Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
Author: Frylock
Robert E. Bodine, Esq. is an attorney in Virginia focusing his practice on real estate and intellectual property law. He is one of the founding members of the Gamers’ Syndicate, a Washington, DC-based gaming club. He was the author of the Loremaster.org article series, Protection from Chaos, dealing with intellectual property law matters as they relate to the gaming industry, and has represented several game designers on intellectual property matters. You can follow him on Twitter @RobertEBodine for politics, @PropertyAtty for legal matters, @GSLLC for gaming matters, and if you’re a sports fan, @MMADork.
Here’s something I haven’t done since the late 90s: Baked a cake.
The top layer is French vanilla, the bottom layer is triple chocolate fudge, and the icing is milk chocolate icing. I even did the same thing with a few cupcakes I was able to make with leftover batter. Surprisingly, the layers came out well in the cupcakes.
There might be a cupcake missing.
I don’t really celebrate my birthday, but I knew I’d have to break my diet today anyway, so I went all in. I think is shows how long it’s been since I did this . . .
Here’s a screenshot of the PC screen for the character builder:
Westlocke is a pre-generated character from module S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
And here’s Westlocke’s current character sheet. The data I said would be missing has now been added, and you can see that the character sheet is, as I like to call it, “one-stop.” You don’t have to look up spells in hardcover books if you’re using my character sheet, even if those spells come from magic items.
In the early 2000s, my paternal grandmother died. Because my father had predeceased her, his share of her property flowed down to his children, leaving me with a 1/12th interest in her home. I was an attorney at the time, but not yet working in real estate, and it simply wasn’t on my radar scope. It never appeared on my radar in part because my crazy uncle just continued to use the home as a storage facility and paid taxes.
Fast forward a bit. My uncle stopped paying taxes at some point, so in 2017, the house was sold in what Pennsylvania calls an “upset sale.” The sales price was ~$8,500 to pay off the tax bill. Of course, I didn’t know any of this was happening because the relevant Tax Claim Bureau didn’t notify any of us of the sale as required by statute. After the upset sale, the purchaser sold to a third party (remember, a house the upset sale purchaser didn’t really own), who then has to get that sale confirmed by the Court. That’s when we all found out about this. We were served papers earlier this month for that second case, but the plaintiff on that second case doesn’t really own the property. The original purchaser at the upset sale didn’t meet the requirements of the statute.
I work primarily in real estate at this point. I know what these plaintiffs are. They prey on unsophisticated and financially insecure families to make a six-figure windfall. I have no sympathy towards them and will happily take the house back if it comes to that.
To give you some perspective, I’ve been told second hand that the house is on the market for $171,000, but it’s worth (depending on who you ask) anywhere between that and $253,000. Let’s assume the plaintiff can provide an appraisal that state’s the house is worth $171,000. This jackass plaintiff stands to gain at least $125,000 from the sale of this home, and I’m sure he’s done that many times prior. My share of that $171,000 is 1/12th, which comes to $14,250***. On the other hand, my cousin’s share is 1/9th, so she’s entitled to $19,000***. She’s on disability and could use the payout, so she contacted me, the only lawyer in the bunch, to see what I could do. She had already mailed her own Answer, but to be blunt, it understandably sucks, and it wouldn’t intimidate the plaintiff into a settlement.
*** Of course, to sell the house, we’d have to first come up with the $8,500 to pay the tax bill, then pay closing costs, etc., so if we did that, we’d get somewhat less than these amounts. However, I think the value of the property is much higher, so let’s ignore that.
I mailed an Answer to the Complaint on Monday, informing the court that proper procedures weren’t followed with respect to notice. However, one of my other affirmative defenses was that, even if Pennsylvania law allowed for such procedures to be ignored for some strange reason, if Pennsylvania law allows discrimination against out-of-state litigants, it violates the Privileges & Immunities Clause of the Federal Constitution, and thus must fail.
Yeah, I cited the fucking United States Constitution on a simple tax sale, and if necessary, it’s going to stick.
I don’t technically represent my cousin because I can’t. I’m not barred in Pennsylvania. However, if I get a settlement for myself, require that I be permitted to share that settlement information with my cousin, and (of course) actually share that information with my cousin, then my cousin will know what to demand ($19,000). In other words, she and I will be getting our payout. I don’t want a dime of inheritance from my family, so I’ll probably donate my settlement amount to charity. Maybe I’ll buy something worth $100 or so just for my trouble. However, I’m getting to stick it to the bad guys and help a cousin. That’s worthwhile.
Last week, I learned about Pluto Time care of VSauce. This is the time of day at which the brightness of the Sun is the brightest it ever appears on Pluto, and that equates to around sunrise and sunset. While the Sun is about 1000x dimmer on Pluto than on Earth, the Sun still brightens Pluto at noon (Pluto time) about 300x more than our Moon brightens Earth.
A couple of days ago, I posted about art history class at the University of Maryland. TL;DR: I attended that class only three days: the first day, the penultimate day, and then the last day for the final exam. None of those days provided meaningful instruction on the topic, yet I passed the final exam with complete, utter bullshit.
This won’t go over well with some elements of the interwebs, but it’s a 100% true story.
At the University of Maryland (go Terps!), no matter what your major, each student had to take two classes from each of four categories of classes in order to graduate (plus two semesters of English). For a physics major, meeting the math and science requirement was easy, but the artsy-fartsy requirements took some work. I selected Latin because I had three years of Latin in high school (easy A!), and then took <throws dart at the class catalog> art history.
I showed up to the first day of class. Then I showed up to what I thought was the final exam, but it was actually the last day of actual class. So, I had to show up one more time for the final exam, which was walking through the university’s art gallery and discussing the art. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to say something like, “This is a Victorian era painting inspired by the Bakersfield style of brush stroke” or some shit like that. All I can remember was critiquing the art from a purely subjective point of view. You know, stuff like, “Oh, it’s a great use of color,” “What fine craftsmanship,” or “I’ve done better myself.”
Craftsmanship?
That final exam was our entire grade, and I passed. I didn’t get an A, but I passed. How the hell did that happen? I completely made up everything I said. Do you think that I could have done that with, for example, calculus?
“Addition and subtraction? That’s for the plebians. We of the elite members of the society use scelpenation to calculate our sums. Let me tell you how it works. . . .”
I invented scelpenation.
Of course, I couldn’t. I’d get an F- and be beaten with reeds. Mathematics is objectively true. Just hold up two fingers with each hand and bring them together as many times as you’d like. The two pairs of fingers will always become four fingers. Sorry, but some degrees are worth more than others. Let’s face it: They just give art history degrees to anyone.
Bathroom stalls have two primary forms of coat hooks (that I can remember). One of them always makes me think of a mind flayer. The one in my office looks like a mind flayer that’s been hit in the head too hard.
Oh, no! I used mind flayer in a sentence! WotC’s gonna sue me!
Play What You Want 