For those that thought I was crazy for knowing the airplane safety instructions by heart… I’m still glad I know them.
Monthly Archive for May, 2008
The California Supreme Court recently overturned the state’s Defense of Marriage Act which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Now that it’s overturned, same-sex couples in California join those in Massachusetts in enjoying the full rights of marriage as heterosexual couples enjoy.
Now a new amendment is in the works, “Limits on Marriage,†which is a proposed constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage in California. Governor Schwarzenegger stated he will not support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, but nonetheless he’s receiving numerous calls from supporters of this amendment in hopes his mind will change.
I’d appreciate your taking a minute to call the state’s automated system and express your support for same-sex marriage. While the line may be busy, once you get through it takes less than a minute to voice your support.
- Call (916) 445-2841
- If it’s busy, please, keep trying! I’d call later in the evening, as it seems impossible to get through right now. Two hours ago others got through no problem… but then again, emails and blog posts are going up about it (I found out by email), and undoubtedly people like you and me are trying to call.
- Here’s what you’re pressing: 1 is for English, 5 for expressing your opinion, 1 to express your opinion on the court’s decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, and 1 to say you support this decision. I recommend listening to the prompts just to make sure things haven’t changed since I posted this.
- It’ll say goodbye to you.
My thanks in advance for your taking a moment to express your support. 
While we do have domestic partnerships here in Washington State (which provide a very limited subset of the rights those that can marry receive), we do have a ban on same-sex marriage via the Defense of Marriage Act. Hopefully California’s example will inspire change here in Washington State as well as all over the country in making progress towards marriage equality for everyone.
The weather here in Seattle has been really nice the last few days with daytime highs around 85 degrees (30 C). One of my friends thought it’d be fun to go kayaking today, and I agreed to go. I’ve never been kayaking before, but I have gone canoeing, which isn’t much different. We were out in Green Lake [seattle.gov] for about an hour. Beforehand we went for lunch at a nearby bar & grill, which is conveniently named the Greenlake Bar & Grill [greenlakebarandgrill.com], and afterwards we went for some Baskin-Robbins ice cream. I’m surprisingly not too sore after going, but I wonder if all the walking while riding Magnum last weekend helped at all.
Sorry, no pictures. I didn’t want the camera to go into the water. And no, I didn’t tip over into the water. 
I tweaked a few things on the site. First, I’m using Lightbox for images in blog posts. You’ve seen this in the “Random Gallery Image†for some time, but I changed things so that it also works in blog posts, which you’ve also seen recently, such as my last blog post. It’s the thing that allows you to click a picture and it loads a larger version of it in a fancy window on top of the site.
I also added an “I Support…†animated GIF on the right which links to a page mentioning the various organizations I support through financial contributions and/or by participating in their events. Hopefully the rotating image isn’t distracting.
What’cha think? What other changes do you suggest?
It’s come and gone, another opening weekend at Cedar Point [cedarpoint.com]. I’m currently at Detroit Metro Airport [metroairport.com] waiting for my flight back to Seattle so I thought I’d write about the weekend. All in all it was a decent opening weekend, and despite a few bumps along the way, it was a good trip.
I’ll start with my flight Thursday night into Friday morning. I took an overnight flight as I needed to swing by the season pass office to pick my pass up. Those that know better do not go there opening day as the line is very long, usually several hours. Had I taken the earliest flight on Friday, being around 8:30am, I would have landed in Detroit, Michigan around 4pm, not leaving much time to make it down there by 7pm when they close. Flying out Thursday daytime is silly as that means an extra day at the hotel and an entire day in Sandusky, Ohio with very little to do. I’ve said before that I’d never take a red-eye flight unless I had no other choice, and this time it just made sense to take it.
Which brings us into Friday, where after leaving Seattle at 10:30pm I landed in Detroit at 5:15am. I didn’t really get much sleep in flight, let alone quality sleep (who can in a coach seat) so I was pretty fried. I left the airport, got in my rental car (a Ford Crown Victoria… ugh… why not a Saturn Aura, I like that car) and headed to the seemingly only Starbucks within anywhere sensible to the airport aside from within the airport’s sterile areas (the areas beyond the security checkpoints).
After a Venti Mocha and a few hours there I met a friend for lunch in Monroe, Michigan and was invited to see the Monroe Emergency Operations Center (EOC). When I lived in Oakland county I did some volunteer work with the Oakland County Amateur Radio Public Service Corps (ARPSC), so I’ve seen Oakland County’s EOC. I haven’t done any work in the Seattle area in this space, so it was nice to see Monroe county’s EOC both to see what their brand new facility had to offer, but also to kind of get back in touch with those days when I did ARPSC work.
Next it was off to Cedar Point and the season pass office. The drive down was just fine. The Ohio Turnpike continues to be a nice stretch of highway that I wish others would learn from – the road surface is always well maintained and construction zones are signed very well and maintain two lanes of travel the majority of the time. Off the turnpike and into Sandusky, I headed to the season pass office, smiled for my picture, cried a little inside when they handed me the pass as they no longer put your picture on it (this will speed up the line I spoke of – no need to wait for them to print anymore) and then headed to the hotel. After checking in, I waited for a friend of mine to arrive before eating and calling it a night.
