I was finally summoned for jury duty, and was scheduled to appear today, but when I telephoned this morning, our group had been dismissed. I was really disappointed, because I’ve always wanted to serve on a jury. I feel that if you ever get called to serve on a jury, you should do so willingly, and a verdict should not be reached lightly. If you are are going to reach verdict of guilty, you better be completely sure the defendant is guilty, and that the law being applied is fair.
Also, if you have never heard of jury nullification, I would suggest reading that entire article. I do not condone abusing your rights as a juror, but I do completely believe in reaching a fair and just verdict.
About 10 years ago, while on my mission, I heard a song by The Cardigans that I really liked (not to mention that I was already in love with Nina Persson’s voice). But by the time I returned home, I couldn’t remember the name of it, or exactly what it sounded like to be able to find it. All I could remember was that it was a live version of a song from one of their singles released in the late 90s, that it had a fast tempo, and that it had the lyrics “har har har” somewhere in the song.
I had been home for about 2 years, when I found a song titled “Sick & Tired” off their Emmerdale album; I thought sounded like it might be the song I was looking for, but since it didn’t have the har har har lyrics in it, I ended up deciding it wasn’t it, and gave up looking for the song.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to look again and found a pretty good discography listing on their official website. When I saw the following CD, I realized that I was retarded, and that the har har har lyrics were likely only in the live version:
I realize this is the wrong live performance (this one says it’s off the “Erase/Rewind” single; though even that’s probably wrong, and it should be listed as being from the “Rewind-Live” single), but I still can’t find the recording from the “My Favourite Game CD 1″ single, and this example is good enough.
I’m sick and tired (ooh, that reminds me I need to write another entry soon after this) of people talking about how media is grossly biased one way for either liberals or conservatives. Here’s what someone I know recently said about media bias: “Yes the right has it’s [sic] share too, but not NEAR the volume.”¹ Now this is entirely speculation (and oh, how I love to speculate (ideas, not oil), but I’ve come up with a hypothesis I think I’ll call “the horde vs alliance effect” (I hate to use this game to compare to real life, but it’s a super awesome analogy, in my opinion). And I am in no way saying media bias does not exist, because it absolutely does.
Basically, no matter which side you pick, everyone seems to complain that the other side significantly outnumbers or outperforms the side you’re on. If you play horde, you hear (or even make) continuous complaints that the alliance are too good, that they cheat, that horde can never win, and vice versa. While on some servers in the game this could possibly be true, the company that runs the game has confirmed that wins and losses are split extremely evenly between the two sides.
I would be rather surprised if this wasn’t also true in nearly every aspect of real life, including media bias.
1. Bennion, Karl-Erik. Used without permission. 3 September 2008. Accessed 1 October 2008. http://kebstuff.com/?p=128
So my wife finally started her own blog over at blogspot, The McClean Family.
Now I can keep all of my posts really boring and nerdy while she chronicles our family life events.
Speaking of other blogs, I recently rediscovered this disturbing one that I had set up for a school assignment 3 years ago. I hardly remember writing any of it: Dug’s Blog.
It had been a while since my last entry, so I decided to take a look at my site, where I noticed lots of hidden sex tags had somehow been added on to my last post. They weren’t comments, but were actually part of my entry. And since Becky doesn’t often update my posts with dirty thoughts, I’m sure either my password has become compromised or wordpress (or one of its plugins) had a security vulnerability.
In any case, I decided to update gallery2, wordpress, and the wpg2 plugin to the latest version. The upgrade also added the freaking awesome functionality of highlighting the “photos” tab when that page is active! I didn’t have to tweak a single thing to get it to work; though I still had to do custom css fix to the font-size so you can read the gallery text).
I have decided that I am one of the least observant people I know:
I was attending a Flash training class in central Phoenix today (the building is about 100 yards from Indian School Rd and Central Ave), and as I was leaving for lunch, I heard a news report over the radio that two helicopters had collided midair above Indian School Rd and Central Ave, around 5 to 15 minutes after I’d left. Though it’s an extremely tragic event, it still would have been a pretty awesome thing to see; and I like to think I could have seen it if I were just a little more observant of my surroundings.
On a much happier note, my wife thinks that having two helicopters crash land on you would be a sweet way to die. Much better than dying of stinking old age.
UPDATE: Removed a dead link to an azcentral.com news article about the story
I decided to title this article based on how my oldest son, Aidan, likes to refer to sequels (and for that matter, originals: “Daddy, we’re going to go see Transformers number 1.”)
A few months ago, my wife placed a pre-order for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and assuming we would have completely moved to Phoenix by then, decided to use her grandparent’s address for the shipping address. Long story short, this is the only book of the series that I was able to read before her.
Though it was Becky that got me started on reading the books, I have really enjoyed them, and was looking forward to the book arriving (though I’ve always seemed to like entertainment intended for children). While I am no critic (though, it could be argued that the common reader is the best critic), I did think the book was very well-written; however, I can’t say if I actually enjoyed the book or not.
Becky knows me well enough to know that if I liked a story, it means that no one (of importance) dies; and if I didn’t like it, it means someone I didn’t want to die does (in the case of this book, that would be Harry, Ginny, Ron, or Hermione; sorry, still can’t spoil if any of them live or die, because I don’t want to die myself).
And yes, I’m very shallow when it comes to stories; which is probably why I had a hard time reading some of the assigned Shakespeare tragedies in high school.
There’s this guy at work that, the entire time he’s using the restroom, sits there and whispers to himself, just enough under his breath that it’s difficult to make out what he’s saying. According to another coworker, he is whispering to himself things like, “Just breathe.” I feel bad for the guy, but it still creeps me out.
Okay, this is slightly obsessive-compulsive, but I will eventually figure out an easy way to get the gallery tab above to be highlighted instead of main when viewing the gallery page… but for now, it’s time for bed.
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