June 17, 2008 :: Comments on moving to Denver

My comments to The House Hunt on metroblogging denver.

My wife and I did the same as you are doing and rented a house entirely through craigslist from D.C. Our story has a happy ending, but it could have gone the other way.

It’s really important to know where you think you’re going to work, as the Denver metropolitan area has the traffic patterns of a city with a much higher population density than it actually has. Mostly on the interstates (I-25, I-225, & I-70) which the inhabitants use as main traffic arterials, and, at the same time, cannot handle merge situations to save their lives. So, every day, between 8am and 10am, then again from 4pm until 6:30pm, many large parts of the interstate system within Denver and Aurora (the other large city stuck the Denver’s East) are parking lots. So, the closer to work you live, the better, especially now with high price of gas.

I needed to live near Denver University, and coming from D.C. where I spent 15-30 minutes commuting 1.5 miles to school, I wanted something closer and easier, so we narrowed our search for rental homes to within a mile from campus. I have a dog, so that narrowed our search as well. We emailed people to give us the address of the house if it wasn’t listed in the ad, and those that would not divulge their address were also filtered. Memorizing the address of the school, Google maps became our best friend. The satillite photos of the house also helped us to ask questions via email about the yard (does it have a fence, a garage, etc).

Some words of wisdom: inside Denver there are good and bad neighborhoods, of course.

- Ask about planned construction projects. Despite the housing situation, many areas like mine in the mile or two around D.U. from Colorado Blvd to Downing St (on the east and west borders) and from Evans St to Alameda (south to north borders) thave houses built in the 1920’s to 1940’s and are being sold for their lots and rebuilt. At least one or two houses per block are in this category, so be sure ask if there are any construction projects planned for next door or accross the street. These houses take from 10-18 months to complete. They are noisy: workers can begin construction at 7am (and they do!) and finish after 6-7pm. If you have no driveway and park on the street, which is common, much of your parking will be monopolized by the workers. Along with construction trailers, construction debris, etc.

- Everyone here waters their lawn - ask about the owner’s desires for a lawn and sprinklers. Our lawn care is included in the rent, we don’t mow the lawn or rake leaves, but we do have to pay the water bill. Last summer, that ran about $80-130 per month, mostly because of watering the lawn every third day with the in-ground, automatic sprinklers. I’m not a fan of green lawns in the desert or arid areas, so I find this wasteful, but at least I don’t mow the lawn on saturdays. Some people even water every day…

- Ask about parking. See above. Also, some places in denver require parking permits, like near DU due to students. Not expensive, but a pain to deal with.

- Houses here don’t often have central air-conditioning, but, if anything, swamp coolers which perform the same task. Mine doesn’t have either, but the owners left us two window units. Since the nights get cool (lately in the low 50’s) this isn’t a problem if you leave windows open at night, then the only warmer time in the house is late afternoon to early evening when the heat has built to its max, before going down again for cooler night temperatures. Good to know, good to ask about. You’ll want easy to open/close windows, not the older kind which "fall closed" or are painted shut - you’ll be using them in the older houses.

- Driver and Vehicle licsensing. If you get Colorado plates and license, these are not through the same agency. Vehicles are registered through the city, and drivers licenses through the state. All can be found through their website. Vehicles older than 8 years or so are cheap the register, but newer ones are not: Denver’s sales tax is 8% and new cars registered in Denver make you wonder why the roads aren’t better than they are :)

- See how close to the interstate it is. As they have so much traffic on them all the time, they have a lot of road noise. Depsite the sound walls, they still are audible background hums at our house a half mile away. We can hear the occassional motorcycle or tractor-trailer gunning their engine before a long shift. Mildly irritating when on a "quiet" 6am walk.

- Lastly, if you can, have anyonen run by a place a take pictures for you and give a general impression of the neighborhood. That’s the best way to check it out from afar. My wife’s father had a friend who drove by ours and didn’t see any obvious "gotcha’s."

Then, after a dozen emails back and forth, I sent the $2000 security deposit check 3/4 of the way accross the country to someone I didn’t really know, hoping they actually owned the property I had an unsigned lease for. Anxious sigh. The plan was to sign it upon arrival and final inspection of the property. I also booked a month at an extended stay hotel ($80 per night, extendable to $1400 for a month) so in the worst case that the house was not theirs, occupied by others, or not even there, we were not homeless and didn’t have to search for such a hotel. We only stayed the night we arrived in denver, and the house worked out the next day. That was last August.

The house next door to us is almost finished 9 months later after it’s construction began, and our sprinkler tech just activated our sprinklers yesterday to rejuvenate the dry, brown lawn in which the house we rent sits. Our dog has a nice yard to play in, and our next door neighbor is very nice and friendly: she a pleasure to talk with It’s 7:40am, and I hear the pleasent chirp of birds outside the window, as my neighborhood is pleasently quiet and for the most part safe.

