Useless Conversation

[Samwise]

Didn't your app update you with the bloom event?

You know, it really wouldn't be that hard to implement that.  One of the mini-greenhouses on my desk is already app-controlled (lighting/watering schedules), all it'd need is a small camera and some very basic image processing to be able to recognize a flower.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Is this where I can brag that my office lily has four flowers on it already going strong with a fifth just starting to emerge? 

[Sky]

Didn't your app update you with the bloom event?

You know, it really wouldn't be that hard to implement that.  One of the mini-greenhouses on my desk is already app-controlled (lighting/watering schedules), all it'd need is a small camera and some very basic image processing to be able to recognize a flower.

Step 3. Profit!

[calapine]

Our new bus is a bit confused and thinks it's a tramway.  

[Strazos]

Long Bus is Looooooooong.

[Polysorbate80]

If I weren’t in Seattle and had access to my PC, I’d totally Photoshop that into your Polandball post 

[RhyssaFireheart]

Oh ho! 

Upgraded one of my monitors at work so now I have two widescreen monitors on my desk instead of one widescreen and one square.  So much more space for my spreadsheets! Now I want a second widescreen monitor for at home!

[Samwise]

My desk isn't big enough for two widescreen monitors side by side plus a laptop, so I got a custom mount to flip one of them on its side.    It's actually pretty awesome for reading docs, or for stacking up five terminal windows vertically when I'm debugging stuff across multiple machines.  I feel ya on wanting to upgrade the home setup -- the difference between three screens and one is pretty stark.

[HaemishM]

I didn't think I'd like multiple monitors until I got a 2nd monitor at work. Now I want to use my old 21" monitor beside my new 27" beauty, but I'd have to clear off my computer desk to do so. #Thestruggleisreal

[Sky]

I'm so lazy I still leave my old mac mini plugged into my 2 work monitors to mostly run email while I do 99% of my work on my laptop.

My plan was to just use the laptop as the cpu with the monitors and bt kayboard/mouse...

[Polysorbate80]

I went back to usng single monitors — a 34” curved ultrawide at home and a 55” 4k tv at work.

Thinking about replacing the 55” with a 75” like I put in my basement.  Perks of doing video production that I can totally justify having a big-ass tv in front of a recliner at work instead of a desk/monitor setup 

[Yegolev]

I'm also in the single 4k monitor camp.  It's around 36" or so.  I've seen people set up 2-3 monitors, some with the 90-degree tilt on the sides.  I don't think I'd like it.

Need to buy one for home now that I'm basically remote all the time.  Needs to be 4k to be useful, though.

[Fraeg]

That moment when you discover you owe $12,000 in state and federal taxes.    I am not fucked but CPAs from now on.

yes yes I did it to myself, yes I should know better. Yes, Yes, and Yes.

It was definitely the biggest.. Oh Jesus Fucking Christ moment I have had in awhile.

Well that and the glenoid fracture I did snowboarding that requires surgery this Friday.  Hope everyone else's 2018 is going better!

[01101010]

That moment when you discover you owe $12,000 in state and federal taxes.    I am not fucked but CPAs from now on.

yes yes I did it to myself, yes I should know better. Yes, Yes, and Yes.

It was definitely the biggest.. Oh Jesus Fucking Christ moment I have had in awhile.

Well that and the glenoid fracture I did snowboarding that requires surgery this Friday.  Hope everyone else's 2018 is going better!

Not as severe, but just getting married and was thinking, 'great, taxes will be way better.' Nope... come to find out her former employer was not taking out the appropriate amount of state and local taxes and we got zapped with a $500 bill. So much for the benefits of marriage. At least she is getting her health problems corrected under my insurance.

[Viin]

That moment when you discover you owe $12,000 in state and federal taxes.    I am not fucked but CPAs from now on.

Yeah, I had that problem this year too. I wish it was only $12k. We sold a rental property we were tired of managing.. I was expecting something of a tax bill, but I was also unemployed for 6 months so I wasn't thinking it'd be this bad. Christ.

[schild]

my taxes were bad

apparently I got $802 back in a check I never saw

they wrote me to tell me they're sending me another $802

this $802 doesn't even buy the bandaid required to fix my tax bill

[Samwise]

I ended up with a pretty good tax situation this year due to it being the last year I can deduct state taxes, but next year will be interesting, between loss of the state deduction and some unexpectedly ridiculous capital gains (although there are worse problems to have -- I just need to make sure to not spend too much of it before tax season).

