Greg

link friday!

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:12:55 GMT

And since it's 8(!) days until the wedding, presumably my last one as a swinging bachelor.

This fascinating NY Times graphic shows the various business cycles and the recession we're in now. And maybe some hope that things will be better in 6 months.

A 60 foot Gundam robot has risen in Tokyo. I really really hope this is real.

Short article on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall. Found this surprising:

In 1966, three years before Stonewall, Time, then the voice of middlebrow, middle-class respectability, published a long essay on “The Homosexual in America.” The magazine, while acknowledging that “homosexuals are present in every walk of life,” concluded that homosexuality
is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. As such it deserves fairness, compassion, understanding and, when possible, treatment. But it deserves no encouragement, no glamorization, no rationalization, no fake status as minority martyrdom, no sophistry about simple differences in taste—and, above all, no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness.

Sacha Baron Cohen's (Borat, Ali G, etc.) new movie Bruno comes out today- this character is a gay fashion person or something. He went out of character on Letterman describing how he interviewed a terrorist. Salon thinks it's bad for the gays, Slate thinks it's good for the gays, and Ebert surprised me by liking the movie.

Ricky Gervais's The Invention of Lying looks like a good movie, and it has "every other Hollywood actor and comic in the world" (Patrick Stewart! Tina Fey! Jason Bateman and Jeffrey Tambor! John Hodgman!)

Cool jQuery plugin to dynamically make nice-looking graphs - uses the new canvas feature, like my marriage map does. Wish I had thought of this!

California v. Texas - take that, California! Although

Despite all this, it still seems too early to cede America’s future to the Lone Star state. To begin with, that lean Texan model has its own problems. It has not invested enough in education, and many experts rightly worry about a “lost generation” of mostly Hispanic Texans with insufficient skills for the demands of the knowledge economy. Now immigration is likely to reconvert Texas from Republican red to Democratic blue; Latinos may justly demand a bigger, more “Californian” state to educate them and provide them with decent health care.

Optimizing iTunesAnalysis: faster database access

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:07:31 GMT

The second in an occasional series
Idea: Now I'm focusing on improving the time to insert the iTunes data into database. Where we left off last time, our script took 71 seconds to run, ~50 seconds of which was database operations. The idea I had to speed this up was to batch a bunch of queries together and thus make fewer calls to the database. It turns out this actually slowed things down.

So I did a little research and it turns out if you insert data with the same query structure over and over again (but with different bind variables), the database doesn't have to reparse the query which speeds things up a lot. I tried doing this with pyPgSql but couldn't find any documentation how it was supposed to work, so I switched to using psycopg2 and changed the query for inserting the playlist data. Just switching to a psycopg2 sped things up a lot, it seems. I tried switching to a similar sort of query for inserting track data, but that actually slowed things down.

Anyway, the new script runs in 25 seconds, and it looks like only around 9 seconds for database operations. This is a 400% speedup in the database time! Overall, this step improved performance by ~180%, and since we started at 114 seconds we've improved ~350%.

Conclusion: Another big success, and I'm not sure how much more I can squeeze out of the iTunesInfo.py script. Next time I'll focus on the analyzedb.py script, which does the analysis from the database - right now it's taking between 5 and 12 minutes to run on my library of 6400 tracks.

Source files:
- old script
- new script

Optimizing iTunesAnalysis through smarter parsing

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:01:57 GMT

The first in an occasional series
Intro: A while back I wrote a script to analyze an iTunes library and find your favorite artists, albums, etc. It works pretty well and I regularly use it to update my own analysis. Unfortunately, it generally takes a long time to run, which is sort of OK for me (because I just start it running and go do something else) but less good for people who are running the analysis through the web site.

So I'd like to make it run faster, and I have a number of ideas to do so.

Idea: There are two main parts to the system - parsing the iTunes Music Library.xml file into a database, and running the analysis on the database. First I'm focusing on the parsing part.

The first version of the parsing script uses Python's xml.dom.minidom package to completely parse the library file.

