ekev01's Xanga

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

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:08:00 GMT

Note 1: So it's been a little while since I've posted up an entry. I've been doing a ridiculous amount of writing over the past 6 months, mostly my thesis, which theoretically should be done... If you'd like to take a look at what 140 pages that nobody will ever read is about, you can not read it too by looking at the 20 page abridged conference version here.

Note 2: I wrote the entry below about 3 weeks ago, so when I'm referring to days of the week, I'm referring to those days of the week.

Note 3: The entry below references a long trip I was going to make. I've been back for a week and a half.

Note 4: I abruptly left off at "Previously Recorded from An Earlier Live Broadcast, pt. 3..." when obviously there should be a part 4. I'll write that eventually, hopefully sometime before 2032...

It was jury duty time for me this week. This was actually the first time I have had to show up for jury duty. The last time I was called, I rescheduled since it was during the school year. They asked to move it to the next available school break, with the next full week for me off happening to be the week between Christmas and New Years. I was never recalled.

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…

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 05:15:31 GMT

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...

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:59:01 GMT

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…

Saturday, January 17, 8:45pm – So, I didn’t get to follow my original plans, but I went to my self, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to explore a little of New York. So I jump on the AirTrain, which circulates people around the nine terminal airport. It also hooks up with some off-site facilities like a rental car depot. I decide to take it to the further of two subway stations it connects to, which is Jamaica Station in Queens. This thing was not like the AirTram at SFO, this takes you way the hell off the airport property. It ended up being like a 30 round trip. I thought about walking out of the Jamaica Station and take a couple of pictures, but it turns out while the AirTram is free for intra-airport travel, if you exit at a subway station, you have to pay.

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

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 06:19:44 GMT

(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…

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:36:43 GMT

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?

Electoral Map Pick-Em...

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:39:53 GMT

A few of us in my program are doing something rather nerdy, and have put together a pool to predict the electoral vote for the election. Now that I've made my endorsements, here's some predictions on what might happen.

Electoral Map:

Electoral Votes: Obama 406, McCain 132

Tiebraker Questions:

Number of Senate seats held by Democrats after Tuesday: 58 (including B Sanders I-VT, and J Leiberman I-CT). Georgia (Chambliss vs. Martin) will move to a run-off.
State with the closest race: Arizona
Winner and margin of victory for...
   Indiana (Obama by 3)
   Missouri (Obama by 3)* Closest of six
   Nevada (Obama by 10)
   Ohio (Obama by 6)
   Pennsylvania (Obama by 11)
   Virginia (Obama by 7)
Number of total voters: 85 million
Margin of victory: 7 million, 8%
Obama total in AZ: 50%
McCain total in IL: 34%
Number of Bush '04 states won by Obama: 13
Number of Kerry '04 states won by McCain: 0

And finally, while I was playing with the electoral map, I made a states I visited map. Places I've visited are in blue and constitute a landslide 385 electoral votes. The three states in yellow I may visit in the near future. What I'm planning to do in Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota? I'll talk about that down the road...

2008 General Election Endorsements...

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:42:53 GMT

As you can see, this is a rather long entry. I haven’t finished writing my arguments to everything yet, but I wanted to get my picks out there. This entry will continue to be updated, and will be complete sometime Monday night…

Elected Offices

President – Barack Obama
Vice President – Joe Biden

Because up isn’t down, left isn’t right, black isn’t white, and day isn’t night…

US House of Representatives, 23^rd Dist – Rep. Lois Capps (D-i)

California State Senate, 15^th Dist – Jim Fitzgerald (I)
California State Assembly, 33^rd Dist – Robert Cuthbert (D)

Mayor of San Luis Obispo – Edward Sullivan (write-in)

I’m not the biggest fan of the current mayor Dave Romero, although he’s not as bad as some people think. While I’d like a change, I’m not too keen on opponent, Terry Mohan, who thinks he needs zero experience to be mayor. So I’m going with one of my engineering professors… I don’t know if he even lives in the City, but here goes nothing…

San Luis Obispo City Council – Jan Marx, John Ashbaugh

Go with the Smart Growth candidates. Incumbent Paul Brown seems like a decent enough councilman, and runs a nice enough restaurant and bar. But his staff thought a group I was with (of graduate students) was too loud one day, and another day, too large (12) to give us a table. Apparently, they’d rather give our table to people who’d order more food.