[Morat20]

So, just got done with jury duty.  Since we basically had all day to deliberate (we had closing arguments in the morning), everybody but one person stuck around to talk to the judge for awhile (learned some interesting things about the defendant, which made it obvious why we didn't know them before we gave the verdict), and told us that any of us willing to stick around a little while longer, that both lawyers would be happy to talk to us about the case.

Basically ask why we decided what we did, what we did and didn't find convincing, and why. I don't recall that from last time, but my last one ended really late.

I know we have a few lawyers around -- you guys ever get anything useful out of that back in forth? Is that common around the country, or just Texas?

[HaemishM]

I had one time on the jury where the judge came back and talked to us afterwards (we declared a mistrial because the prosecuting attorney was a moron who couldn't present a coherent case that the defender's lawyer didn't discredit or at least put a reasonable doubt in our minds). For the most part though it's been "you're done, you don't got to go home but you got to get the hell out of here."

[Abagadro]

If he created reasonable doubt, should have been an acquittal not a mistrial. 

Jury polling is all over the map and its really dependent on the case and how willing jurors are to talk to you. If you lost, sometimes you can uncover grounds for appeal.  If its  a hung jury, you get good info on how to approach the retrial. Sometimes you just want feedback so you can improve your courtroom performance for the next client.

[HaemishM]

Sorry, hung jury - we couldn't decide on a conviction or acquittal (vote tallies were about half for, half again'it).

[schild]

i cannot imagine a world where i ever get picked for jury duty

[Rasix]

I kind of liked it. Sure, it was a bit boring, and the defense didn't have a chance, but it was overall an interesting exercise. I think I probably could have swayed the jury either way in a closer trial (no one there was very bright), but this was pretty clear cut drug possession. The defense's only really argument was "yes, but you don't know how much drugs were in the drugs!!"  The legality of the stop was something that was being decided outside of our trial.

Honestly, I'd do it again as long as it didn't tank a release or interfere with vacation.

[Rendakor]

I agree, it's an interesting experience. When I served, my feeling was that most people wanted to find the defendant guilty immediately, just so they could go home.

[Rishathra]

When I served, everyone in the room was all gung ho about doing our civic duty and we all wanted to do a good job.  So, we kept bugging the bailiff outside the door to get us copies of various bits of documentation presented during the trial (as gung ho as we were, none of us thought to take notes), and he looked at us like we were insane.  Eventually, we got a note from the judge saying something to the effect of, "you're trying too hard, this isn't the case of the century, just go off of what you remember and that's fine, we're all trying to get the fuck out of here and go home, including me."  Honestly, it was kind of depressing.

[Morat20]

i cannot imagine a world where i ever get picked for jury duty

Wait until you're part of a jury pool where the words "sex offender" shows up. Not a sex offense case, but merely where the defendant is required to be on the sex offender registry (and where they made that clear that, in fact, the case was not about anything but technical compliance with the registry). 65 people in the pool, and juror number 60 got seated. That's how many people in the pool stated they couldn't be objective, or else answered the "Do you find a cop to be more or less credible as a witness" at the extreme ends of the 1 to 7 scale.

Weird thing was -- cops get a tip a sex offender had moved without changing his address. (From the ex-gf at his address on record). They show up, talk to her, but...no one asks to go inside. To check out his room, verify his stuff seems gone, nada. Just talk to her on the porch, note his car isn't currently there, end of story. No cop went inside. No witness (other than the ex-gf and the one whose name is on the lease) can testify he moved his stuff out.

Five minutes, max, of the officer who was already at the house and there'd been a conviction instead of an aquittal. (Hell, we'd have probably taken a biased witness called over to watch kids. Literally any second person who could say "Yeah, man, his clothes and TV were gone").

I have no idea why that cop didn't go inside. It's not like he asked and she told him no. I don't know whether it's simply not in their procedure, or the responding cop forgot, or got called out before he could, or what.


Rishathra: You guys were allowed to take notes? We weren't. We tried to ask the judge a few questions (we got copies of the documents entered into evidence), but they basically can't give you anything. I think she said pretty much all we could get is a portion of the transcript read to us, and only if we were disagreeing over a specific fact in the testimony. Not "couldn't remember what X said" but something like "X said the 7th, no she said the 17th".

