All Things Profane and Sacred

I screwed up big time yesterday. You see, I was doing some research using the evil Westlaw. Westlaw is evil because they hook you with lots of free stuff-like fancy-ass travel mugs, stuffed animals and free printing-and then when you're out of law school, KABAM! Fees up the wahzoo. But by this time you're hooked on the sweet easy research. Kinda like crack.

Anywho, I was doing Westlaw research and sending my results to the Westlaw printer, intending to pick them up the next day. When I came in, the printer was all jammed up with somebody's big horkin' 1000 page print job. I manage to get this untangled and the print job continues, and I'm muttering about the damn fool who's being all wasteful and printing all this shit they do not need.

So I get some help from the reference desk. He looks at the stuff and says, "Hey, this stuff is printed from your ID." Turns out, due to default print settings and my stupidity in ignoring them, I didn't print the list of souces I wanted, but the full text of every source in the list.

I felt slightly better when he postulated that the default setting had changed from "list" to "full document" because Westlaw charges lawyers for printing and they hope to make mon-ay from forgetful/stupid lawyers. They weren't counting on forgetful/stupid law students (surprising, I know).

So instead of being a big paper waster, I was more like a proletarian hero-socking it to the man.