I just got a client inquiry based on a 2008 post, so I looked at the post, and . . . YIKES! I found someone had hacked my blog and inserted advertisements into the post! The advertising links are gone from that post now, and I’ll be changing my a password as soon as I finish with this post, but it looks like I now have to look through my other 800+ blog posts for signs of similar shenanigans. If you run across any odd links anywhere on the blog, please notify me at gregATgregmaylaw.com (replace AT with @) and tell me which post they appear in. (It would be…

Regular readers will note the blog’s new design, which debuts today. When I started my new blog, The Ninth Circuit Blog of Appeals, I utilized a customizable theme that emphasizes search engine optimization. I’ve switched over to the same theme here for the SEO benefits and in order to make the designs of the two blogs similar enough to suggest a relationship. I still have lots of touch-up work to do, but I decided it was better to reopen the blog to access today as scheduled rather than spend another day or two tinkering without substantive updates. So, please bear with me as I clean up around here over the…

If you are a regular reader, you know I’ve been AWOL for several months. What started as a short break turned into a hiatus, without so much as an announcement from me. Work and family issues made for such a hugely busy few months. For the past few weeks, I’ve been considering how to get started blogging again. I’ve been mulling a change in focus of the blog, design changes, perhaps starting another one. Something I could do to rekindle my blogging spirit and herald my return to the keyboard. Then, today I was thinking, “No. Forget about grand announcements. Forget about design changes. Forget about a shift in focus.…

I’ve had a hard time getting back up to speed since returning from being out sick.  Fighting a lingering cold, catching up on old cases and jumping into new ones . . . being so busy and with Christmas approaching, this seems like a good time to take a blogging break.  I do not plan to post again until at least January 2, 2009. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, a fun New Year’s celebration, and a fantastic 2009.

Just a short post to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving Day. My work schedule remains light as I continue to struggle through whatever crud I have.  Honestly, I thought I’d be over this by now, but the duration of this energy-sapping malady is going on four weeks!  Thanksgiving Day reminds me, however, that I should grateful my illness amounts to nothing more than a severe inconvenience.  I haven’t been looking at the courts’ output for the last month or so, so if there’s anything of appellate interest that you think I should write about, email me with the case information and I’ll try to get to it. I am hopeful that…

Regular readers who are wondering where I’ve gone (and are, hopefully, disappointed at my lack of posting the last few weeks) should know that the blog lives!  I, on the other hand, have barely felt among the living the last few weeks, dogged by some kind of head/sinus/allergy/flu/who-knows-what-it-is that has really wiped me out.  I’ve been able to work only on those projects demanding my immediate attention.  Since my blog can’t be dismissed for failure to post, while my cases can be dismissed for failure to file, my limited hours of coherence each day have been devoted to my cases. I finally feel like I’m on the mend, and hopefully,…

Well, a young blog, at least, if not brand spanking new. The California Constitution was launched in August by Howard Rice partner Steve Mayer. Good luck! Hat tip: California Punitive Damages.

Two weeks ago, in response to a post I’d seen elsewhere about judges reading blogs, I put up a survey in the right sidebar that asked readers to choose the description that best described them.   During that time, I posted rather lightly, and the blog had a slow few weeks: barely 1300 page views.  With 1300 page views, how many survey participants do you think I had?  100?  200?  500? Try 34. I’m no statistics expert, but I figure that puts the margin of error in the results somewhere around 12,000 percent. The only category with zero responses?  Judge. The responses broke down as follows: Next time, I’ll do…

You wouldn’t know it from my blogging output lately, but I’m still here and will continue blogging. I happen to be moving into a new office during a heavy work week, so actually looking at the newly published cases is a real luxury right now. I may get a post or two up this week, but they’re more likely to be links to other blogs rather than original commentary on any new developments. I’ll resume my regular blogging schedule next week. If you haven’t responded to the survey in the right sidebar yet, why not take the opportunity to do it now? The survey comes down Monday morning, June 2.

Last Friday’s post about blog-reading judges got my curiosity going about who is actually reading this blog. I’ve placed a survey at the top of the right sidebar asking you which of the responses best describes you. I would appreciate your participation, especially the extra effort any e-mail or RSS subscribers make to actually visit the blog to do so. You only need to respond once (in fact, if I have it set up right, it won’t let you respond more than once, even if you try it on different days). Select your response, then click the “Vote” button. That will take you to a bar graph showing the results…

Well, I was wondering how quickly the first blog post would go up about this morning’s California Supreme Court decision striking down California’s ban on same-sex marriage (at least that’s how I’ve seen the decision characterized — I haven’t read the 161 pages of opinions yet).  The winner, at least among the approximately 200 law blogs in my feed reader, is Legal Pad, at 10:10 a.m.   But I doubt they’re speed readers over there, for the post is pretty spartan.  But they promise regular updates throughout the day, and since it’s a California law blog, it’s probably the blog to watch throughout the day.

Time to upgrade WordPress again, this time to version 2.5.1.  I’ll be doing that this weekend, so the blog may be unavailable briefly on Saturday or Sunday.  I tend to do these things in the wee hours, when there’s less traffic, to minimize the disruption.  But you never know.

Things are a little crazy for me this week, so posting will be light. In fact, I’m not sure I’ll post anything other than the posts I already have in the queue to publish throughout the week. That means I won’t have any breaking news on cases. But I will have a few posts trickling out throughout the week, including a special anniversary post on Wednesday.

Image by DML East Branch via Flickr There once was a blogger named May Who thought he had something to say Then he signed up to host A serial post Blawg Review one five five is today! April is National Poetry Month! Which, in conjunction with hosting Blawg Review #155, makes it Bad Poetry Day here at The California Blog of Appeal. Here’s a haiku version of that introduction: after a weekend considering submissions Blawg Review is here! Ouch. If you’re still reading, allow me to welcome you to Blawg Review #155. Asking me to improve on Blawg Review numbers 1 through 154 is a pretty tall order, and not…

This has probably been my lightest week of posting since starting this blog nearly a year ago. I’ve just been swamped this week and haven’t had time to surf the web and review all the opinions I wanted to check. Remember, on Monday, April 14, I’ll be hosting Blawg Review #155. It will be a very different type of post than what you are used to seeing here; so much so that regular readers may assume that the site has been hacked. I’ll resume posting on Tuesday.