Saturday morning hits, and it’s time to go to the park! On my way in, Magnum greeted us with the sun rising behind.
The line at the back entrance is long, but it didn’t take long to get everyone through it. After getting into the park at 9am, we headed over to Maverick for a quick ride. After what seemed like a bumpy start to getting it running, we were through the line and the ride fairly quickly.
Then it was time to ride Magnum XL-200, and although I missed the first train of the season, I was on the third which is close enough. We met up with more friends and started our usual Magnum ride loop, went for lunch later, met up with even more people we knew, strolled the park for some pictures and gift shop visits, and eventually made our way back to Magnum for some more rides. I also stopped by the ice cream parlor and had myself some Toft’s ice cream (very yummy ice cream). Last year they took out the Ice Cream Parlor and replaced it with a Ben & Jerry’s, but I didn’t like it. I was glad to see Toft’s return this year. Here’s a picture of the new building, along with the fake cow outside it. I named the cow Bessie.
Unfortunately, Magnum suffered from numerous seat problems and a lot of seats were closed off for one reason or another. This caused the line to move very slowly and given things like this are not fixed until after the park closes, we lived with the closed seats for the rest of the evening. In the end, I had 16 rides on Saturday.
Sunday rolls along and we head back to the park once again. Saturday’s weather was a nice sunny 60 degrees Fahrenheit (15.5 C) but now Sunday brings wind and rain into the picture. I gear up in my rain suit and hope the rain is not enough to shut Magnum down but yet enough to keep people from visiting the park. It seemed to work – there weren’t very many people there. 37 rides for Sunday.
Everyone needed to take off Sunday night, so I headed back to the park Monday by myself. Aside from a quick lunch and a trip to two gift shops, I spent the entire day at Magnum and had 44 rides, so my weekend trip total is 97. A little light rain, and the temperature was now 52 degrees (11 C), but that wasn’t enough to keep me from the ride. 
The crew was having fun as well, such as asking guests waiting to get on to guess how many rides I was at, and one even thought it was funny how I could seemingly fly out of the train and down the exit ramp while everyone else is just finishing undoing their seat belts and getting out of the ride. I’ve had years of practice at it, so it’s quite easy now to get out of the ride very… ahem… efficiently.
Now it’s Monday and here I am at the airport waiting to go home. Of course it’s sunny and 65 degrees (18.3 C) outside, and as much as I wanted to sneak into the park for a few hours this morning to ride some more, I dragged myself away knowing I’ll be back again before I know it (hopefully next month). Anyone else want to go?
… for my washing machine to bust. The night before I fly out to the park. I went upstairs to put the clothes in the dryer and opened the lid to a tub full of soapy water. Now, for those that know me really well, it’ll be no surprise to you when I say I figured out what happened and worked around it.
When you close the lid, a switch is triggered so that the washer knows it’s safe to spin the tub. It broke off and was dangling inside the machine. I took a paperclip and wrapped it around so that the switch was triggered, and ta-da! I finished washing my clothes and they’re in the dryer right now.
Phew! Let’s hope that the last of that for this trip.
Yikes! Seems that April is the month for out of town company to come by. My parents came to visit as they’ve done past years, and a very good friend of mine came to stay with me as well.
Before anyone can come visit, though, I need things picked up. Between the waterbed needing replacing and the new furniture, I had a lot of displaced things and I needed to part ways with most of it. Mostly old software, such as Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Office 97, and so on, but there was some old paperwork in there, too, in case of an audit, but given it’s 2008, I think I can safely shred and discard my bills and invoices from the 1990s. That took some time, I must say.
Then there’s the garage. It still has my old waterbed frame in it, along with old living room furniture, dining table and such. I need to get all that out of here. After I’m back from Cedar Point, that’ll be at the top of my To Do list.
After all that picking up and such was done, Jen came to visit. She was here as it was time for the MVP Summit, which is when Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professionals are invited here to the Redmond campus for various talks and such. It was a real treat to have Jen come stay with me while the summit was going on. We ate out a lot at places like The Cheesecake Factory and we went to downtown Seattle a few times. We even took the bus! When Jen went back home, she left me some really delicious fudge.
Then a bit later my parents were here. This was their first time seeing the new furniture, which they liked very much. Unfortunately they weren’t feeling well and therefore we didn’t head out much, but we did slip away to Snoqualmie Falls for a bit which was really nice to see. We also played Wii quite a bit and we had a really nice dinner here at home that my mom made for us.
Now that April’s done and May is here, it’s my turn to travel. I’m hoping to hit a few amusement parks this summer, including one where a friend of mine is getting married. Yay for earning frequent flyer miles. Let’s hope I get to keep them all after Northwest merges with Delta…
I mentioned to some of you either over the phone or through Windows Live Messenger or IRC that I received a jury summons. I also promised I’d blog about it, and here that is.
