C4-Ea-F1-F234123-C4-Ea-F1-G2-C3 or The People Versus...

Getting called this week was semi-perfect time or semi-imperfect timing. Since I’m just finishing up my thesis/doing a research project this week, I’m generally free. However, I am going on vacation next week. I chose not to postpone for a couple reasons. 1) Hubris – I thought the chances that I’d get seated on a jury, or seated on a jury with a case longer than 1 week would be low. 2) While I could reschedule for 2 weeks from now, at the time I received my summons, I hadn’t yet secured housing in Davis yet, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be busy doing that. I figure I’ll also be turning my thesis in around then.

After not being called in on Monday, me and 50 of my closest friends reported to the Department 3 courtroom of the San Luis Obispo Superior Court. The case at hand was a criminal case, and somewhat of a doozy with 3 counts, and an expected trial time of 2 weeks. Uh oh…

The charges:
           - 1 felony count of possession of child pornography
           - 1 felony count of possession of a controlled substance – methamphetamines
           - 1 misdemeanor count of possession of drug paraphernalia

The process began with the judge, who was actually quite funny, asking anyone if they had any significant personal hardships. He was somewhat willing to take vacations if they were complete immovable, but I figured the truly immovable part of my vacation was the part after the trial was scheduled to be over, so I didn’t raise an objection then. He did warn that if you got waived on this case, you’d probably be sent to a courtroom where another case was in jury selection. That judge has never dismissed anyone for hardship before. Of course, it was her first case on the bench… It’s actually kind of unfortunate I didn’t get assigned to that courtroom, as I would’ve been dismissed for cause as I no longer would’ve been a resident of the county come the end of the trial.

The process of jury selection generally follows this pattern:
           - General inquiries about jurors from the judge
           - Questions from the defense attorney
           - Questions from the prosecutor
           - Removal of prospective jurors based on counsel vetos (pre-emptory challenges) and back to the beginning with selection of new prospective jurors

After a few people were dismissed for hardship, the process began with the random selecting and questioning of 12 potential jurors and 6 alternates. The judge asked simple questions on occupation, spouses, children, where they lived, etc. He also asked if we knew any of the parties involved, defendant, counsels, prospective witnesses, etc. Also, since in this case jurors would have to view child pornography to determine if that’s what it actually was, he asked if people could separate viewing that without taking out their anger on the nearest defendant.

Next came the defense attorney questions. He asked things like do you feel everyone has the right to a fair trial? He was especially interested in people’s computer knowledge, asking a key question on how reliable people thought computers are. Another key question was peoples feeling on legal pornography.

The prosecutor was also interested in people’s computer expertise. She was curious about peoples reactions to what happens when surfing the internet they come across something explicit that they didn’t want to see. This was a particularly aggravating 20 minute line of questioning in the gallery as there didn’t seem to be any notice that stuff like unfiltered image searches and spam are things that aren’t actually out of the ordinary. Finally, what I thought to be her money question was what people thought of computer regulations.

After the first round of questioning, the pre-emptory challenges began. Of the original 18, 7 jurors were dismissed in this round. The counsels could dismiss up to the point that there was no longer any alternates to fill the newly vacant seat on the actual jury. The defense attorney eliminated older people who didn’t have good knowledge about computers or had religious views about pornography. He also eliminated a couple guys with good computer knowledge, including a computer teacher who said computers don’t malfunction wildly. If something is on your hard drive, chances are 99% that you put it on there consciously. I would’ve agreed with this saying computers malfunction less than people say they do. I’d say when they do malfunction, it’s that they don’t do what you want them to do, and not do things you don’t want them to do.

The prosecutor axed almost all of the younger jurors, who pretty much all had a pretty liberal views on computer regulations. Almost everyone middle aged and older said regulate, regulate for the kids. The kids, said, don’t watch what I’m doing, especially on a computer in the privacy of my own home. One said he didn’t care if it was illegal activity, the government shouldn’t be spooking around. Another younger guy also agreed. Both were gone fast.

Seven replacements were then called up and questioned. We only got through the judges questions before we adjourned the next day to resume Wednesday afternoon. The judge did have to release one of the new alternates who said my religious beliefs won’t allow me to even look at the evidence and that my spirit would die a little inside if I had to do this. That statement burned me a little bit, as it highlighted an issue I sometimes have with the uber-religious. It’s a lack of taking of personal responsibility if you will. It’s like instead of doing something to rectify a situation, just pray, or believe that god will take care of it. Basically, thus guy was saying, I am so religiously and morally opposed to something that I won’t do what it takes to help stop it in the name of justice.

This guy had a pretty lame excuse for a personal hardship earlier, saying he wanted to postpone his service, but his website status said he couldn’t, even though a vacation was an acceptable postponement. Well, it is, but if you’re looking at your status online, which is uploaded the night before serving, it’s too late to postpone. You’re supposed to do it in writing ahead of time. His vacation was that he was going to stay home with his wife who also scheduled time off. They weren’t even going anywhere. The judge would’ve taken non-refundable plane tickets to Europe as a hardship, but staying at home, forget about it. Why do I get the feeling, instead of taking responsibility and comprehending his procedural error, he must’ve been praying for the cold and soulless jury commissioner who wouldn’t let a man share time with his wife.

