloon payment on an interest-only mortgage. All I need to know is that the loan was through Countrywide and I know that someone with good credit would have done better elsewhere.

Every month I have less debt. It's just a tiny bit less but every little bit helps.