Mayor of Berkeley – Former Mayor Shirley Dean

Current Mayor Tom Bates was caught throwing away copies of the Daily Cal that endorsed Dean in 2004, but was elected anyway. Among Bates highlights as mayor, suing Cal twice… over revenue to the City for services, and the Memorial Stadium renovation project.

State Propositions

Summary Table:

1A YES	2 YES	3 NO	4 NO
5 YES	6 NO	7 NO	8 NO
9 NO	10 NO	11 NO	12 YES

A few notes on the philosophical basis of the following picks…

As Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has said, “Government are the things we choose to do together.” As such, the act of governance requires investment in those things we as a community of citizens deem to be important. To pay for those things we want and need, we may actually need to spend money and raise taxes. Waste and inefficiency are problems in government, but so too are they in business. It is a sad course of events indeed when we reject the things we need over cynicism. In recent years, we have gotten around raising real revenue by borrowing. Now borrowing is appropriate in many cases, where something is really needed, or you don’t have the cash on hand to pay for something outright. An analogy, would be like buying a house, you tend not to pay cash for those, but you do for groceries.

A side issue on budgeting, is a big reason why we have so much trouble in California over budgets is that we have too much locked-in-spending, where by statute, we must expend certain amounts per year in certain areas. This leaves us inflexible to adjust budgets in many areas. So no more of that…

Full Endorsements:

1A (High Speed Rail) – YES

Prop 1A, which would fund the construction of the first truly high-speed rail network in the United States comes down to two major benefits, energy use and congestion. One way or another, the state is going to have make significant expenditures to allow for fast inter-state travel, build this rail system or build more airports. Congestion in Bay Area and LA airspace and at airport gates is a problem now, and will grow more problematic with population growth. Think of it, LA, which you can think of a 4 airport region for most of recent memory, is turning into a 7 airport area (LAX, Burbank, Ontario, John Wayne, now also Long Beach, San Bernardino, Palmdale). Where are new airports supposed to go? Airports influence huge swaths of land, with people not wanting to live near them, and height restriction in huge areas around them. Areas around highly traveled train stations attract activity, and can become bustling, high value areas.

In terms of energy, air travel has a much higher energy intensity (CO2 generated per passenger mile traveled) than rail, giving air travel a greater global warming impact over rail travel. Further, the most energy intensive part of air trips is take-off and landings, giving shorter flights a greater carbon footprint per mile than long trips. Lets keep air travel for the longer haul, cross-country flights, and go for high speed rail in-state.

2 (Animal Caging) – YES

While an unapologetic omnivore, and as someone who thinks Michael Vick got excessive punishment, I am going to go with the animals on this one. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to allow farm animals to move, and I think the measure includes a reasonable exception for transportation, which can be difficult. Opponents argument that keeping animals confined is somehow more unhealthy is a curious one. Proponents made convincing arguments in the California Voter Info guide that the extra costs are marginal for the consumer, and levels the playing field for smaller farming operations that do not have extreme economies of scale. Also, they didn’t yell in their argument, which the opponents did several times.

3 (Children’s Hospital Bond Act) – NO

I hate to do this, but I’m probably going to vote against this one. If we really think this is important, we could go ahead and raise the revenue to pay for it outright. However, I think its too specific an expenditure to borrow and go into debt for. I haven’t heard of an epidemic of crumbling Children’s Hospital’s specifically, more so of crumbling hospitals in general, which will be needed with our again populations. I’m more inclined to use this money on other infrastructure and general population necessities. However, the bond total is not so great, so I may change my mind in the voter’s box.

4 (Abortion Notification) – NO

Pregnancy and abortion is a tough subject for any prospective parent. Let’s not force parent-teenager dynamics into decision making. For many teenage mothers, parental support can be a great asset. For others, it can not be. We can reduce the number of abortions without this law. Having teenagers talk to trained professionals could be a much better route than informing their parents.