Our story worked out, but I can see a dozen places where it might not have.

June 10, 2008 :: bored at court

May 31, 2008 :: Gay marriage article with major con law issues

I'm a happily married man, so what do I care about gay marriage? I care about rights. One of my older professors used a story to describe the definition of "new-comer" to a rural commuter county: everyone who moved out here after me is a newcomer. Well, just because I am married doesn't make everyone else a newcomer, less deserving of rights.

This is an interesting case, as per con law in general. The bigger issue here seems to be what happens when a state constitution prohibits gay marriage and is countered by the full faith and credit clause of the US Const where California will start regognizing gay marriage. Even more interesting is that the states seeking to prevent CA from starting their new law are using a separation of powers argument because the governor of NY stated policy to honor the CA marriages. It seems the state legislatures beleive it's their jobs to interpret their constitution and set policy, not the governor.

In prior articles, the press reported that full faith and credit usually applies to judicial acts with a far higher level of "oomph" (respect) than statutes, and I'm thinking that a marriage certificate, issued by a court would be such a higher-respected judicial act.

Even more interesting is that Colorado (of Romer v. Evans, loosely: the US sup ct case denying CO the "gay rights ban" to the people of CO's state constitution) is one of the states, but not virginia (where an anti-gay-marriage statute was actually passed in 2004).

10 States Seek Calif. Gay Marriage Delay; Suit to Be Filed in N.Y. | ABA Journal - Law News Now

Updated: Opposing forces are gearing up to fight a major battle over the right of same-sex couples to marry, centered on the recent decision by the California Supreme Court that the state constitution protects their right to do so.

Following a directive by New York's Democratic governor, David Paterson, that New York will recognize as legal any such marriage that is legal in the state in which it is held, a Christian legal group has announced that it will sue over the policy, reports the Associated Press.

"The group, the Alliance Defense Fund based in Arizona, is working with New York legislators on the case that in part will accuse Paterson of violating the separation of powers in his directive this week," the news agency writes.

Joseph Bruno, the New York senate's Republican majority leader, has been considering a possible challenge to the governor's directive, the New York Times previously reported.

Meanwhile, the attorneys general of 10 other states petitioned the California Supreme Court yesterday, seeking to delay the implementation of the gay marriage ruling until after this fall's elections. That is so they can see whether voters approve state constitutional amendments to require that marriages be between a man and a woman before deciding how to respond to the California situation, reports the Associated Press in another article.

California's attorney general is urging the court not to grant the delay.

State officials plan to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses on June 17, and have already unveiled a new form that substitutes "Party A" and "Party B" for traditional bride and groom designations, as discussed in another New York Times article.

The 10 states seeking delay are: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.

May 31, 2008 :: Second year...Done

This is a short post. Second year of law school is finished. Leaving me 2/3 of the way through my J.D.

How exciting :)

March 28, 2008 :: Virginia Politics "mistakes were made" -Abusive-driver fees repealed -- Heads of State, Virginia, Timothy M. Kaine -- dailypress.com

The classic, "mistakes were made" political quote. I love it.

Abusive-driver fees repealed -- Heads of State, Virginia, Timothy M. Kaine -- dailypress.com: "The Virginia-only provision sparked widespread grass-roots anger. As accident and arrest data poured in, state leaders learned to their chagrin that the threat of fees as high as $3,000 didn't improve general driving behavior.

'In the earnestness of trying to solve the transportation issue, a mistake was made,' said Sen. Edward Houck, D-Spotsylvania, who sponsored Senate Bill 1 in the 2008 session to repeal the fees. 'This was simply the wrong way to go about funding transportation. And today is the day we correct all that.'"

March 26, 2008 :: Chewbacca's Purse

I've been looking at The Satchel Pages website and found myself reading about man-bandoliers for utility. Someone wrote about Star Wars' Chewbacca's utility belt, and I laughed out loud. That deserves a blog entry.

It seems that messenger bags are also "men purses," "bailout bags," and "murses," to name a few alternate terms for a bag a man carries things in. I've been looking for a decent bad to carry to court and think I might have found one for a reasonable price.

Soon, I'll be searching for a reasonably priced diaper bag. I'm narrowing on a canvas/leather bag, or a small timbuk2 messenger. Baby steps...pun.

Threads.Rebelscum.com: Chewbacca's Purse: "What the hell is that thing Chewbacca wears? What does he carry in it? A bigass hairbrush and nail file?

It sure as hell ain't no utility belt or he would have used it to escape from the net trap on Endor. It can't be an ammo belt, or it would have looked pretty damned suspicious for a couple of stormtroopers to be parading an 8-foot wookiee through the Death Star with a sling of ammunition draped over his shoulder. And I know it's not suspenders, 'cause he's got no pants.

Any ideas? To me, this is one of the great mysteries of the Classic Trilogy. Help me out."

March 16, 2008 :: Bella in a vail snowstorm