Now I suppose I’m being fairly judgmental here, and I might deserve a false start on stone throwing flag right there. Oh well, I wasn’t going to win Kansas anyway…

Anyway, questioning resumed on the remaining 6 newcomers. It was going faster this time, since the counsels started honing in on the follow-up questions they wanted to ask. After both went again, it was time for another round of pre-emptory challenges. To the dismay of those of us in the gallery, they ejected another seven jurors.

At this point, I was pretty sure that if I got selected in the next round of questioning, I would be ejected. Like most of the younger potential and ejected jurors, I would say I have pretty anti-regulation views on computers and the internet. I would have agreed that the government should stay out of what people do on the internet in the privacy of their own homes. I perhaps wouldn’t have said what the one guy said, I don’t care even if it is illegal. But I would’ve agreed with one lady in her 30’s who had pretty liberal views and said, government should go after posters of illegal content, and that if the government has to look at what law abiding people are doing to find illegal activity, they shouldn’t do it.

I would’ve gone as far as saying that there should be probable cause and search warrants before authorities look at web information. Then again, my views aren’t formed based on child porn, but instead on my old Foothill Computing Center days. Since Rescomp worked in there too, we had to deal with people getting subpoenas and take-down notices from the RIAA. I didn’t like that at all, and while that was private corporations spying on private citizens and not the government, it shaped my hostility to the viewing of network activity. While I would’ve brought that up if asked, I wouldn’t have said anything about perhaps reconsidering because of the nature of this case, lest I make myself appear balanced and nuanced in analytical processes.

During this second round of challenges, the prosecutor kicked off another college student who I thought she’d keep. He hadn’t said anything anti-regulatory, he hadn’t said much at all, and his computer knowledge was on hardware. He was then immediately replaced by an old man who the defense attorney kicked out, to be replaced by the lady in her 30’s I just mentioned. She was immediately kicked off by the prosecutor.

So as I said, I was confident I could get myself eject if selected as a college student got kicked off for seemingly no reason, and someone I agreed with followed him out. Still, I was quite nervous as they needed seven people to sit down and there were only 14 of us left in the gallery. It’s a pick ‘em, and somehow I didn’t get called. I had been exchanging facial expressions/sighs of relief with an older gentleman next to me throughout the proceedings and we exchanged another look of disbelief as we somehow had made it again.

Prior to the selecting of the 7 new people, both counsels accepted the jury as it was at that point. All that was needed to fill the 12^th spot and the 3 needed alternates. We took a break before the new questioning started. When we returned, it appears the 11 seated jurors began to realize that they weren’t going to get dismissed. As we returned from recess, all of a sudden one juror had a medical condition she needed to disclose to the judge, and another all of a sudden she couldn’t unbiased-ly rule on a child porn case. The medical case must’ve been sufficiently embarrassing that the judge didn’t want to read it in court, but he wasn’t too happy with the other lady. He prodded, you can’t intellectually separate viewing whether something is porn or not with whether the defendant was in possession. Her response led him to respond that what she said just then sure made it sound like she’d be able to do the job. Ramping up her response, almost to the point to where I think she was about to say, he’s guilty, the judge released her. Face-palming in the gallery I thought, if they pre-empt two or more jurors, I’m going to end up being called up.

Oddly, during this session, a man and like his 10 year old kid came in the courtroom. I suppose court cases are generally open to the public, so this guy took his son in to watch one. After a couple of minutes of weird looks from people in the room, the bailiff moved toward the dad who got up and met him. The bailiff I’m sure told him we were talking about child pornography, they shook hands, and the man motioned to his son that they’d be leaving. Bizarre…

Back to the case, one of the new seven selected, who moved directly into the jury because of medical condition lady, was another Cal Poly graduate student. We were the last two student-age people in the gallery, so chances were one of us would get called. It ended up being him, leaving me the eighth and final 20-something in the gallery. As he got questioned, he said the buzzword which I was going to use if called. Certainly, I would’ve said everything that I mentioned earlier I would say, but my money term was going to be “Net Neutrality”. To him net neutrality meant the net should be an apolitical place for free and uncontrolled expression, basically saying that it should generally not be regulated. When pressed by the judge though, he stopped short of saying they should control illegal activity.

After questioning this new group of seven, it was time for pre-emptory challenges again. To my amazement, both sides accepted the jury, the prosecutor somehow not ejecting net neutrality guy. In fairness, this guy also works as a Police-Student liaison officer, so maybe that was enough to balance the net neutrality statements. The guy next to me whispered to me he couldn’t believe she didn’t dismiss the guy in the green shirt (net neutrality guy). I said, I can’t believe they didn’t dismiss either the guys in the green shirts, the other guy being a prison guard who replaced can’t give an unbiased opinion lady. The judge and counsels met in chambers to select the 3 alternates out of 4 remaining potential alternates, with both prosecutor and defense attorney nicely releasing a lady 3 months pregnant.