5 (Non-Violent Drug Offenses) – YES

California prisons are so over-crowded that we have to talk about exporting prisoners to other states. They are also a huge public expenditure thats almost impossible to cut (you can't get away with neglecting prisoners, or not securing them properly.) Prop 5 may be a little radical, but after reading some of its proposals, I think its pragmatic enough an option, cut down terms on some non-violent, particularly drug possession offenses, and make some more violent crimes longer term. Opponents have been arguing that this is somehow some sort of drug dealers bill of rights, but when it comes down to handing down a common sense prison sentence on someone who deserves it, the last word remains with judges.

6 (Police Funding) – NO

Prop 6 locks in spending at a fixed amount, and as I said at the beginning, gets the state in trouble by eliminating flexibility in our budgets.

7 (Renewable Energy) – NO

Renewable energy = good. Prop 7 = poorly written. This is what you get with the direct democracy system in California, you tend to get laws that aren’t written very well. Big utilities that are helping defeat this measure probably aren’t against it for any sense of sustainable principles, but they can be fought next time with a better or bill or in the legislature. The specific issue I have with Prop 7 is the locking in of utility rates. It could give us lower rates, and more alternative energy, but it could also give us higher rates as better technology is developed in the future. We just don’t know.

8 (Elimination of Rights) – NO

In Brown vs. the Board of Education (Sarah Palin says what now…), the Supreme Court struck down the idea of separate but equal. Let us not write discrimination into our State constitution that some people can come together and form a union of their choosing, and receive all the benefits and responsibilities of those unions, and others can’t. No one is saying that same-sex marriages have to be acknowledged in anybody’s own church, but in a society where there is a separation between church and state, we can not and must not legislate who can and who can not receive public benefits and private joys based on religion.

I am particularly troubled with the scare tactics over parents, children, and same-sex marriage. The ads show parents scared that their children will think it’s ok to be gay because of this proposition. Opponents have responded, somewhat misguidedly, with the answer that schools aren’t required to teach about marriage. The real answer, is while they aren’t required to teach about it, even if they do, what’s the problem. If a person was any kind of parent who loved their kids unconditionally, they would love their child whatever their personal preferences were. And besides, if you really didn’t want them to do go one way or other, try some parenting (not that I think that is particularly possible in this case), as opposed of legislating others whose private lives you have no business interfering with.

Besides, think about your average college freshman who wants to f*** anything that moves… I don’t think reading some book about a guy marrying a guy is really going to change that situation much. Hormones, baby, hormones…

9 (Criminal Justice System) - NO

This Proposition appears to have similar goals of several laws passed in the last 25 years, at increased administrative costs to the state.

10 (Natural Gas Money Grab Act) – NO

Say no to the daffodil girl, vote no on 10. This is a money grab by natural gas interests. Prop 10 says you can get rebates for fuel efficient cars… by fuel efficient they mean natural gas. Hybrids don’t even count. Now, natural gas has a lower carbon per unit energy produced than gasoline. However, other sources could get even lower.

I think Prop 10 is also funneling deceptive hidden advertising at people. I received in the mail a pamphlet “Voting Guide for Democrats.” It listed some Democratic candidates and standard boiler plate election endorsements. My roommate received a “Voting Guide for Republicans” pamphlet. It included the same info but with Republican candidates. Both pamphlets urged Yes on 10. The state Democratic party is neutral, and the state Republican party are against it. So, they’re basically Yes on 10 ads, giving us just enough partisan meat to think its legit… No on 10…

11 (Redistricting) – NO

I agree that many state legislature districts are drawn kind of bizarrely. My state senate district in San Luis Obispo is represented by a man from Santa Maria, one hour street, and also covers the Monterey Peninsula, areas outside Santa Cruz, but not Santa Cruz, Morgan Hill, parts of San Jose... yup, and even Los Gatos. That said, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about this version of redistricting reform. After seeing this, I like the Governator's idea from a couple years ago that I was against at the time better than this. In the end though, I don't think any redistricting reform plan will work all that well, I prefer an open primary system which we had in California for one cycle in 2000, and is seen in Louisiana and Washington.