After profiling the first version by running python -m cProfile -o profiledata.oldway iTunesInfo.py "iTunes Music Library.xml", I see that the whole parsing process takes 114 seconds. The major parts of this are 60 seconds for the xml.dom.minidom.parse method and 46 seconds for the database operations. Note that this only leaves ~8 seconds for figuring out the track information - clearly this is not the bottleneck!

So I'd like to improve parsing speed. There are two basic kinds of XML parsers - what we're using now is a DOM or Document Object Model-style parser, which means that the parser reads the entire file in and returns a parsed structure containing all the data. (I remember writing a simple XML parser that did this as a project in COMP 314. Ah, memories...) The advantage to this method is that after the parsing is done, it's easy to traverse the DOM tree and find the data that you're interested in. The downside is that, well, it's slow. Also, the entire document has to be read into memory which means that your memory usage is proportional to the size of the file you're processing, which adds to the slowness and can lead to out of memory problems on huge files (although we weren't seeing that here).

The other basic kind of XML parser is known as SAX, or Simple API for XML. You provide callback functions that are called whenever the parser runs across the start of a tag, end of a tag, character data, and...that's it. Whatever processing you want to do you have to do in those callback functions. So if you're just, say, counting the number of <key> tags in a document this works really well. It's also much faster than the DOM-style parser, since it doesn't have to generate a giant tree structure. But doing the sorts of processing we're doing on the library file seems a bit more tricky.

Anyway, I take a stab at it, and after a bit end up with version 2 of the script. Notice that the logic in the Handler class is a bit twisted - we have to keep track of where we are in the document (so if things get out of order we'll have problems) and use a state-based system which is a bit brittle and unclear.

But how does it perform? The old version of the script ran in 114 seconds, and this version runs in 71 seconds for a ~60% increase in speed. But really, it's better than that, because the database operations still take around 50 seconds - if we subtract that from both we get 64 seconds versus 21 seconds which is a ~200% increase in the speed of the parsing.

Conclusion: This was a big success! Most of the time is now in the database layer, which I have some ideas for speeding up next time.

Source files:
- old script
- new script

weekend, life update

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:25:54 GMT

Thursday I went tubing with some people in New Braunfels. I'm generally not super excited about water activities, but it was fun and relaxing. It was also really, really hot. I didn't fully reapply suntan lotion while floating down the river (not really sure why I didn't, except that I didn't feel like I was burning) , and thus I ended up horribly sunburned on most of my chest, upper legs and feet.

I've been using some aloe lotiony stuff which helped a lot, but even still it's still sensitive and (worst of all) itchy, especially at night. Saturday night I took a Benadryl which successfully knocked me out, and last night I tried to get by with just some cortisone cream. Gave up on that after a while of itching and not sleeping and took the Benadryl, but it didn't work as well...got to sleep after about an hour and didn't sleep well. (neither did djedi, for unrelated reasons)

12 days until our wedding! Everything seems in order and we're keeping up with our todo list but I'm still generally stressed. Picked up honeymoon tickets, etc. today and I'm looking forward to that part :-)

A somewhat rambling but interesting talk by Stephen Fry about America's place in the world.

Propaganda posters for World War III. I think this one is my favorite.

happy 9 years!

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:34:32 GMT

And on the same day of my 1000th LJ post! Clearly this is an auspicious day. Except for the fact that I broke a glass this morning :-(

Firefox 3.5 is out today! Looks like it's not automatically updating yet. I've been beta testing for a while and it's speedier and more responsive than Firefox 3. You can see some of the new features here.

I'm becoming somewhat obsessed with the Palm Pre - been reading reviews from Engadget and Gizmodo (here's the flash-heavy Sprint page) and I'm kinda excited about it, although I'm under contract with T-Mobile until March. I even signed up to develop an app for it - gonna try porting whereslunch.org to it and see how easy it is...

Sometimes I step back and marvel that I can buy 16 GB of storage that fits on my keychain for $35.

Internet is out at home until Friday.

