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 twenty 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 and our son Thomas in 2026. My personal trademark is my carbon fiber briefcase from Tecknomonster, a combined aerospace/luggage company. For entertainment purposes, I recently resurrected a popular anonymous discussion board for lawyers called JD Underground, which has been a great diversion from the law firm for me. I also sometimes build computer systems and custom guitars, which I find to be self-actualizing. I am originally from San Francisco, which I always enjoy telling people because Dirty Harry shares my hometown. Finally, like Thanos and Tony Stark, I am cursed with knowledge-- and I try to use this substantial gift for positive things.

News

August 6, 2026: My crazy ex re-filed her DVRO case from 2023 against me that had terminated in my favor. She is an insane, vexatious litigant, and this time I'm more focused on retribution because she crossed various lines with her fabricated, outrageous claims.

July 26, 2026: Trying out a few things for the next guitar series. I figure a pyramid with an Eye of Providence is a nice motif, plus the pyramid fits nicely where the art goes.

July 26, 2026: We are in week five of a major jury trial that is expected to conclude on September 4, 2026. This has been a difficult one because I'm commuting from Redwood City to Santa Rosa four days a week and spending three hours in the car each of the days. Pure torture, but I have to be back for my family. At least the trial is on Federal hours (8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.), otherwise it would be impossible.

July 6, 2026: I built chassis no. 002 of my signature instrument, the Blackstar gold bass, for Tony Visconti. Tony was David Bowie's producer for around 40 years and is a talented bass player in his own right. Blackstar is a Bowie tribute instrument inspired by the Blackstar album, which was Bowie's final album of course. Tony won the Grammy for it, and I thought this instrument would be a fitting way to recognize a collaboration that touched my heart. As noted on the product web page, this is real 24K gold leaf (two layers) in a proprietary composite that the gilding artisan and I co-created for this instrument series. We're very proud of it. Tony will be playing this instrument on the upcoming 22-city tour with his Bowie tribute band, Holy Holy.

Ventures

Attorney - general civil litigation and complex family law, with twenty years of experience and 40+ trials. 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® - this is where my special, custom guitars live.

Tutorials and Articles

Here are my popular tutorials/articles/videos:

Andy's List - Made in USA products.

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

Creative writing - I seem to have an unusual connection to the ether that gives me a limitless supply of material. The background image on this page is from an original story I wrote about a teen girl who wields a knight's enchanted gauntlet that is imbued with special powers for the worthy.

Animal House - the most realistic fraternity movie of all time, and should be required viewing for everyone considering joining a Greek Letter Organization. I was going through some old boxes and realized that I have a trove of great material from the 2000-2002 era of my life that will be nice to revisit, and I intend a write-up of this film in that context. Literally every principal character in this movie had an analogue in UCLA Theta Chi, which I joined in 2000. We even did a tribute/parody video internally where we tried to mimic one important scene from the movie as part of a recruiting video.

Jack Reacher - "He doesn't care about the law. He doesn't care about proof. He only cares about what's right." That's why Jack Reacher is my hero. This is a write-up of the 2012 film, which is my favorite version of Jack Reacher because Tom Cruise fits the role so well-- and the film doesn't shy away from controversial topics, such as mass murder and sexual homicide. Coming soon.

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

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.

My trademark concept art - I commissioned this piece from a vision in my head, and I used it as my background for many years until updating to the latest artwork in 2026. The dark knight motif really fits me, I think, but I went with the lighter-toned Raellic art just for the hell of it.

Hall of Fame: services, products, and service providers that I use and strongly recommend.

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.