Back in March I received a summons for jury service instructing me to report to the King County Regional Justice Center down in Kent. The summons strongly suggested I take the bus down as parking is limited, so I did. Given I needed to report at 8am Wednesday 2 April, I had to get on the 6:30 bus to Overlake Transit Center, which meant waking up at 5. While it wasn’t horrible, let’s just say that I haven’t exactly stuck with the 5am wake up time since then. After getting to Overlake Transit Center, I transferred to a Sound Transit Express bus that traveled through Kent.
Upon arriving the first day I checked in, sat in a large waiting area where we watched a video on the importance of jury service, and a judge came in, gave us some brief information and answered a few questions which unfortunately consisted of people mainly complaining about having to be there. They then called the first group of jurors to head to a courtroom for jury selection. I wasn’t selected in this group, so I remained in the waiting room reading some books I brought with me. Soon the second group was called, wherein I heard my name and was told to first head for lunch and afterwards head back to a different waiting spot to go in for jury selection.
I had lunch at Quiznos Subs. It was alright.
Back at the Justice Center after lunch, we all went into the courtroom and Judge Fleck provided some information and started the question part of jury selection. This part, called voir dire, meaning "to speak the truth," is where questions are asked to asses whether or not one would make a good and impartial juror for the specific case. We were each asked to state our names, where we live, who we live with, where we work, what some of our hobbies and interests are and whether we’ve served before, and if so, what type of case it was. Then we were asked a series of questions wherein if the answer of yes applied to us that we hold our juror number card up for recording. This allowed the attorneys to come back and ask us follow-up questions one-on-one rather than need to ask each juror one at a time.
Upon completion of this "Oprah Winfrey" method of asking questions as Judge Fleck put it, and the follow-up questions from the attorneys, some jurors were dismissed and the final jury was selected. There were about 50 potential jurors in the room, with potential jurors 1 through 13 seated in the jury box and the rest of us in the observation seating in the back of the courtroom. As jurors were dismissed from within the jury box, the next juror in line would move from the observing seating into that specific seat within the jury box. It was interesting that after a few dismissals, they dismissed the juror in seat 8, the next potential juror moved from the back seats into seat 8, and then was immediately dismissed. This happened over and over and over until it was my turn to go there (I was potential juror 27), at which point both attorneys were satisfied with the jury as is. And there you have it, I’m on a jury.
At that point we adjourned for the day. Given it was about 4pm, I could either catch the bus back, or take the Sounder train. I’d never been on the Sounder before and thought it would be fun. The Sounder normally runs mainly from Seattle to Tacoma in the afternoon (Kent is in between), but they run one reverse commute train from Tacoma to Seattle which was scheduled to stop in Kent at 5:17. I stopped at a Starbucks and then waited for the train. I discovered that when they say 5:17, they mean exactly 5:17. The train arrived and I hopped in. There are two levels, so I went upstairs for the heck of it, and found a seat at a table which to my surprise had an electric outlet. I plugged in my tablet PC and surfed the web for the half hour I rode the train. I got of the train in Seattle and transferred to a bus there to get home.
The trial took two days occurring on Thursday and the following Monday. We reported at 8:45am so I caught the 7am bus rather than the 6:30. The trial was an assault case wherein the defendant allegedly assaulted a homeless man outside of a Wal-Mart in Federal Way, Washington. We heard testimony from various people, such as the technician that reviewed the head scan, the police officer that was at the defendant’s arrest, a friend of the homeless man, and the homeless man himself. Lots of objections, lots of sustains and overrules, the usual court stuff you see on TV.
On Tuesday we returned again at 8:45am and after receiving jury instructions we started deliberating. We needed all of 20 minutes to reach a guilty verdict. Probably to the surprise of few, I was the presiding juror and had to record the verdict and sign my name on it. When we entered the courtroom I had to claim that we reached a verdict, but unlike how it’s done on TV, I did not read the guilty verdict; a court clerk did. We were done around 3pm but given I’d not be back in the Kent area again in the foreseeable future, I hung around at Starbucks and caught the train again. And that was it, it was all done.
I found jury service to be a very enjoyable experience and I have new appreciation for our country’s court system. It was a pleasure to serve for Judge Fleck – she was really friendly and appreciated our taking time to serve. She even came to the jury room after the trial completed to personally apologize for some of the delays we experienced. I’m looking forward to my next summons notice.
It’s unfortunate how many don’t appreciate jury service. From those I know that I told about the summons, a common theme emerged. Those that are from other countries and are not able to serve really want to do it, and many of those that are United States citizens gave me tips on avoiding service or suggested deferring it. In any case, I hope if there are any questions I can answer about jury service, that you feel free to ask them in this post’s comments. I’m more than happy to answer them for you.
Cedar Point opens in a week… I have a feeling an upcoming blog post will focus on that. Until next post, take care everyone!