Games database

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:22:05 GMT

Just got done working on a database of the games we own. Not everything we own is in there, but most of it is, and I'll try to get the rest added soon. You can search based on number of players and the length of the game. Give it a shot and let me know what you think!

linky in spirit

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:17:11 GMT

We watched Dial M for Murder last night. I had high hopes for it, having enjoyed Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" a few weeks ago, but this was even better! The opening 15 minutes or so were packed with tension, and although sometimes older movies don't hold up today since their twists have become terribly commonplace, this one holds up quite well. Highly recommended.

The Alamo Drafthouse had a tribute Michael Jackson singalong last night, and they say there will be more this weekend. I went to one of these in 2005 and it was a lot of fun.

Supreme Court rulings: strip-searching a 13 year old because you think they have Advil = very not OK (Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter), and crime laboratory technicians must testify to admit lab results into evidence, which sounds like it might be a fairly large change. That was a 5-4 ruling with an odd majority: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Scalia and Thomas.

If you're interested in the Supreme Court (and who isn't?), here's a chart of the justices' ideology over its history, which explains why seeing Stevens and Thomas agree on anything is pretty weird.

The DNC gay fundraiser I mentioned last week happened, and apparently Joe Biden gave a good speech and got a lot of applause. But it's hard to read this:

He said that gay and lesbian concerns will not be "delayed, put off or not end up on [Obama's] plate" because he is dealing with so many other issues.

since that seems to be exactly what's happening. I appreciate that they're pledging to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, but talk is cheap.

For you non-Austinites: it hit 107 degrees yesterday at the airport, and it's supposed to get up to 106 today. It is very very hot. Pity us!

craving HDL

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:33:02 GMT

I had a physical yesterday, and like last time my HDL is still low. (it's 28...somethings and normal is 40...somethings) The good news is that my triglycerides and LDL were normal this time. Oh, and I need to lose some weight, which I already knew.

I got my results on a nice little sheet with the normal values and what I could do (non-medicationwise) to improve the values. On literally every measure, the first two items were "Lose weight" and "Exercise more". Um, great.

Also, I moved at work today! Exciting.

teh gays !<3 Obama

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:38:41 GMT

Last week the Department of Justice filed a brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act. Now, DOMA is the law and the Justice Department is required to uphold the law (although apparently previous DoJ's have published opinions saying they thought laws were unconstitutional), but the brief itself is pretty terrible - saying DOMA is consistent with equal protection, comparing it to laws banning incest, saying the right to marry isn't fundamental when it comes to marrying someone of the same sex. And according to Robert Gibbs (the press secretary) Obama stands behind the brief

So. This pissed a lot of people off. There's been a lot of unhappiness already about the lack of movement on DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell, and even the HRC published a kinda mad letter. A lot of people are pulling out of a DNC gay fundraiser next week. People generally feel betrayed.

Presumably to address these issues, Obama announced the he would grant same-sex benefits to federal employees, which is great except that said benefits don't include health insurance. Although it does include relocation assistance. Which is, ahem, something.

Anyway! Rant over.

A story of homeless Sims in The Sims 3. The narrative is pretty touching.

GameFAQs recently ran a Best Game Ever bracket, which Zelda: Ocarina of Time won. I was happy I've actually played a lot of the games in the final bracket!

filllllings...nothing more than fillllllings...

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:13:57 GMT

I went back to my new dentist at Shoal Creek Dental Care - the cleaning I had took a while but was much more pleasant than usual, and I got a tooth filled yesterday in 20 minutes, which is awesome. And my cheek/gums didn't hurt after the numbing wore off! I am quite pleased.

Courtesy of FiveThirtyEight, I found this awesome chart:

Some interesting things:
- Housing antidiscrimination is the most popular policy in all 50 states, but it's only been enacted in 20 states. My guess is that it's something that people don't run into that often (we've looked for housing in MD and TX and never felt discriminated against) so there's not much impetus to pass it.
- Bully for Iowa's Supreme Court, but I'm worried about marriage being overturned there.
- Obvious next targets for marriage: NY, RI, and CA (oh the irony!)

better living through science

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:51:26 GMT

A while back I wrote a script to analyze our GnuCash account. A few months ago, I added a quick little feature to predict how much money we're going to spend this month - basically just taking the existing values and extrapolating to the end of the month, disregarding stuff that is largely the same like the mortgage payment and bills. So every time I run the script I get an updated projection of how much money we'll spend this month.

