My Life Blog

I started the week by reporting for jury duty promptly at 8am on Monday.  Well, perhaps not so promptly as a wreck caused me to be 15 minutes late.  No worries, after reporting in, I sat for 2.5 hours until I was finally assigned to a panel.  Once assigned, I made my way up to the court where I waited another 45 minutes before we finally filed into the court.

I was amused and appalled at the creative excuses everyone was giving to try to influence the attorneys to disfavor them from the jury.  I was straight-forward and honest and as I sat as panelist #2, I was sure I’d be picked.  As luck would have it, they skipped right over me, so I only lost one day to the experience.

I actually don’t mind serving for jury duty.  I’m intrigued by watching the legal system work.  As long as my view of the process is from the outside, as in not a principal in the case, I’m fine with it.  This case was a theft case, the guy was accused of stealing between $100,000 and $200,000 from a Subway business.  Apparently, computers involved, as the attorneys asked many questions of us panelists to try to ascertain how we felt about computers.  Some representative questions were, "Have you generally had positive experiences with computers?"…"Are computers always correct?"  I never had to answer any of those directly, so I was spared having to provide a characteristic overly-long reply.  Given the way work has been lately, I’m not sure how my answers would have gone.

Some of the exemption excuses tendered to the court were, "I have bladder control problems"…"I was robbed on Thursday and my husband had a stroke yesterday"…"My brother was accused of stealing baseball cards, so I might have a bias"…"I don’t feel good and its getting worse"…"I have travel plans on Friday".  Those are just a few, and no, the bladder control problem was not mine.

Others thought the defendant was already guilty based upon his presence in the court.  The presumption of innocence is apparently a concept that attorneys cannot take for granted by prospective jurors. 

When the computer questions were being asked, the attorneys targeted certain people with direct questions.  Most appeared to have computer-related occupations.  Strangely, I was left out.  As I considered why, I surmised that my listed occupation of "Application Architect" probably was interpreted by the attorneys as that I probably build buildings.

It was not an unpleasant experience, just a bit inefficient.  The court system needs to figure out how to progress things a bit quicker, I think.  Thankfully, I brought two books to read while I waited.  In addition, I’m looking forward to my $6 check, but sadly, it cost me $3 to park and $6 for lunch.   But at least I did my civic duty and was willing to be selected if that were the desire of the court. 

Having a Counting Crows kinda weekend here in Dallas.

I just discovered that the student-produced newspaper of my university has made its way online.  That’s no surprise, its probably been online for quite some time.  You can find The Battalion here.

I only found it because I was wondering today what the student perspective on the upcoming NCAA tournament game might be.  Turns out, its Spring Break and so the information is a bit stale this week.

I remember fondly  when "The Batt" would be made available every weekday afternoon.  It made for good reading between classes or on lazy classless afternoons. 

I started noting things I wonder about here.  Here are a couple more:

• Wondering about the term "meteoric rise."  The term is used to describe a dramatic upswing and yet all meteors do is fall quickly to the ground and flame out.

• What is the deal with people who need to back into their parking spaces?  I have never understood this phenomenon and I wonder if its just a Texas thing.  And its usually the people with the biggest vehicles, like the big trucks that are found in Texas.  To me, its way too stressful trying to negotiate into a parking space while backing up.  I’d rather have the easier back up scenario where I’m not trying to thread the needle between two other vehicles.  I cannot figure out what kind of advantage this provides someone, so if someone out there does this regularly, please explain why.

• Another parking lot scenario.  When packing out of a spot, why must you be three-fourths out of your spot before you get the respect of oncoming traffic.  It seems I’m invariably putting the brakes on even when my car is well out of its space.

That’s it for today…

I don’t know how it came up, but Suzanne and I have discovered that we have two very firm, but different beliefs on how a four-way stop is navigated.  These are such long-held beliefs that even if we find out that one of us is wrong, we will be hard-pressed to change our habits.

We are in agreement on the four-way stop in the one and two car at the same time situations.  Its when several cars arrive at the same time, that we differ.  Suzanne believes that the order must go based upon the order of arrival.  In other words, it does not follow a clockwise or counter-clockwise rotation.

I, on the other hand, have always observed a counter-clockwise rotation once someone has claimed the right of way.

I have tried to research this in the Texas Department of Public Safety Driver’s Manual, but they were pretty vague and there was much left up for interpretation.  There are a few other assorted Internet sites, but none seemed to have a definitive answer. 

So until we find out otherwise, I guess we’ll each handle it our own way.  I refuse to adopt Suzanne’s method since it seems inherently dangerous.  I do not believe people can maintain an order that’s not some kind of a rotation.  But for all I know, she may be right.