12 (Veterans Housing Home Loans) - YES

A worthy cause, making sure veterans can purchase homes. This program, continues a pre-existing program that provides loans to veterans, which they eventually pay back anyway.

The Overthrow of King Dasani and Princess Aquafina…

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 06:20:23 GMT

So it’s been a while since I’ve done an entry. It’s not because I haven’t wanted to, or haven’t had anything to write about. Well, maybe that a little bit. I haven’t written since all summer I’ve been doing a lot of writing for my thesis, and I haven’t been able to bear much more writing beyond that. But, I finally finished my literature review (only 4 or 5 more chapters to go), so I gathered enough will to write here again.

Since it has been quite a long time, let’s see, what has changed from June 21… 112 days ago… and now…

	June 21	October 11
High temperature in SLO	113 degrees	69 degrees
Barry Zito record	2-11	10-17
Cal starting quarterback	Nate Longshore	Nate Longshore, wait… what?
Rasmussen Presidential Poll of Florida	McCain – 47% Obama – 39%	Obama – 50% McCain – 47%
Gallup Daily National Presidential Tracking Poll	Obama – 46% McCain – 44%	Obama – 51% McCain – 41%
Jobs I’m currently working…	0	5
Thesis pages written	Does an outline count?	34
Dow Jones Industrial Average	11,842.69	8,451.49
G.M.-Chrysler	In Simpsons episode [3F17] Bart on The Road, Principal Skinner blurts out “G.M. Chrysler, I can’t afford that,” after finding that correcting errors in his plane reservations would cost $7,830.	G.M. and Chrysler considering unprecedented merger that would turn Big 3 automakers into Big 2. Would have net worth of about $7,830.

So after all this time, what shall I write about? There’s plenty of stuff going on in the country and the world right now… I took a trip to Seattle a couple months ago… Yes, that is a 5 up there in the table… All good topics, but how about… water?

A couple Saturday’s ago, after the Cal-Arizona State game, I was playing a pick up football game at the new Underhill Field in Berkeley, between the Unit 1 and Unit 2 dorm complexes. Built on top of an underground parking structure, Underhill Field replaces a garage and field structure that was torn down due to seismic inadequacy after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. Now the field is just great. It has the new field turn with the artificial blades of grass, and specks of rubber dirt, instead of a flat carpet. It was a real soft surface to play on, and heck, the parking garage part looked pretty good too. However, the real gem of this facility is its superb water fountains.

A lot of times, you just don’t want to drink out of a water fountain. Especially on an old campus like Berkeley, who knows how long that water fountain has been sitting there? You start to wonder, what is floating around in the pipes, the porcelain looks kind of grimy, is that mold on the spigot, what are those particles next to the drain? No such problem here.

At first drop, the water was crisp and clean… surprisingly tasty. Now I know, I was running around so you think, I would have found anything “tasty.” But I’ve been in those situations before, where you’re really thirsty, get to a water fountain, and the water is only passable, just good enough because you’re really desperate. Sometimes, sub-prime water like that can feel dry, well as dry as water can be… chalky might be a better term. You just feel there is something in there other than water and it makes your tongue do a double-take.

A problem with a lot of water fountains, whether they have good water or not, is that it’s hard to get to the water. This can be a problem in a couple of ways. Sometimes the instrument to activate the water fountain isn’t too good. I’m especially not a fan of push buttons or turning handles near the spigot itself. You have to reach you hand up to the spigot. Sure it’s not that far, but why go through the effort of putting your arm next to your head. Drinking water is not supposed to be the Macarena (hrmm, Microsoft Word just auto corrected this into a proper noun…). I personally like water fountains that have a plastic bar across the front that you just press down with your arms down in front of you. The Underhill water fountains have this system, and it doesn’t take a lot of pressure to turn the water on.

The other way water fountains can be hard to drink from is that the water doesn’t get far enough away from the spigot. You’re thirsty, but can’t get a sufficient volume of water, or get dangerously close to a lick-full of plumbing… No such problem at Underhill as the water forms an arch with a diameter of maybe four inches. These water fountains don’t play hard to get.