For something so simple, it's surprising how it's changed my behavior. I'm very much more conscious about spending money now, and last month we spent the least amount we have in a while. Of course, that's just one data point. It's similar as the idea behind the Google PowerMeter - if you can measure something well you're more likely to think about it more and conserve when you can.

In a similar vein, the Wall Street Journal writes about not getting enough sleep and a device called the Zeo which tells you how well you slept the next morning. Again, the idea is that you can try out different things (cutting out caffeine longer before bedtime, etc.) and see how they affect your sleep patterns. Cool stuff! Yet another study shows that sleep is important and helps you learn.

just this guy, you know?

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:21:12 GMT

A new poll came out showing that 69% of Americans favor allowing openly gay people in the military - up from 64% 5 years ago...and even 58% conservatives support it! For a point of comparison, when Truman integrated the army only 13% of the population supported it. Stephen Colbert is doing his show from Iraq this week (in front of troops) and last night did a segment on Don't Ask, Don't Tell which was pretty ballsy.

25 Great Calvin and Hobbes Strips

Remember that long health care article? Turns out Obama read it too and is taking it pretty seriously.

I'm in a hurry to get things done...

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:46:29 GMT

Obama gave a big speech in Cairo yesterday - here's the full text and the hour-long video. Pretty impressive and even-handed.

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, and the Chinese government tried to block foreign reporters from recording by...using umbrellas.

New Hampshire passed a same-sex marriage bill into law this week, leaving Rhode Island as the only New England state that hasn't legalized it. Which is pretty crazy when I stop and think about it. The map is turning more green!

A long article about gay marriage from a Burkean conservative point of view.

Loving Day, the anniversary of the Supreme Court striking down anti-mixed race marriage laws, is this weekend.

Cool guys don't look at explosions (video).

A long "screenplay" about how hard it is to get security right - this really opened my eyes!

Pixar vs. the Rest, or "Pixar movies, they make a lot of money and people like them".

Stem Cell Contact Lenses Cure Blindness in Less Than a Month - um, wow.

other odds and ends

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:57:38 GMT

As a wedding present from djedi I got a new monitor! Whereas my old one could fit 4 xterms without overlapping, the new one can fit 9 (and 12 with just a little overlap). This makes a huge difference when I'm programming - being able to see larger sections of the file I'm working on (and having more xterms open in different directories, etc.) lets me get distracted less by switching between virtual desktops, etc. Also, the screensaver of pictures looks much more impressive :-)

We saw "Up" on Saturday (in 3D, no less). It was sweet - the first five or so minutes were really really great. I hope I can be Ellie to David's Carl. Or something. Overall I liked it but less than Wall-E and The Incredibles.

Last night we put in 10 or so attempts on Hodir and got him down to 23% or so. It's pretty overwhelming at first - I have to find the fire and stand near it, avoid icicles, dispel frost novas, heal like crazy through the frozen blows, and not screw up the flash freeze. I got pretty good by the end except at the avoiding icicles while healing through frozen blows. Maybe next time...

If you installed .NET framework 3.5 SP1, you probably got an unwanted silent installation of a Firefox addon that makes it less safe - the link has directions on how to remove it. That kinda sucks.

This whole post is really just an excuse to post this short video which I won't spoil. Also: 100 movie lines in 200 seconds.

Yeah, yeah, my heart's in a whirl

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:11:26 GMT

May had some high points, but overall it kinda sucked, what with being stressed out with work stuff all the time. June looks to be somewhat better, but still stressful. July will be hectic for 17 days, then awesome, then more awesome. (August will be extremely stressful for about 4 days, then presumably back to normal) This would all be more managable if I hadn't been so moody. Hoping that goes away when the stress is gone.