[HaemishM]

I've been to jury duty 3 times, in all 3 counties I've lived in over the last 20+ years. Two of them were sex offender cases - neither were full on molestation but more "fondling" of a child for sexual gratification (legal definition I think being that the child wasn't penetrated - I know, EWWW). The third one was luckily a civil car wreck case that was pretty easy to decide. The sex offender cases were both hung juries because the DA didn't or couldn't really prove his case and for the lesser fondling charge, there's rarely any hard evidence other than children's testimony and that can be unreliable at best. The second case was also between a divorced husband and wife so there was the added complication of "does she have a bone to pick with her ex or are these kids being truthful?"

I enjoy jury duty in that as a writer, it's just an interesting experience to watch. Not to mention if I was in the docket, I'd really appreciate having jurors who were switched on and wanted to be there rather than just the dregs who couldn't get out of it.

[Rendakor]

When we wanted to review evidence, the judge was more than willing to oblige us. First we got transcripts, then they let us watch video of the testimony. We were allowed to take notes too, but we had to turn them all in at the end of the day (and at the end of the trial).

We were down to the last 3 people in our pool too when it finally filled up, and ours wasn't sexual in nature at all.

[Rishathra]

No, we weren't allowed to take notes.  It's just what I was thinking at the time.  Here we all were in a room, ready to go over the evidence and the testimony, but with no transcripts, and no documentation, and no copies of the evidence submitted.  Only our memories, which we all felt wouldn't be complete or accurate enough.  Apparently, we were the only ones to think so, going off of all the court officers' behavior.

[HaemishM]

They let us take notes if we wanted, but all notes had to stay in the jury room at the end of the day, and we couldn't take them with us at the end of the trial.

[Johny Cee]

Ummm....  Happened to look at the members online and there are 160 guests....  Is some organization scraping old forums with bots or something?

[schild]

there's always shitloads of guests

i've kept registration off until we upgrade

[Morat20]

No, we weren't allowed to take notes.  It's just what I was thinking at the time.  Here we all were in a room, ready to go over the evidence and the testimony, but with no transcripts, and no documentation, and no copies of the evidence submitted.  Only our memories, which we all felt wouldn't be complete or accurate enough.  Apparently, we were the only ones to think so, going off of all the court officers' behavior.

I think it varies by state, honestly. I found out that, per a fairly recent-ish (last few years I think), that judges here in Texas can't define "reasonable doubt" for you. The judge had to tap dance and explain "preponderance of evidence" (civil), "clear and convincing" (family law -- like removing kids from parents), and that "reasonable doubt was higher than those two".

Judging by the comments, some judge said something like "99% certain" and then someone appealed because that misled or prejudiced the jury, and viola. Neither judge, nor prosecutor, nor defense lawyer can define it for laymen. Judge sounded pretty irritated by the tap dancing she had to do too.

I'm sure there's a reason -- probably some weird legal theory on decision making -- behind not taking notes, maybe for the same sort of reasons you're not supposed to discuss the case during breaks until deliberations start.

In other news, I've decided that if anything will ever prompt me to go for massive property damage to protest injustice, it'll likely be aimed at the stupid fucks that run my goddamn prescription service. I've been dealing with these morons for six months now, and they are unable to transfer a prescription from anywhere, they routinely just decide not to fill shit and not tell you, and basically seem to view their job as NOT sending goddamn medication to the customers who keep trying to pay them goddamn money to get it.

I have to call them, minimum once a fucking month, because their "hassle free refills" don't fucking work. They also don't put their customer service number on their web page, instead preferring a "Contact Us" button that lets you put your phone number in so they can call you ("right away", "in five minutes", etc). It has not worked in the six months I've dealt with these shitheads.

Given my wife is fucking diabetic, I'm pretty sure they're actively trying to kill her.

[IainC]

In the last week I've been pitched a job by an HR lady who found me on LinkedIn, spoken to the team three times on Skype and have been offered a job working on a new long-term project based on the Warhammer IP. That's not even the crazy part. The crazy part is that they want me to relocate to Bangkok. I don't mind moving around, I've done it plenty of times in the past, but never as far out of my comfort zone as Thailand. It's a pretty big step but it would get me out of the crippling poverty hole that I'm currently in. Although I do quite like Slovakia and I love my current apartment, I'm not sure how tenable my position is here going forwards.

So, on the one hand, gainful employment again after a ~2 year dry spell. On the other hand, Bangkok. Anyone have any experience with living out there as a filthy, job-stealing immigrant ex-pat?

[Trippy]

It’s a trap!