I have things I wonder about and mean to post, but always seems to forget them.  Here are two:

• Why does my printer (HP OfficeJet v40) print pages from first to last?  The result of this is that the first page is at the bottom of the stack and I then have to reorder them manually.  As I’ve been printing off sizable PDFs lately, this has become very annoying.  To be fair to HP, I’m running the Gimp printer driver / adapter on my Mac, so that could be the reason for this.

• There are a series of speed bumps in the long driveway leading to my office’s employee parking garage.  Invariably I get behind a large RAM-tough truck or a Toyota Tundra or some kind of large vehicle and they take these bumps as if they are hauling a truckload of unsecured glass.  What gives?  In the commercials, these trucks eat speed bumps.  And me?  I get more air than the Flying Tomato as I race over these bumps. 

More of these as I recall them…

I had a strange car trouble episode today.  It started as I arrived at work today at 8am.  Like always, I got out of my car and used my keyless remote to lock the car.  But as I did so, the auto theft alarm went off.  Since this is not a regular event for me, I fumbled with the remote trying to disengage the alarm.  But it went on and on.

Just imagine my embarrassment as my fellow co-workers all were getting out of their cars and looking over to me to make sense of the chaotic noise.  I was trying everything.  I pressed the button inside the car which turned off the alarm.  I pressed the keyless remote button repeatedly.  I even drove the car forward and backward.  Nothing worked.

And then something did work, but I did not know what.  Thinking maybe it had been an anomoly, I pressed the lock button on the keyless remote once again.  Unfortunately, the pattern repeated.  I finally drove home where I could work out the problem with less of an audience.  Once there, I briefly researched on the Internet before conceeding that I needed professional help.

So I took my car into my new favorite shop.  After a couple of hours, they had worked out the problem.  Turns out that Saturday’s errand which involved picking up a new sink packed in an over-sized box was the catalyst.  It was raining on Saturday and in my haste to complete the errand, I elected to simply wedge the box into the trunk of my small car and tie it off.  It took me 15 minutes to get home.  Little did I know the side effect of my decision.

Apparently the moisture from the rain that made its way inside the trunk mucked up the electronics which runs my lock and alarm system.  The solution was to blow-dry it and hope for the best.  It cost me $173 and I was at work by 11:45am.  However, when I arrived back in the parking garage after work was over, the alarm was going off.  So, I guess we’ll see what happens. 

So note to anyone driving Mercedes:  Curiously, the trunk may not be the best place for your potentially wet cargo.  So think about this the next time you load a cooler or purchase that party ice.

This is a post mostly directed at my Mother who requested a picture of our Christmas Tree — a tree with a couple of ornaments she gave us.

I should say that this is the first tree I’ve had since the Christmas of 1993, so this is quite remarkable.  Suzanne has done a fantastic job of outfitting the house with all kinds of Christmas decorations.

My small contribution was to buy a collection of the Christmas shows that play every year — shows like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas", "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", etc.  Since I made her go to a hockey game on the one night that Rudolph was on, I figured it was the least I could do.

When I added Suzanne to my life, it was a package deal.  Coming with her was a 3-year-old cat which Suzanne rescued from a shelter two years ago.  I’ve never really been a cat person and in fact, I’ve always believed that I have a mild cat allergy. 

But having said that, I will admit that I’ve fallen in love twice.  This cat makes me smile every day with her various antics.  I’ve provided two examples to give you an idea.  This cat, Autumn, needs love and attention just like a dog and so its easy to love her.

Today we went to see "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire".  This is now the second Harry Potter movie that I’ve seen without having read the corresponding book.  I managed to read the first two books, so I had the benefit of the background context for those movies.  Suzanne on the other hand "inhaled" all six books within two months.  As a result, she usually fills me in on what the movie glossed over or how it deviated.  Its her opinion that this one was probably easier to follow.  Still, I have mixed emotions about going to see these movies without having read the book.  The books are so well-written that I feel like I’m probably cheating myself out of a good experience.  Nonetheless, the movie is highly recommended if you follow the series.

On a different note, I had waited all season to see what UT was going to do to my Aggies.  I feared the worst as they had been demolishing everyone.  Early on, UT took a 14-0 lead and I had that disappointed feeling you get when you start eating a taco and the bottom cracks in two.  You know its going to get messy, but your committed to the experience.  But it turned out better than I thought.  The Aggies hung in there and were competitive for the entire game.  Though they lost 40-29, they bested UT in most offensive categories.  So now I have a little hope that next year will be a better year.  But Texas is just a machine this year.

I have switched my websites to use Google Analytics as it offers tons of information for free.  I had previously used Sitemeter and the outdated Urchin package provided by my hosting service.  But speaking of analytics, I’m wondering how Web 2.0 apps will affect the analytics field.  As it is now, most everything is measured on page loads, but Web 2.0 apps will reduce page loads in favor of intermediate intra-page visits to web servers.  So I’m curious to see how analytics will evolve.