What made these water fountains really special though was just how cold the water was. Being an outdoor water fountain, I was expecting ambient temperature water. However, here the water was nice and cold. In fact, the water got colder the second and third time I took a drink compared to the first. This was even despite other people on the field taking sips. So not only was the water cold, but there was sufficient cooling capacity in the fountain to make it reliably cold.

Now while the water fountain is outdoors, it should be relatively good for years to come. The water fountains are shielded in a little foyer that leads to the field’s restrooms. It has a fairly narrow opening, so despite being exposed, it’d take sideways rain to get these water fountains. This is an improvement compared to Cal’s other recreational field, Maxwell Family Field. So, to conclude, that was some really good water. So good, I might want to play another football game up there, toss another halfback pass for 6, and take a couple more cold, crisp, sips…

'Cause Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad...

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:44:11 GMT

It’s 1 am on a Friday night/early Saturday morning, and I’m writing this entry as I’m sitting on my balcony. Right now, it is 75 degrees out here, which is quite nice. I’m sitting out here because inside has not quite cooled off yet. At about midnight, the thermostat in our hallway read 90 degrees. Thursday was hot by any standard, with a high of 106 degrees. The forecast said it was supposed to cool on Friday to a mild 102 degrees. However, it was 10 am, I woke up and it was already 101 degrees outside and 92 inside. As the indoor temperature approached 95 degrees by 11:30, I had to leave in search of air conditioning. By then it was 103 degrees outside.

Me and one of my roommates took a 2-hour air conditioned lunch and then plotted where we could go to kill a few more hours. From the restaurant, I drove to a shopping center across the street, with the windows down, as it was too short a drive for the AC to take effect. Perhaps I should have left the windows up as waves of hot, hot air blew through the car. It turned out at this point, about 1:45, it was 110 degrees. The high for the day eventually peaked at a ridiculous 113 degrees, with a heat index upwards of 115.

Sure, it gets into the triple digits a lot in the Central Valley, and into the 110s in the desert, but San Luis Obispo is only 10 miles inland. It rarely gets into the triple digits, let alone the low to mid 110’s. The hottest average temperature for any month in San Luis Obispo is 74 for September. The average for June is 70 degrees. So, today’s 113 was definitely a record for this time of year. But more than that, today’s 113 was the hottest temperature ever recorded, in any day, in San Luis Obispo.

But I guess, better now than last week. Last weekend was graduation weekend at Cal Poly. Had I stayed on my original one degree plan, I would have finished last weekend. But in any case, most everybody who started with me two years ago graduated last week so I went and watched with a couple of the others doing the dual transportation program, and a third year, with me.

Like at Cal, there are sort of two ceremonies. There is a larger university wide ceremony with speeches and no degrees conferred, followed by a specific department or college actual ceremony. The large university one is outdoors at the football stadium. It started at 10 am, fine last week, but if it was today with 101 degree temps at 10am, there may have been several ambulances that would’ve needed to be called. I didn’t go to that first part, and instead only went to the second part, the specific ceremony was for the entire College of Architecture and Environmental, of which the City and Regional Planning Department is one of five.

I suppose I should start with the positive. In terms of pre-ceremony refreshments, that was some good lemonade, and I’m not much of a lemonade guy. Cookie was pretty good too. However, as to the rest of the ceremony, train wreck might be a good way to put it.

The ceremony was in the Rec center’s main gym, which can convert into an auditorium of sorts. Just being in the rec center was kind of minus for me and both the guys I was with as we were all part of the vaunted CRP department basketball team which went 0-15 in the building, and where I scored my whopping total of 4 career points. But I digress.

So, we were only half way up in the stands, but we couldn’t really hear anything, since all there were was four dinky speakers up near the stage. The ceremony started kind of unceremoniously as the stream of faculty walking in, and students walking in, and the music weren’t really coordinated. The department heads walked in to no music, then music started and nothing happened, then some other faculty walked in, before a semi-inconsistent stream of students came in that didn’t really know where to sit.