The judge released her and the 7 of us remaining in the gallery and we were free to go, with me and my other lucky friend shaking hands and marveling how lucky we had been, the 7 out of almost 50 not to be called. I joked that I thought I saw a pattern in how the names were called across the alphabet and sure I was going to be called in the last round. Another guy who was chosen thought he had deciphered the pattern too. We were both wrong…

I guess I’ll never know whether the net neutrality argument would’ve worked. While the guy who said it got study, I would’ve said more than him for sure, although I wouldn’t have gone as far as I don’t care if it’s illegal guy. It probably would’ve worked if I had been selected early, but less likely in the later rounds. It certainly wasn’t likely, but my hubris didn’t end up biting me in the rear, and to boot now I have one year insurance on being called for service again. That is good, since it’ll probably a hectic year up in the land that the marine layer forgot.

The non-sensical title above is the notes/counting for roughly the theme to the "People's Court". Notes, in the key of C above, with counting in eighths (note the pick-up) below...

CE | F-F----- | ------CE | F-G-C---
4a | 1a2a3a4a | 1a2a3a4a | 1a2a3a4a

Previously Recorded From An Earlier Live Broadcast…, pt 3…

Sunday, January 18, 2:00am – I hooked up with three other grad students from my program who flew in from LAX (on US Airways, hah, via Charlotte) at Dulles Airport. We eventually made it to our hotel for night #1 with a fourth person from my program, and a friend of one of them. As it turned out, we were able to score a room in the Embassy Suites, right in downtown DC, and it was only $90… thank you Hotwire.

Sunday, January 18, 4:00am – For inauguration weekend, the District of Columbia allowed bars to stay open until 5am. With that in mind, a couple of people in my group, particularly the pair that come arrived earliest, still felt like hitting the town, despite it being 2:00am.

There was a bit of a wrench into this plan, and that was the free concert that was being held on the National Mall on Sunday, starting at 2:30pm. The person that everybody else was staying with wanted to go to the concert and really early to get a good spot. By early, she wanted the people staying with her to bring their stuff over at about 4:30am. This did not fit into the plans of the three that wanted to go out, nor the two that wanted to sleep. Nor did it fit into anybody’s good idea of how to spend a day… sleep two hours, go stand in the cold for 10 hours, don’t eat for over 12+ hours.

Eventually, they settled on the guy in my program and his friend who knew her best to go pick up her key at 4:30am, let the others sleep, and let their friend go to the concert if they want. So at around 4:00am the two of them grabbed their bags, went out in the cold, and walked the 10 blocks to go there. From what I heard, I think they slept after they got there.

Originally, the setup was me sharing a pull-out sofa-bed for the night. But since my bunkmate had to go, I had my own bed for all but 30 minutes, despite us starting the night with 6 people in the room.

Sunday, January 18, 1:15pm – I made a visit to the National Archives. My law professor told us who were going that our homework was to go take a picture of the constitution. I went, but I’ll be back in time for class Wednesday afternoon, so I took a picture of something that’s just the same, the Magna Carta…

A lady next to me asked, “Why do we have the Magna Carta?” That’s a very good question…

Before heading to a Metro station, I made a stop on the National Mall to see all the preparation. I was surprised by just how many screens they put up and how close they were. Granted, they still weren’t that big or that plentiful, but when faced with trying to put screens for an extremely open area, I thought it was as good a job as they could do.

I exchanged picture takings with a nice couple from New Mexico, and then we were approached to do the same for a man visiting from Turkey. In the picture I took, I was holding a Manila folder of papers that was in my backpack. As I detailed in Part 1, I was covering a bunch of classes last week with another graduate student. I couldn’t cover one class Friday afternoon that I usually grade for, so the other TA collected the papers. She handed them to me in Washington, and just to make sure there was evidence of that particular homework’s 4500 mile trip, I had to take a picture of them in front of the Capitol.

Sunday, January 18, 3:45pm – I went up to College Park, Maryland to watch the Conference Championship games with a buddy of mine. We started off with the NFC Championship at the Cornerstone Pub a couple blocks away from the University of Maryland campus. I was a little apprehensive walking in since I was wearing my Cal cap, and we lost to them in September, but everyone was definitely in NFL mode.

Considering we were 10 minutes out of DC, the place was like three quarters full of Eagles fan. So much so, right before kickoff the assembled Eagles crowed broke out in a rendition of “Fly, Eagles, Fly…” A friend of my friend was with us, and he was also an Eagles fan. Thankfully though, he’s one of those quiet, whoa he’s a sports fan type of fans. Sort of reminds me of one of my roommates, who took me a year to figure out was a Lakers fan, as you know, usually their loud and boorish.