This is a terrible, terrible attack on Sotomayor. Something tells me G. Gordon Liddy thinks women shouldn't hold any positions of power anywhere.

Bing is Microsoft's new search engine. It seems decent so far.

Nevada gets domestic partnerships (over the governor's veto) and Illinois's civil union bill makes it out of committee but not to the house floor although it's still possible it will in a special session.

days go by and still I think of you

Fri, 29 May 2009 15:45:18 GMT

Had a nice relaxing week, apart from being sick Tuesday and Wednesday. Oh, and we downed a few new bosses in Ulduar-10 last night (Kologarn and Auriaya), although no loots for me.

Despite being sick most of the week I found some good links:

- Dave Matthews Band has a new album coming out next week, and you can stream the full thing at Pandora. So far it's pretty good!

- This article about health care in the New Yorker was both fascinating and a little depressing. It looks at why McAllen is the most expensive city for health care in the US, and basically the answer is because the culture for doctors there is to try to maximize revenue.

- How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks

- A rebuttal to those who claim that the new Star Trek movie threw away a bunch of continuity...short version, Star Trek has been throwing away continuity for quite a while now.

in the merry month of may

Fri, 22 May 2009 19:32:57 GMT

My same-sex marriage map got some link love from Metafilter (thanks kernelm!) and somethingawful, oddly enough. And twitter, come to think of it. This added up to 225 hits over the past 3 days, which is a lot for me.

I'm not sure why it makes me so excited to see people linking to my stuff - there are no ads on the page, and presumably most people click on it, take a look, think "Neat!" (or "What a piece of crap!") and move on with their day. I guess it's a measure of fame or prominence, however slight.

The government just released data.gov which is a collection of parseable data from various government agencies. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of too interesting stuff there yet, but there is a a contest to write a cool app. (the first entrant is FBI Fugitive Concentration!)

The Dallas Cowboy's new stadium has the world's largest HD video screen.

marriage: the gayening

Wed, 20 May 2009 20:11:24 GMT

The New Hampshire legislature narrowly didn't pass the gay marriage bill (amended as the governor requested), but sent it back to committee so it might come up for a vote again in two weeks. Of course, then who knows if the governor will sign it?

Supposedly the California Prop 8 lawsuit decision will be handed down tomorrow. If it overturns Prop 8 it's possible gay marriage will be legal in California again. Not having followed the proceedings at all I'd bet against it, though.

The Nevada legislature passed a domestic partner bill but the governor has said he'd veto it.

Gay Marriage Slow to Draw an Opposition in N.Y. - good?

All these things are keeping me on my toes updating the same-sex marriage map. Hoping to add a few small features later this week.

Non-gay marriage links:

You know how everyone says the divorce rate is 50%? Apparently that's not true if you look at it as how many people have ever been divorced.

Lost Season 5 recap with crazy crazy theories.

A review of "Glee" which we watched last night. I thought it was kinda (and surprisingly) good!

rumsfeld flashbacks

Mon, 18 May 2009 15:54:26 GMT

Apparently the President's Worldwide Intelligence Updates (prepared by the Pentagon) often had verses from the Bible on the cover, which makes me a little queasy. I agree that, if you're religious, there's nothing wrong with looking to your religion/God for faith and guidance, but this seems more like "Hey, the Bible says this whole war thing is A-OK, carry on!" The accompanying article is full of new information about Rumsfeld, including

The next day, three days after landfall, word of disorder in New Orleans had reached a fever pitch. According to sources familiar with the conversation, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff called Rumsfeld that morning and said, “You’re going to need several thousand troops.”

“Well, I disagree,” said the SecDef. “And I’m going to tell the president we don’t need any more than the National Guard.”

The problem was that the Guard deployment (which would eventually reach 15,000 troops) had not arrived—at least not in sufficient numbers, and not where it needed to be. And though much of the chaos was being overstated by the media, the very suggestion of a state of anarchy was enough to dissuade other relief workers from entering the city. Having only recently come to grips with the roiling disaster, Bush convened a meeting in the Situation Room on Friday morning. According to several who were present, the president was agitated. Turning to the man seated at his immediate left, Bush barked, “Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what’s on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I’m watching? What the hell are you doing?”