After the intro, the presiding faculty kind of forgot that there were graduate students. They were about to jump into department by department reading of the undergrads when the dean after already yielding the mic, quickly returned and remembered that there were both undergrads and grad students graduating. So, they had all the grad students regardless of department get up, except they didn’t know where to go, and neither did the ushers. They ended up doing a weird S and snake pattern through the seating area before getting to where they were supposed to go.

So the first grad student goes, his name card gets read, and the announcer suddenly realizes that she doesn’t know what degree is being conferred. Because the undergrads were going to be called up by department one-by-one, the name card didn’t have a line to say what program you were in. But the grad students were put all together. The first few students were read with some delay, kind of confusingly, for instance they were read as Master’s Candidates in the Master of City and Regional Planning Master’s program or something like that. Meanwhile, the others waiting in line were handed pencils and scribbled additional info onto their cards.

So the process eventually carried forward. The graduates didn’t actually get to go on stage, they passed through the area in front of it. A little unceremonious in that regard, but I guess it’s not so big a deal as the stage was a temporary platform about 6 inches off the ground, and about the size of half a dorm room.

The ceremony continued about a third of the way through when some sirens sounded intermittently with some strobe lights going off. Of course, this was the fire alarm. About a dozen poor folks had their names read off as the alarm was going off. The dean stepped in after those names were read and announced that they were required to evacuate the building. Based on my knowledge of working in university facilities, there are 2 things I’m pretty sure of. (1) We were required to evacuate, and (2) there was no way to turn off the alarm without the fire department.

The end of the ceremony must have been great, since I get the feeling a lot of people who already had their names read off didn’t return. Now, I’m willing to give the college a pass on the fire alarm since it was out of their control, but the ceremony that did occur before then was already pretty bad. So all in all, I’m pretty happy that I didn’t graduate this year.

[Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad was the second hit single by the singer Meat Loaf off his 1977 album ‘Bat Out of Hell’. The chorus goes: I want you / I need you / But -- there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you / Now don’t be sad / Cause two out of three ain’t bad.]

California June 2008 Statewide Direct Primary Election Endorsements...

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:55:41 GMT

Tuesday is another primary election day in California. Not a presidential primary day since we moved that up to be more relevant, but primary day for everything else. Imagine though, had we left the presidential primary election where it was originally scheduled… imagine the ads plastered all over, as we’d probably be the final, decisive decider. Oh well, without us this week, the media was able to focus on one of the most relevant of all presidential primaries, the one in Puerto Rico…

State Propositions

Proposition 98: Eminent Domain. Limits on Government Autority. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. – NO
Result: Measure 98 fails 60.4 to 39.6

This proposition is a bit of a response to the Kelo vs. New London (2005) Supreme Court decision that affirmed the use of eminent domain. For those of you not familiar, the process of eminent domain is where the government takes over a piece of private property for a ‘public good.’ This is used extensively for building various public facilities and infrastructure, like freeways. The Kelo decision affirmed that an acceptable use of eminent domain was for economic development, where private property was taken and given to other private developers for the process of generating economic activity.

This proposition seeks to ban this process. However, this is an overly onerous proposition, which also includes hides a hidden second agenda. Think what you may about handing private property over to other private entities, but there are two reasons why it shouldn’t necessarily be banned. First, original owners are compensated fair value for their property. Second, when it comes to redeveloping our blighted and depressed areas, jurisdictions have to get private entities to do the actual redevelopment building. Cities aren’t in the business of building housing and office buildings, lest they want to be called communists.

The main reason to vote against this proposition as it bans rent control in the state. What does rent control have to do with eminent domain? Even if you don’t like rent control, the answer is nothing. Besides, quit your whining land owners, government regulations have much more loopholes and breaks for owners than for renters. A vast majority of housing subsidies and tax breaks go to home owners and not renters. And, the biggest financial disaster in the history of the state, Prop 13, gives tax breaks to property owners, forcing government to raise funds through sales taxes and user fees, which disproportionately impact lower income groups, who may also be more likely to rent.