Watching the intensity level on people’s faces, even before pre-game, made me think, well, people in the East Coast just by default are a couple notches angrier than Westerners. You could see the intensity level ramp up more as the Cardinals built up their early lead. I jokingly uttered, when do people start calling to fire Andy Reid?

Sunday, January 18, 4:30pm – While fairly neutral, I am tacitly rooting for the Cardinals. Not that I’m showing it other than not cheering when Eagles do thing, and doing referee-like hand gestures on Cardinal touchdowns. Since again, I had my Cal hat on, I could have tricked people into thinking I was DeSean Jackson and thus Eagles fan. The strongest reaction I had all day was when he dropped the first pass thrown to him (although it was a little behind him). If DeSean didn’t hold on to his juggled touchdown later in the game, I don’t know if I would’ve made it out alive.

Sunday, January 18, 5:15pm – The Eagles, down 18, get the ball first to start the 3^rd and are forced to punt. A girl in the crowd yelled out, “Fire Andy Reid.” Oh, there it is. Did I say two notches angrier at the beginning of the game, I meant five notches angrier…

Sunday, January 18, 6:15 pm – A confluence of intrigue is going on right now. The Eagles have stormed back stirring the Eagles crowd. For a while, a handful of non-Eagles fans, particularly one guy who looked like he had to have been from New York, were running roughshod on the crowd, singing the praises of Kurt Warner. Now momentum wears #36… I was going to say momentum wears green, but 36 is more accurate. Of like the 15 Eagles jersey’s being worn, all were for Westbrook except one Brian Dawkins (20) and one Jason Avant (81, with duct tape over Owens name).

Meanwhile, on a more local level, the waitress has cutoff this bumbling tall guy in the next table over. This guy has seemed a bit out of it ever since he showed up. He just stands next to the table, towering over it for a little while, then sits down. When he sits down he usually elbows our table or bumps his chair into it. Now he gets up, leans a little, and looks as if he is about to topple over like a chopped down tree. At this point, I’m not feeling confident about my personal safety.

On a more positive note, finally the first non-white or black guy showed up at this place. And funny enough, it’s another doppelganger, this time of one of my former students. Although, the guy who walked in wasn’t as good a doppelganger as the others, being an apparently half-Asian version of a White guy.

Sunday, January 18, 8:30pm – For the AFC Championship Game, I went to the house of some friends of my friend, two of which are people in one of my Fantasy Baseball leagues I’ve never met before. My friend introduced us by our team names. Introducing me one of them, my friend goes, this is Gimmeapid… I had to ask him to say that again, because for the last two years, I thought his team neame is Gimmepaid… Not that either variant means anything…

About half of the people there were Ravens fans, and the other half are outsiders with no rooting interest. I was kind of surprised there were really hard core Ravens fans since they haven’t been around that long. Makes me wonder if they were only football fans since the Ravens started, or they intensely liked another team, and became turncoats…

Sunday, January 18, 9:30pm – The Ravens are starting off very poorly, and one of the guys isn’t taking it too well. Apparently when his teams lose, he gets a little depressive and frustrated, thus explaining why his Fantasy Baseball teams have extreme turnover.

He disappears from the basement and doesn’t come back until halftime. He watches the game upstairs, and as it turns out, we have a bit of a delay downstairs. So, we can tell what’s about to happen based on the thuds, or lack of thuds coming from the floor above us.

What’s kind of funny about the Baltimore Ravens super-fan is that he kind of breaks the mold of his field a little bit. He’s kind of an intense, and thus not so mild-mannered, meteorologist. Funny still, is that he lives with a wine-living, lone-star flag flying, Texan who did his undergrad at Oklahoma. Finally, their third roommates is an Indian guy. Now, that’s not that odd in particular, but he was the first for certain non-White or non-Black guy I ran into today.

Sunday, January 18, 10:30pm – How To Get Killed Tip #81, say you take Terrell Owens’ side within 50 miles of Philadelphia… thank goodness I was only within 100 miles…

Monday, January 19 – I was supposed to meet back up with the other students from my program for a day trip to Philadelphia. However, since they partied it up too late the previous night, they didn’t get up until noon. They also got scared by people telling them they were crazy to try and do the trip because of road closures. I don’t buy that reasoning, because they would’ve avoided the road closures because to get Philadelphia from Washington, you did not need to go through the City of Washington. You only had to go around the suburbs on the Beltway. Most of the closures were interior of the Beltway. Perhaps though, it was a good idea to not go to Philly since it was snowing in Baltimore and northward. While in Baltimore it was looking like a White Christmas, TV footage showed that in Washington, only 35 miles south, it was not even cloudy…

I ended up hanging out with my professor as he visited a couple of old friends he knew back from when he lived in Baltimore, along with a friend of his from Elementary School who came down from New York for the inauguration. While perhaps less exciting than a trip to Philadelphia would have been, it was interesting to spend Martin Luther King Day talking with African-Americans.