Rumsfeld replied by trotting out the ongoing National Guard deployments and suggesting that sending active-duty troops would create “unity of command” issues. Visibly impatient, Bush turned away from Rumsfeld and began to direct his inquiries at Lieutenant General Honoré on the video screen. “From then on, it was a Bush-Honoré dialogue,” remembers another participant. “The president cut Rumsfeld to pieces. I just wish it had happened earlier in the week.”

Another excellent article I read this weekend was What Makes Us Happy? in The Atlantic. (a magazine I consistently enjoy) It looks at a study that started following Harvard students in the 1930s and kept up with them until now, trying to determine what factors were most important to living a happy life. What they found was

Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors.

(bolding mine) The "mature adaptations" they mention consist of

altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship)

(bolding mine)

One more: here's Obama's commencement speech at Notre Dame.

hurried links

Fri, 15 May 2009 19:57:18 GMT

Is it the end of May yet?

A Roomba's path (by taking a long exposure time picture) is pretty chaotic!

Yes, Star Trek: The Next Generation had a torture episode.

In The Fierce Urgency of Whenever, Andrew Sullivan is pretty pissed Obama hasn't done much for gays yet. I mostly agree, although I'm a bit more patient. It turns out Obama wrote a personal note saying he's "committed to changing our current policy" of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

The governor of New Hampshire says he'll sign the gay marriage bill if religious protections are added, which the legislature has indicated they'll do. Sweet! For the record, I have absolutely no problem with saying religions don't have to recognize gay marriages. (even though, to my understanding, they don't have to even without the wording he wants in the bill) After all these bills go into effect, Rhode Island will be the only state in New England without gay marriage. That is some craziness, folks.

With The 'Gay Tax,' Love Doesn't Come Cheap - why, despite the awesomeness that is states allowing gay marriage, the fact that it's not recognized at a federal level still costs couples a lot of money.

Hello New York friends!

Wed, 13 May 2009 19:12:53 GMT

The New York state assembly passed a gay marriage bill last night, and Governor Paterson has said he'll sign it if it gets to him. Before that happens, it has to pass the state senate, where a gay marriage bill has failed before.

If you could take a minute and write or call your state senator and ask him/her to support the bill (the number is S4401, although I'm sure they'll know what you're talking about!) you could make a difference. And it would make me very happy!

pride and prejudice and zombies and "star trek" and wedding and words

Mon, 11 May 2009 19:36:40 GMT

In reverse order:

- My bad. I posted to Facebook that my epic jury duty recounting was 9500 words long, which sounded more improbable the more I thought about it. Indeed, my word-counting was counting characters instead of words, so after a little tuneup the statistics show it was only 2228 words long (still my longest post ever). In fact, now I know I write an average of 200 words per entry! And over the life of my LJ (including protected posts which don't show up in the public statistics) I've written 204550 words, or around 126 words a day.

- Wedding stuff is going fine. I sent the invitations out today at lunch!

- "Star Trek" movie = good. We saw it at the Alamo Drafthouse, so I had a Romulan Ale before it even started which made it even better. (also, Kirk's Iowa steak with McCoy's baked beans, while arriving extremely late (the waiter took half off the price) was delicious) The new 4K digital projection thingy was incredibly crisp and I really enjoyed the movie. (talking about seeing it again soonish!)

- I have a long history with "Pride and Prejudice". I was forced to read it in 7th grade and hate hate hated it, didn't understand most of it, and got a "D" or something like that on the test. As such, I never had any desire to watch the A&E miniseries even though my mom and sister(s?) loved it, and I generally went on with my life.

For my birthday, djedi got me Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I started reading it, and awesomeness ensued. The first paragraph is:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. Never was this truth more plain than during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead.

There was enough zombie happenings to keep me interested throughout the book, and I even got kind of engaged with the non-zombie plot, which is nothing short of remarkable. Also, there are illustrations!

I'd recommend it (my mom and at least one sister want to borrow it) and am eagerly awaiting Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 2!