Proposition 99: Eminent Domain. Limits on Governemtn Acquisition of Owner-Occupied Residence. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. – NO, I mean ‘YES’ (wink, wink…)
Result: Measure 99 passes 62.8 to 37.2

This proposition is also a response to the Kelo decision, but also is a response to the blatant hidden agenda of Prop 98. Prop 99 seeks only to ban the most objectionable part of the use of eminent domain, the use that Prop 98 supporters are using to scare the public. Prop 99 will ban the use of eminent domain to take over owner-occupied single-family housing, and nothing else. So there will be no grandmothers being kicked out for a mini-mall under Prop 99, and no chicanery either.

If you’re worried about that go ahead and vote for Prop 99, it certainly is an honorable way to accomplish that end. However, I’d still vote no. Right now, I do not see an epidemic of single-family homes being taken over for development projects. Foreclosures are taking care of that just nicely thank you very much… Besides, in the future, when gas prices hit $6.00 a gallon (lets say May 2009), we may be looking at ways to redevelop our dilapidating suburbs into denser, more transit friendly places.

If Prop 99 and Prop 98 both pass, Proposition 99 supersedes Proposition 98.

Elected Officials

So that I wouldn’t have to make up my mind early for the presidential race, I re-registered to vote in San Luis Obispo County so I could vote in person instead of absentee. I thought moving to SLO County would have also meant moving to more competitive races, since pretty much all Bay Area races are Democratic cakewalks, except in Berkeley and San Francisco where Democrats must battle the Green Party. Well, maybe not so much…

23^rd Congressional District Democratic Primary – Rep. Lois Capps (inc.)

In SLO County overall, Republicans outnumber Democrats by 8,000 voters. However, in this particular distrct of the county, Democrats outnumber Republicans by 5,000 voters. That might not seem like a lot, but this is a safe seat in November for Rep. Capps… thanks for also being in this district Santa Barbara…

15^th State Senate District Democratic Primary – Dennis Morris (write-in)
Result: 1,989 write-in votes, for whom TBD

The local Democratic Party did not nominate a candidate against Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-inc.). I was inclined to then nominate anyone as a write-in candidate. However, local resident Dennis Morris became a certified write-in candidate. Senator Maldonado also has registered to be a certified write-in candidate, and if he should win the empty Democratic primary as a write-in, he would appear as both parties’ candidates in November.

33^rd State Assembly District Democratic Primary – Robert Cuthbert

Cuthbert is the only candidate. This is a safe seat in November for Asm. Sam Blakeslee (R-inc.). So what do you know, all the seats are non-competitive here too. Eldridge Gerry would be proud...

3^rd District San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors (City of San Luis Obispo/Grover Beach) – Adam Hill
Result: Hill defeats Lenthall, 58.5 to 41.3

Boards of supervisors are non-partisan positions. Due to necessary obligations of county government the current Board typically votes in 5-0 decisions, with one notable exception, land use, where progressive and sustainable minded land use typically loses 3-2. This seat is currently held by a member of the majority, Supervisor Jerry Lenthall. Running against him is Cal Poly lecturer Adam Hill, who could either hold the current closeness, or swing towards a new majority. Hill was also the only thing close to a public official that attended any of the meetings my department held for the Grover Beach 2030 Community Planning Project. Interestingly, Lenthall, a Republican, holds the seat that represents 2 of the 3 Democratic majority cities in the county.

5^th District San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors (north City of San Luis Obispo/Atascadero/north central unincorporated SLO County) – Supervisor Jim Patterson (inc.)
Result: Patterson leads Arnold, 51.1 to 48.7 (240 votes). Race not called

Supervisor Patterson is the current voice for progressive planning in the County. However, Republicans outnumber Democrats in this district by over 2,000 voters. Patterson’s vulnerability being in a competitive district makes Adam Hill in the 3^rd district particularly important. Patterson is running against wedge-issue politician Debbie Arnold, who talks in flowing terms about issues that tug the heart, but with little substance. For example, Arnold attacked Patterson for voting for the location of a medical marijuana dispensary in the county, conveniently ignoring the fact the board voted 5-0 (including the board’s 3 Republicans) for the dispensary, because regardless of political inclinations, they were required by the state to pick a location otherwise the county would be fined. In a letter to the editor to the San Luis Obispo New Times, an Arnold supporter called Patterson and other supporters of pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods communists. Um, ya…