My professor is originally from Ghana, and so are most of the people we visited Monday. I ended up getting fed a couple of times, and was surprised to find that Ghanian’s staple food is rice. Perhaps this explains why Ghana is one of the most stable, more industrialized countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Previous Recorded From An Earlier Live Broadcast..., pt. 2...

Saturday, January 17, 9:00am PST – Now for flight #1, a trip from San Francisco International Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. I’m riding Virgin America, which actually has its gates in the international terminal. It probably has something to do with people connecting from Virgin Atlantic to Virgin America flights, with Virgin Atlantic being there main operation at the moment.

Getting on the plane, there was a little bit of swank going on. It was like entering a night club with indigo mood lighting and leather seats. Interestingly, despite this flight going to New York City, it was essentially an Obama Express, or should I say, the Obama Local Stop Tour… Interestingly, out of people I talked to, I was actually the only person connecting by flight to Washington that day. Lots of other people were staying in New York and taking Amtrak (which has the ‘high’ speed Acela route to Washington) or buses closer to inauguration day.

You could always say, this was the Cal express, as I kept talking to people with a Cal connection. At the gate, I was talking to an older Cal alum and his wife. We shot the breeze about basketball for a while, but lets not talk about how that turned out any further… Once I got onto the plane, I ended up sitting next to a family with a Cal connection. The lady to my right’s father went to Cal in Architecture in the pre-Wurster Hall days… Actually, as it turned out, I was pretty much an ad hoc member of the family, sitting in the middle, with the mom to my left, a son to my right, and an older son across the aisle.

We had a pretty good conversation going for a couple of reasons. The mom was into trains, and was quite interested into talking to me about out once she heard I was a transportation planner. The fact that we were on a flight to New York also brought on more conversation as I had the whole plane-bird class thing earlier in the week. The mom, who said she flies quite frequently, mentioned we took off in an unusual way for SFO, south, and that she had seen a lot of birds up north by the Stick.

The older son across the aisle just got a PhD, which interested me since I got to ask him about that idea as a life choice. He thoroughly endorsed the idea. Then again he got a PhD in 4 years, and I’m only getting a Masters, albeit 2 in 3 years. As for the other son, well, he was the biggest of the bunch. While really lanky, he was like 6’3” or something, so of course when he fell asleep, his arm kept dropping over into my airspace, and blocked the remote control for my TV monitor. Of course, it was funny watching the mom tell him what to do every once in a while. Turn down your music. Turn down your music again. Are you hungry? Hey, look at that flag painted on the wingtip... I get the feeling the kid was in college, so if I were him, I’d probably be rolling my eyes with the bit of nagging, but hah, it wasn’t me… well, not this time…

Saturday, January 17, whatever the hell time it is in Utah… – So, I mentioned that kid next to me was blocking my remote. Of course, I was flying a run of the mill airline, he would’ve just been blocking my armrest since regular airlines don’t have the entertainment options that Virgin Airways offered.

Sometimes most regular airlines will have maybe an in-flight movie, but only for longer flights. JetBlue shattered the norm offering satellite TV on individual monitors as well as satellite radios. Virgin America took it another step further adding on-demand music tracks, video games, and touch screen food and drink ordering. Although, I did wonder just how many free drinks they’d give me if I pushed it. Additionally, they had some other paid content, like movies and TV shows. That tall dude to my right ordered two episodes of “The Office.”

After figuring out that you could pull the remote out of the armrest, and use it as a controller, I started playing a couple video games. I settled in for a couple games of Vectoroids (a knock off of Asteroids) and Anagrams (a knock of Text Twist, the game du jour for killing time while on shift at the Computing Center back in the day). I decided against playing a first-person shooter game on a plane.

Saturday, January 17, whatever the hell time it is in Iowa… – After tiring of Vectoroids, I watched an episode of Battlestar Gallactica that was on. Having never seen a full episode of it in the four years it’s been on, I saw a full new one Friday night. It was actually the season premiere. Now, I got to see the episode before it, last season’s finale. Afterwards, they went back and played an episode that was before, or maybe a couple before that one. Knowing how the plot ends, I didn’t really feel the need to know how it begins. Sort of like how I feel about the Lord of the Rings. Now that I saw how it ends, and ends, and ends… who needs the beginning…

Saturday, January 17, 6:00pm EST – Oh, I’ve got a mind-splitting headache right now. I took  a nap on the plane, and woke up feeling like crap, and it got worse over time. Perhaps playing a video game that required scrambling anagrams wasn’t such a good idea when I stated feeling headache-y.

Damn, I was all ready to use my four and half hour layover and hop on the subway, take the hour and half round trip into Manhattan, maybe grab a slide of Pizza, and get on my plane. Instead, I can barely move, and setting for 6 Hot Wings from a Kentucky Fried Chicken stand.

