Month: February 2003

02/26/2003

I was called for jury duty yesterday morning. I trundled down to the Boulder Courthouse (a place which I’m quite familiar with by now) and went obediently to the Jury Assembly Room. There I was treated to a lovely 20-minute video about my responsibilities as a citizen, the jury process, yada yada. Truly an entertaining experience– look for the video at your local Blockbuster soon.

Anyway, then we went to the courtroom where we were introduced to the District Attorney (Ms. Laskey) and the defendant (Mr. Moore). Apparently Mr. Moore had been driving with a revoked license and was caught. Oops. He had elected to defend himself in this trial, which was probably not the wisest choice on his part.

They picked twelve of the thirty of us (I was not one) and questioned them about their personal status, feelings toward law enforcement, etc. Everyone “passed” I suppose, and then Ms. Laskey asked a few questions of the jurors. She was articulate, well-dressed, and obviously very experienced with this sort of thing. Mr. Moore had his turn, and he asked a rambling question that must’ve gone on for two minutes (after which the juror he had asked said, “huh?”). He was wearing his Broncos sweatshirt and jeans, and was a pretty stark contrast to the DA.

Well, they selected the jurors and everyone else (me included) was allowed to leave. That was that. It might have been interesting to watch the trial, because it’s my opinion that Ms. Laskey was going to chew him up and spit him out… but I had things to do, so I guess I’ll never know how it came out.

So my civic duty is covered for at least one more year. One of these times it might be fun to actually sit on a jury, but for now I’m happy to have only spent the morning.

02/20/2003

HP has impressed me once again.

I bought a new drum kit for my laser printer (I don’t even know what the drum kit is for, but it’s pretty expensive). It came in a nice box, of course, and inside the box was a note about recycling. HP wants me to send back the old drum kit– which looks like a large and fairly complicated collection of plastic, gears, and metal– so they can reuse it by filling it with whatever goes into a drum kit.

Now, that’s all well and good, and I considered whether it was worth it to me to recycle it. Then I saw the UPS slip.

See, HP included a postage-paid (blank check) UPS Ground shipping label that I could slap on the box. Then I can send it back to HP, they reuse it, and the Earth says “thanks”.

That’s cool.

02/18/2003

An eight-year-old named Rod lives next door. He really impresses the kids with his belching prowess. It’s to the point where the kids let loose a burp and compare it to what I can only describe as the Rod Scale.

Alex: (buuuuuuuuuuuuurp!)
Kyra: “Wow Alex, that was as good as Rod’s burps!”

Or, on the other end of the scale:

Alex: (burp)
Kyra: “That burp wasn’t nearly as good as Rod’s.”

Dinner conversation will never be the same.

02/18/2003

To my great surprise, I learned that at least two people in the world read this journal!

One is my friend Tad, who stumbled across it on my da Vinci Projects site; the other is my pal Roy who insists, “Hey, I’m a fan!”

Thanks for reading, guys. I’ll try to keep things interesting…

02/16/2003

I just downloaded and installed a nifty little gadget. It’s called WayV and it recognizes mouse strokes like a PDA stylus– and performs actions based on them. For example, I can “write” an M on my screen and it’ll launch my mail program. N for Netscape, K for Konqueror, / (slash) to kill the window, and so on. Fun!

02/15/2003

Valentine’s Day was fun as always. We made heart-shaped sugar cookies with the kids. Kyra had her friend Amanda over, and they decorated them (and of course ate several in the process). We gave some to friends’ kids, and hoarded the rest.

Laralee hid little Valentine notes around the house… well, that’s not exactly accurate. She wrote the little notes, and the kids hid them. Then they’d come up to me and say things like “Dad, don’t you need to use your stapler?” When I said I didn’t really, but thanks for asking, they’d insist, “No, I think you should get out your stapler and staple something.” Lo and behold, there was a little note under the stapler. Et cetera.

And I, being the incurable romantic that I am, rented “The Bourne Identity” for us to watch. What a terrifically romantic movie…

02/11/2003

I got my “new toys” today: four brand new Shuttle SK41G small-form-factor computers, and all the little trinkets that go inside. These puppies are awesome little silver boxes, less than half the size of a standard desktop system, and they really pack a wallop.

So I spent a couple of hours putting everything together, and basked in the soft blue glow of the power-on LED and the translucent front panel. Tomorrow I’ll actually set everything up, and then (sadly) they’ll be shipped off to Boulder to act as my new faster-better-stronger web and database servers.

Now if I can just think of an excuse to get one for the house…