johnlittle.com

I’ve had a few friends ask me these past couple of months about what’s happening with me (I was always such a loudmouth I’ve even surprised myself by how quiet I’ve been lately), so I’ve been thinking about writing an update.

Nowadays I just can’t stand to be behind the computer much. And so many years of legal writing makes me sound so punctuated that I sometimes cringe when I read myself, even when its just informal message board stuff… So, I’m trying to change that… do different stuff.. like with the use of these ellipses… or mybe i shld typ evrythng like i wUd in chat). I don’t know. I guess the trick will be learning to write more readably and with less clauses.

My old about me page was last updated in June of 2008, and alot has happened since then, so I’ve known I need to come up with a new one… this is part of that effort.

Last December or so, I wrote about some health issues I’d experienced and how that had led to a change in career. The last time I read that account, I decided I’d shared Too Much Information. My sincere thanks to friends and former clients who left some very nice comments for me. I’m getting better, and I very recently had several “all clear” test results for blood clotting and pulmonary issues. Short story: While I remain a licensed attorney, I’m not practicing law right now. It really sucks to have health issues coupled with the misery of being shackled to a desk manufacturing a product called billable hours. So, I’m taking a break. Maybe I’ll muster the gumption (how’s that for more creative writing) to get back to practicing law one day, but it’ll be in a much different form. I used to be the General Counsel of a healthcare company that served special needs children and adolescents. I sometimes like to think that with my background, I’d be well suited to represent such a person in court. But I was never a courtroom attorney and don’t know much about civil procedure, so I’d need a good mentor.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been working on doing something in the field of brewing. Having been my hobby for the last 5 years, that’s really the only other thing I was any good at. I sure can’t cook. Besides homebrewing, pretty much all I’ve ever done is read and write. I can’t even wire a ceiling fan without being dumbfounded. But by golly I’m excited to be figuring out how to wire pumps, temperature gauges, float switches, and electronic ignition gas valves to a brewing system. I’m definitely needing someone to make sure everything is exactly right, but I’m enjoying the challenge of figuring out as much as I can.

It has been a little over a year now since I made the change, and I’ve stumbled through a few different possibilities on which direction to take. Read more…

First, an internet casino’s spam bot found this site and posted about 500 spam comments in one day. So, I had to disable comments until I find an appropriate solution to prevent the spam.

Second, I recently discovered (I should’ve tested the site in several browsers 4 months ago, but I was lazy) that some browsers where having numerous error messages pop up when viewing the blog. This is probably the result of one of several hacks I installed when I first set up the blog software. My apologies. Anyway, I’m not sure which hack caused the errors, so I had to reinstall the blog software without any hacks in order to correct the problem. So for now the email notification feature is gone.

UPDATE 12/24/04 -> modified some files and turned comments back on… hope it works to keep the spammer away..