Much to my amusement, accidental blank posts draw more feedback than anything I've written... perhaps I should I just let you guys discuss amongst yourselves, eh? Well it might be about the only thing I have a chance to blog about for the next few weeks. Hours at my firm are being extended such that I'll be working at least 80 hours a week, and I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted us to do 90 hour weeks. My next day off is scheduled to be March 19th. Needless to say, additional posting over this time is unlikely...

The job itself is okay... We're paid well in absolute terms, but relatively poorly. Placements at other firms might make six to ten dollars an hour more than we make. Nevertheless, it is a whole new tax bracket for me... even if that salary level won't actually hold up for the full year.

Somehow, I managed to get a significant amount of supervisory responsibility as soon as a week and a half into the job. I have my own little staff of people working directly for me and to some extent I'm supervising all 75 or so document reviewers working on the project. My team likes to say half-jokingly that I'm on staff attorney track... I don't know what to say about that.

One of the worst parts about working at my firm (other than the new hours) is the commute. Every day I spend two hours going to or coming home from work, and the process costs $11 per day. At some point, I'll use this time to produce a parody of the Doobie Brothers song "China Grove" that does nothing but ridicule my local Metro stop (Shady Grove). That remains a future project.

Because of this horrendous commute - and because I don't like living so far out - I'm looking to move into the District as soon as possible. It's tough to do that when only about a quarter of the studios in the right parts of town are affordable and when it's so difficult to find random people who seem acceptable as roommates (and for whom the feeling is mutual). It would be a lot easier if someone I knew were also looking for a place and a roommate in DC... so Josh, you better move down here after you quit the job...

On another note, if anyone plans on doing any shopping at Best Buy in the near future, please get in touch with me first...

Today's P-G reports that the Pirates appear to be headed into the 2005 campaign with potentially the lowest payroll in baseball for the first time since the 1997 "freak show" Pirates took the field. Having the lowest payroll is a dubious distinction, but in and of itself isn't terribly upsetting. But parsing the article, a reader can glean this list of the lowest payrolls for 2005:

30. Devil Rays - $32 million (may or may not include the $1.3 million contract Travis Lee signed with the D-Rays today)
29. Pirates - $33.4 million (minus an unknown amount of Matt Lawton's contract being paid by Cleveland)
27(t). Brewers - $41 million
27(t). Royals - $41 million
26. Indians - $42-45 million
25. everybody else, $50 million+

Not only do the Pirates look like they'll be last, but it's at least plausible and perhaps likely that they'll be within $10 million of only one team and within $20 million of just four. That is embarassing. It also suggests to me that the Bucs' ownership group is pocketing some nice change. Between the new ballpark and $13 million or so of revenue sharing money coming in just last season, the incoming cash has gone up significantly in the last 5 years, but payroll hasn't really increased much over 2000 levels. Francises in similar situations to the Pirates such as the Tigers, Reds, and Marlins (who have the worst lease deal in all of baseball) have all managed to find a way to jack payroll over $50 million, so why can't the Pirates?

I haven't taken any online quizzes in awhile and Sean pointed me in the direction of one I thought I'd take: the nerdiness quiz! Now admittedly, I'm just a wannabe computer nerd (which is to say I know enough to know all the things that I don't know), but I'm also nerdy about lots of other things - geography and baseball being the big two... I like to think of myself as a "Renaissance Nerd"... someone with a broad base of nerdy aptitude... So I'm not sure if this nerdiness quiz quite sizes me up right, but I suppose the result more or less confirms my preconceptions (since so many of the questions are computer-based)...