Headaches kind of make feel a little nauseous, so I only eat one. I’m thinking, if only I had a screw driver, I’d drive into my skull and gouge out a part of it. This was the kind of headache that makes me think, you know what, I would trade a little brain power to have fewer headaches.

Like in San Francisco, the Virgin America gates are in the international terminal. Since it’s the international terminal, you typically have lots of people waiting outside the security gates, either people saying a long goodbye, or waiting a long time for a long awaited hello. There aren’t a lot of open seats available either, so there are a lot of people on the floor, particularly people with laptops who want electrical outlet access. So like those others, I find a spot on the floor, throw my big coat and an extra pair of pants on the floor, hunker down and endeavor to take a nap. Of course, most of the others found a nice corner to sit down in, I ended up picking a spot right below the departure and arrivals screen.

Saturday, January 17, 8:00pm – I’ve fallen asleep and gotten up at least four times. Each time, I sleep longer, and feel a bit better. I’ve been using the small, small second bag I brought as a pillow. I realized at this point, I put the rest of my wings in this bag, and I was pretty much lying directly on top of them… The back of my head noticed that this is a lot bonier than a normal pillow as well as the distinctive firmness of 11 herbs and spices…

Interestingly, while on the AirTrain, I began to notice some doppelgangers of people I know. This would happen a few more times over the course of my trip. I saw someone who looked a lot like the girl who lives across the hall from me my 2^nd-half sophomore/1^st-half junior year, and another person who looked like someone in my graduate program. I suppose when you get a City of X-million people, you start running into the body doubles.

This reminded of a funny Facebook post where an old suitemate of mine, who knows I moved to San Luis Obispo, left me a wall post saying she saw my twin riding on BART. It turned out, it wasn’t my twin, but it was me coming up for the 2006 Big Game Bonfire Rally.

Saturday, January 17, 10:30pm

So now I’m actually on my flight to Washington. This is now really the Obama Express. At first I thought I might have my own row on the plane, seeing lots of unoccupied seats when I was checking in and selecting my seat, but eventually another college student sat next to me. A recent graduate of Duke sat across the aisle.

This flight was on JetBlue, so I had TV again and was reading some basketball scores on the ticker. We ended up having a college basketball commiseration session. Cal had lost. The guy next to me, while currently going to school in New York, started at Florida State who lost. While Duke won, the girl across from me really wanted Clemson to beat Wake Forest to give them a loss before facing Duke, but that didn’t happen. The guy next to me was at least to rub in the story of when Florida State upset Duke and he got to rush the court on them.

Later, I was the only one of the three who found the Pacific-Cal State Fullerton game even the slightest bit interesting.

Saturday, January 17, 11:30pm – Live, from New York, it’s Saturday night? I’m not in New York anymore, but on our final approach into DC, SNL came on… And for once, I’m actually watching it live, what a concept…

Live, err, Previously Recorded From An Earlier Live Broadcast Blogging The Elephant, err, um, Donkey

(feat. A Summer in San Luis Obispo in January...)

Saturday, January 10, 4:30am – I wake up on the couch on my living room. My alarm is not supposed to go off until 4:45, but I figure I should wake up now, or risk falling asleep until 10am. I am supposed to go pick up one of my professor’s on campus at around 5:15 and take him to the airport. This is the beginning, of what will become a long, strange trip. I know it’s going to be long, don’t know how strange it’ll be, but it’s strange enough, and I’m writing this part Friday 1/16.

From January 12 through January 15 is the annual Transportation Research Board conference. My professor is going to present a couple of papers. Several of us transportation graduate students were planning on going to the conference. Being tantalizingly close to the inauguration, we figure we can do both. My professor also wants to do both. However, in the end, we figure we can’t all miss a week and half of class.

My professor has to go the conference, the rest of my compatriots go for the inauguration. I sit on the fence, wandering and indecisive, but leaning towards going to the conference because I don’t know where I’m going to stay in Washington.

Then one of my classmates has the brilliant observation. Monday is MLK day and my professor has no classes on Tuesdays. Ah ha, he can make it, assuming he flies back the night of the inauguration. Ah ha, now I can go to the inauguration because now I have a place to stay because my professor has many places to house me in Washington over the weekend, since most of his family lives there. So its set, we all get to go. I get a place to stay in exchange for taking my professor to the airport and covering his classes for the week, which I’d rather do than go to the conference anyway…

Saturday, January 10, 5:00am – I better get my tail over to campus to pick him. I hop into my car. Damn it’s cold out, it must be 30-something, and windy too. I make the five minute drive to campus. I get a call, my professor is running late. 20 minutes later I’m cold again since my heater wasn’t on that long.

