My Bio

Hi, my name is Andrew G. Watters. I am a radically honest, category-defying polymath based in Redwood City, California, USA. I am primarily a lawyer, with a law degree from U.C. College of Law San Francisco (formerly known as U.C. Hastings College of Law), a bachelor's degree from UCLA, and eighteen years of professional experience. I have had my own practice since 2012, and my own law firm since 2016. I offer legal services, including complex private investigations; and a custom software platform for attorneys called Slash. I am married to Mrs. Right, with whom I welcomed our daughter Jennifer in 2022. In my limited spare time, I manage to produce independent music and build custom guitars, which are for sale to fellow fans of my guitar heroes, Prince and Eddie Van Halen. My personal trademark is my carbon fiber briefcase from Tecknomonster, a combined aerospace/luggage company.

News

November 23, 2023: Happy Thanksgiving! I have a lot to be thankful for, and one of them is my experience in law, which has been a roller coaster but ultimately rewarding. I posted it on the new JD Underground for kicks. Read here.

November 22, 2023: eighteen years ago today, I was admitted to practice law. What a crazy-hard journey with many unexpected turns. I have a lot more to reflect on this, but I need to gather my thoughts over the course of a normal work day and update this.

November 14, 2023: I'm very happy to report that I've received my first trademark registration, which is for Rællic® -- a made-up word that I created in 2012. The registration is in two classes: (1) physical computer products and (2) software consulting. All in, the process took a year and three months. I realize USPTO has a crushing workload and is improving, but honestly they still have room for improvement. It would be much better if they had separate tracks for easy/uncontested and hard/contested applications, and if they didn't hassle you with office actions in clear cases where registration is warranted.

November 11, 2023: I'm loving TeX as a desktop publishing solution. It permits amazing fine-grained control over every aspect of documents and produces beautifully typeset output. I re-created my c.v. today and the hard work paid off. TeXMaker is a great, free front-end for TeX on Linux and Mac, and I highly recommend this workflow. Can't believe I was stuck with Adobe InDesign for so many years, although I will still use it when I need a WYSIWYG editor. Programmatically generating letters and other documents is next.

Ventures

These are my current business ventures:

Attorney - general civil litigation and complex family law, with eighteen years of experience and thirty trials (plus three JAMS arbitrations). Also available for complex private investigations, including missing persons/homicide and cyber/corporate espionage. Software platform Slash for licensing to fellow attorneys who want a non-Clio solution.

Rællic® - special projects, guitar projects, and my music hobby.

Tutorials and Articles

Here are my popular tutorials/articles/videos:

Linux tips and tricks - random tips learned the hard way. 🔥

Run your own email server Howto - have you ever wanted to take full control of your email? Not for the faint of heart.

Andy's Connections - my effort at behavioral science-based matchmaking.

Privoxy on macOS Howto - have you ever wanted to block ads on the web on your Mac without having to install MacPorts? This is for you.

Lattice™ - next-gen user interface for slash.law, featuring a novel technique for focus detection and raising.

Andy's Dashboard - a free charting solution for server administrators.

Introduction to microexpressions - my guest lecture at Stanford.

Unboxing a new IBM Model M keyboard - travel back in time to 1988.

Andy's Hardware - market research on the concept of a Made in USA hardware store.

100G office network Howto - the fastest, most reliable office LAN that money can buy.

10 gigabit networking - a howto on my 10 gig office setup, which rocks.

The Forever War - my superfan-level tribute to the greatest science fiction novel of all time.

A fractal crystal lattice of Gaussian primes - research on the fractality of prime numbers in Mathematica.

Hall of Shame: if someone gets me to the point of posting a whole web page about them on here, you know they went way too far in whatever they were doing wrong.