Jury duty, rehearsals

Two firsts today. I checked the jury call sheet and was completely surprised that my group was called to Palo Alto. My group number was 603 out of 609. We should have been the last to be called. Apparently they are now randomizing.

I got there half an hour early. Right on time at 1 (I think, I had left my phone in the car because they said they weren't allowed in the courtroom) the admin started taking our documents and checking us in. Each of us got a sheet saying we had shown up, and we were in station 85.

After more than an hour they sent us to station 85, which is a courtroom. There were about 50 of us, at least. They swore us all in, then another admin took roll in alphabetical order. And then she called out names in random order to sit in the jury box. I was #6.

The judge had each of the 18 of us (12 in the jury box and 6 in the alternates row) answer about 25 questions, after explaining that this was a case of the nice young man in the defendant's seat saying he was not guilty of a pair of DUIs in which there were no injuries or damage. The last 6 were DUI-related.

He then explained the very few reasons one might claim a hardship to get out of jury duty, and called a break. He said for people who claimed hardship to get a form from the bailiff and be back in 10 minutes. The rest of us were told we might have time to get to Starbucks and back, but that meant a 3 block walk and another pass through the metal detector. Most of us went back to the holding area where we had checked in.

At about 3:30 we were called back in. The defense lawyer asked the potential jurors some questions about "innocent until proved guilty" and then sat down. The prosecuting attorney who is way cute, asked several individuals some questions which basically assumed that engineers were unable to make "reasonable doubt" decisions, and she led the group to show they would accept circumstantial evidence.

Then each of them was allowed to dismiss some jurors without cause. I was the last one, the defense ditched me. I wanted to be on a jury, but this case wasn't very exciting or relevant to me, so I was happy to not have to drive through horrible rush hour traffic be in Palo Alto at 9 am for the rest of the week.

I had changed into dress pants and shirt so as not to be in contempt, but it turned out to not be necessary. And neither was leaving the phone - they had free wi-fi for us, and there were actually desks with power outlets for people who brought laptops. I had to be content waiting with New Yorker magazines.

I'm off the hook for 2 years.

Home, there was just enough time to finish the python project I had been working on, heat up some pork buns and get to rehearsals. Lots of old friends, and at our second break the director told us to meet 3 people we did not know. I met two.

It was a pretty intense music rehearsal, but done with a sense of humor and it was clear that the room was filled with really great singers. And I was happy to be singing a couple of numbers which were to the tune of Sousa's El Capitan march. Except the baritone/bass part in the band arrangement is a heck of a lot easier than the bass line in the opera.

They also gave us a lot of info about the history of the show, and how they had stitched our score together from a very old one and a lot of research.

The bass line is a PIA to follow, because while all the other parts have the words below the music, the bass line is usually below the words. My eye keeps getting drawn to the tenor line.

The vocal director also recommended a MIDI player for Android, and we have MIDI files for each number. With MIDI you can isolate your line and also hear it with any combination of other lines.

Home at about 10:30, wound down with some more CFL, made an egg cream, and then boiled up macaroni & sliced hot dogs, added shredded cheddar and had an écliare and a chaser. Which was probably a mistake.

Email from a recruiter at NVidia saying a hiring manager wants to do a phone interview, maybe this week. I sent all my info and a new copy of my resume. Earlier in the day a freelance recruiter had emailed me for the third time trying to convince me to apply at Netgear for a Superman job. They wanted someone to do everything from writing the tests for devices to mentoring the other testers to monitoring the quality of components from suppliers to going to Taiwan and (hopefully in Mandarin) negotiating with the component manufacturers. I counted 4 full-time jobs in the job description. It also tried to make this 20-year-old, $1.3 Billion company look like a poor starving startup. I told him no thanks, again, but sent him my resume for his database.

Plans for tomorrow:
Do some more Python.
Highlight my El Capitan music and put the tab dividers in their respective locations
Meet L at Prolific Oven to schmooze and collect a VHS tape he wants to have DVDed.
Shopping. I am out of popsicles and running low on frozen dinners.
Maybe do laundry
Maybe do some evening gardening.

A Mostly Good Day

The flag was all wrapped around the pole again, so I took it down, reversed the top swivel and sprayed both top and bottom swivels with silicone lube. It didn't make a difference. Next thing I'll try will be to lower the angle so the flag is more parallel to the ground. I'll have to check the protocols to see if that's allowed.

Though it was in the 80's on the thermometers, we had a cold breeze coming off the Bay, and it was breezy too, so I took the El Capitan score outside, sat on the porch and highlighted all my words & music. And found that I was not imagining it, there really are sections where the basses have the words below the music, but mostly it's above. And sometimes the transition is on the same page. Now that I have the music and words highlighted together, it should be easier to keep my eye on my part. It took a long time, we have a lot of singing to do, and sometimes it is nauseatingly repetitive. I also inserted tab pages for each number (the tabs are pre-numbered 1-35, There are "only" 16 pieces. I used 27 for 7B).

That done, I loaded the laptop into the car and went downtown. Hacked a bunch of portals, activated three neutral ones. Got two more awards (now have 5). Also got one yesterday when I hacked a couple of portals in Palo Alto.

Starbucks, as usual. Almost as soon as I logged into the laptop the phone rang, it was a recruiter I'd talked to on the 15th, telling me GoPro wants to interview me tomorrow. So the man will call me at 10 for a half-hour chat. I checked his LinkedIn profile, which has not been updated since 2011, when he was at Cisco, but what's there is an amazing list of camera and optics related work. He's trained as an astronomer. His masters is from Hawaii, which is a premier school for that. I would have a LOT to learn to do the job, but probably anyone they hired would also need a lot of training. We'll see. I still haven't heard when NVidia plans to call.

Home, watched what apparently is the final episode of Monica The Medium, which I hope they renew.

Then it was off to Rivermark, where localinactivist was waiting for me in the Prolific Oven. He bought us dinner, and gave me 4 VHS tapes to make into DVDs. We had a good catching-up chat. His work's recent re-org went the opposite of mine. He got singled out for praise on a project and was given a better boss and duties which are a better match to his skill set.

Safeway is right around the corner, so I stocked up on things on my list. They had no limes. None. Except for key limes, which are worthless, and organic ones which looked like they had been sitting there for weeks.

Home, put stuff away, caught up on email, FB and now this.

Plans for tomorrow:
The usual morning drill
10 am interview
Capture the videos. That's going to take about 9 hours.
Python class at 7