Saturday, January 10, 5:30am – Alright, my professor and his son have arrived for me to take them to the airport. Let’s go, that flight is leaving in 45 minutes. Off we go and… what the hell, did I just almost run over a pedestrian? No one walks across this intersection during daylight, what the hell is some one doing walking there at 5:30 in the morning. (*He was well across my half of the intersection as I was turning)

Saturday, January 10, 5:45 am – We arrive at the airport. Oh, my professor’s son fell asleep in my back seat. His name is Collin… he is a 12 year old black kid. He is not yet taller than me, I think… One of the other grad students I’m going with is Colin… he is a 12, err, I mean 24 year old, 6’4” hockey loving white guy…

Monday, January 12, 1:00 pm – The first class I am covering, CRP 213 – Population Housing, and Economic Analysis. Lab 1 on Excel basics.

Monday, January 12, 3:00pm – The second class I am covering, CRP 516 – Quantitative Methods for Planning. Lab 1A on Excel basics.

Tuesday, January 13, 2:30pm – Temperature in San Luis Obispo, CA… 86 degrees. Temperature in Washington, DC… 28 degrees.

Wednesday, January 14, 1:00pm – The third class I am covering, CRP 213. Continuing Lab 1 on Excel basics. This is taking a bit longer than I was expecting…

Wednesday, January 14, 3:00pm – The fourth class I am covering, CRP 516. Lab 1B on Introduction to American FactFinder. Temperature in San Luis Obispo, CA… 82 degrees. And now, for crying out loud, I have to turn the fan on in the lab room?

Thursday, January 15, 12:35pm – US Airways Flight 1549 crash lands into the Hudson River in New York City, as a result of multiple bird strikes shortly after takeoff, during ascent. Did I mention I’m laying over in New York City…

Thursday, January 15, 1:35pm – I am in a class on Airport Planning and Design. The topic of airplane engines comes up, and so does birds. Apparently, birds are a continuing problem in airports and with airplanes. Generally though, while birds hitting planes are a common occurrence, they’re usually not a pretty big problem. Jet engines are supposedly pretty tough. The first test flight of a Boeing 767 uplifted asphalt off the runaway and got sucked into the engine, causing only minor damage.

There is one danger zone where bird strikes are serious. Just before and just after takeoff, to get ascent lift, plane engines are working at about 120% their max capacity. If a bird hits then, the plane is trying to get up off the ground, and needs all that thrust. Also since the engine is running at 120%, the engine can not be quickly shut down. This also assumes your other engine is working.

Oh, this class started at noon, so we had no knowledge of what was going on in New York.

Thursday, January 15, 3pm – The fourth class I am covering, CRP 213. Lab 2 on Introduction to American FactFinder and Lab 3A on Population Pyramids.

Temperature in San Luis Obispo, CA… 80 degrees. Temperature in Washington, DC… 9 degrees.

Friday, January 16, 9am – The class I normally teach, CRP 216, Computer Applications for Planning, Section 1. Introduction to Geographic Information Systems, and Basics of Desktop Publishing.

Friday, January 16, 11:30am – It’s getting a little hard to talk. I’m not even halfway through done talking today.

Friday, January 16, 1:00pm – The fifth class I am covering, CRP 213. Lecture and discussion on secondary data sources, the UCSB Economic Forecast Project, and analyzing demographic and housing indicators.

Friday, January 16, 2:00pm – My seventh and final class of the week, CRP 216, Section 2. My voice is flagging pretty good now. I give my normal middle of class break after 45 minutes. I get a bit of reprieve because I have them work on their own in the middle of the class, but I close with a lecture. I’m toast by 5:00 and so ends 10 hours of instructing in 26 hours.

Friday, January 16, 5:30pm – I hop on my bus for San Jose. Hrmm, look at that funny looking guy, what’s that big things he’s carrying… Oh, it’s a snowboard… Hah, with 5 straight days of temperatures 80 degrees and above, who would’ve thought it would be weirder to see a guy carrying a snowboard than people in shorts…

Friday, January 16, 7:30pm – It’s the bus trips food stop in King City. I order a cheeseburger, small fries, and a coke. Hey, that costs less than I thought…. Server: Order #299, small fry… Hey wait, that’s my number. Ah damn it, she didn’t hear my first order. I’m hungry too… Back in line I go. Can I get A cheeseburger please. Cashier: That’ll be $11.72… Wait, what, 11 dollars, for a cheeseburger…. Cashier: Oh one, not eight [yells at the cooks in the back] hey, it’s just one, not eight… Oy… I suppose what was particularly funny was that the cashier didn’t as much as flinch when I supposedly ordered 8 cheeseburgers, and nothing else. What, is this not an odd order?

Friday, January 16, 9:30pm - My bus gets close to the stop at Diridon Station in downtown San Jose, across from the Shark Tank. As we wait at a stop light, I see a bunch of kids play sliding down a freeway overpass embankment. First, sliding down under a freeway overpass, and second, kids in downtown SJ at 9:30. What gives? Now whats that, are those soccer balls? No, they're red, white, and blue basketballs. Ah, the Harlem Globetrotters must be in town. Boy, they sure are more popular than I thought...

Friday, January 16, 10pm – Alright, back at home. Now time to pack like I’ve never packed before. Since I’m going to be relying on the DC Metro, it’s literally the same trains as BART just with three doors on the cars and better signs, I need to pack light. I will attempt to travel to the east coast in the middle of January on just a backpack. Let’s see, I think I can wear three shirts on the plane, but can I wear 2 pants?

Previously Recorded From An Earlier Live Broadcast Blogging The Donkey is a reference to Live Blogging the Elephant, a series of internet posts covering the Republican National Convention that appeared on a liberal blogosphere website. A Summer in SLO in January is a sequel to well, look below you...

A Summer In San Luis Obispo in November…

Still holding on to my Cal season tickets for the last three years, I’ve only made it to three Cal Poly football games while I’ve been down here. While this is only Division I-AA/FCS level football, I’ve missed some decent action as Cal Poly is currently ranked #3 in the country at this level. Yesterday was the regular season home finale… and oddly it was a de facto championship game for the Great West conference. Oddly I say because it was between Cal Poly (7-1, 2-0) and UC Davis (5-5, 2-0). That’s right, both teams are 2-0, going into their third conference game, and that’s all there is for the conference. There are actually 5 teams in the conference, these two plus Southern Utah, North Dakota, and South Dakota. However, despite there only being 4 other teams in the conference than yourselves, you only play 3 of them. What a conference…

During the game, I kind of had a hard time rooting against UC Davis. Consider it recurring goodwill for beating Stanford a couple years ago. Some of it was also instinctual, given the choice of the blue team or the green team, I kind of wanted to go with the blue team… Davis brought their band too, so while I barely know any Cal Poly music, the Sons of California/Big C/Hail to California trifecta was a bit hard to not follow.

Part of it was also stylistic. Starting with the national anthem, the crowd was a little iffy. Nobody sang it down here compared to Berkeley. Now which place is not supposed to be the real American anyway? This iffyness carried on into the first few minutes, where I thought to myself, “You’re cheering wrong…” Cal Poly started on defense, and people were going, clap… clap… defense… clap… clap… That’s not going to do anything. Try making some actual noise… None of this intermittent crap. While some noise eventually did start and recur through the game, people weren’t too good about paying enough attention to start doing it, oh, before the snap was imminent. It’s ok, the visiting team should be able to hear each other in the huddle…

Finally stylistically, when it came to rooting for the triple option team, or the team that throws the ball kind of often, I kind of wanted to root for the offense I was used to. Granted, the Davis QB threw two picks, and my brother has been kind of mad at him for losing games due to untimely picks. However, I think I’d take this guy over Nate Longshore any day because he at least gets out of the huddle with more than 4 seconds left on the play clock…

But enough about football, because it didn’t really feel like it was football season, let alone championship football season. Saturday in San Luis Obispo, it was 87 degrees, capping a string of a few 80+ degree days. (Global what-now…?) It was so unseasonable warm, I was half expecting people to barbequing and running down water slides. With this weather, you think of baseball instead of football, and events this week seem to provided for the change in weather.

On Thursday, I had my final IM softball game of the season. We thought our season ended on a wet night two Monday’s ago, but inexplicably, despite a 1-3 record and -12 run differential, worst in our league, we made the playoffs (In fairness, we played consistently better than the true worst team in the league, we just got shelled in our first game). Of course, our playoff game went about as well as the 4-13 match-up can be expected to go, but hey, it was mid-November softball, on a field so dry at 8:30pm that I tossed a couple of dead duck pitches because the ball was sticking too long to my dry hand…

Then of course this week there was Tim Lincecum, the first part-Filipino pitcher (he’s either quarter of half) to win the Cy Young Award, and first San Francisco Giants pitcher to win since Mike McCormack in 1967. The feat, which caused a noticeable increase in the number of Giants hats seen on campus, also caused a flurry of activity on my Facebook NewsFeed. I had logged in, and out of the corner of my I saw the entry, 41 people have changed their profile pictures. I went, “Wow, 41… that’s kind of a lot.” So I click on it, and there are a set of four profile picture updates in a row, three of the four being Lincecum related.

A few thoughts crossed my mind when I saw these updated profile pictures. First with Gus’ pic, since he’s from in SF and goes to USF, I wondered a) Did he take this pic himself. After looking a the pic some more and looking at the full-sized version, I wondered a couple more things, b) Who are they playing, c) Why is a player guarding the bullpen when there is no one warming up in it, and d) Why is the umpire on his knees (if you look closely, he’s on both knees)?

As for the dueling video game covers, I thought, what are the chances that out of 41 updates, that the two of a kind end up lining up back to back? Seeing AJ, who I used to ref football with, and a baseball reference, brought back bad memories of when he hit two home runs off of me when I played his softball team last year, despite the two pitches being about a foot inside and up at his eyes. Definitely not a Lincecum moment for me, that was more of a Barry Zito… Finally, seeing Hubert and the same picture made me think, hey, you’re a grad student now, you don’t have time for video games anymore, right?