I am the law!

Fri, 08 May 2009 22:06:24 GMT

I recently got called for jury duty and served! My incredibly long story within...

The summons said to be there at 1:30 - parking was terrible to find given I wasn't sure about whether I'd be able to feed the meter (they only go for 2 hours and I was short on change anyway), so I ended up parking 8 blocks away in an expensive garage. That kinda sucked.

As I walked in I had to go through a metal detector/X-ray thingy. The security guard (who looked a lot like Dr. Kelso on Scrubs) told me I should get a man-purse since I had so much crap in my pockets :-)

In the criminal justice center, they had a lot of airport-like screens all over the place listing names, times, and cause numbers. I never did figure out exactly what the deal was - I figured they'd be cases being heard, but for example the court I was in had a list of 10 or so people for that day, and as far as I can tell the court never did anything with them. The cause number included the year - about 80% of them were 08, most of the rest were 07, and there were a few outliers like 94.

26 people had been called for Voir dire - I think all ended up showing up. I was #6, which I figured meant I had a pretty decent chance of getting chosen.

After we lined up and sat down, the judge talked to us for a few minutes about the process, which I was already somewhat familiar with (see previous jury experience). He said the court was misdemeanor court and the case should be done by Friday.

Then the prosecutor got up and started. (interestingly, or perhaps not, both prosecutors and defense attorneys were women, as were the bailiff and court reporter) Her name was Ms. Trumm, and she said she had taught high school before getting a chance to get to law school for free (she made it sound like it just happened out of the blue, and we never heard anything else about it) and ended up wanting to work in the "women & children" (words mine, not hers) department...but she was just starting out so she was doing this instead :-) She was quite young and she seemed a bit nervous. She had a powerpoint presentation that covered a lot of the same stuff as I had seen the last time - if you don't believe in judging people or in the one-witness rule, etc., this isn't the right case for you.

She also said the crime was a DWI, and although they weren't allowed to discuss the facts of the case, it was pretty clear that there was video evidence but no breathalyzer test.

The defense attorney seemed better organized (she also had a powerpoint presentation) and she asked a series of questions that we had to answer on a scale of 1 to 6 (1 = strongly agree, 6 = strongly disagree). Some of the questions were "Do you trust a police officer more than a citizen just because he/she is a police officer?" (hint: the correct answer is no; under the law, you're allowed to take into account the officer's experience and training, but not the fact that he's a police officer) and "The police never make a mistake." Anyway, her partner was writing down all of our numerical answers which was kinda neat.

It was pretty obvious some people near me were going to be disqualified - the woman whose husband is a firefighter (and so sees lots of DWI crashes), the guy who had been in a house that was raided by the Austin Police and then they realized it was a wrong address, etc. I had a feeling from my answers that I would be picked, and lo and behold I was juror #3. The judge dismissed everyone else and the bailiff showed us to the jury room (which was not as awesome as the judge last time had led us to believe :-) ) - it had a table, some chairs, a fridge and sink and a TV with a VCR/DVD player. The judge told us to report here at 9 AM the next morning and instructed us not to talk to anyone about the case.

The next morning, I dropped David off at NI at 8 to make sure I had plenty of time to get downtown and park. This time, I had a parking pass which made things a lot easier - found a spot two blocks away and walked in. Arrived around 8:30 and had some time to chat with the other jurors (who all ended up being pretty nice) and try to not fall asleep.

Then the bailiff brought us in to the court (one of the jurors showed up late so we didn't enter until around 9:30). The judge swore us in and then the opening arguments began. The prosecutor went first (it was neat when she said "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury" and she was totally talking to me!), and she again seemed somewhat nervous, but explaining that we would see a videotape of the defendant clearly intoxicated. "Intoxicated" according to the law means that they've lost "normal" use of their physical or mental faculties as a result of alcohol or a drug or some combination of alcohol and drugs. (or it means a BAC above .08, but that didn't come into play here since the defendant refused a breathalyzer test) She finished up by saying something like "After seeing all the evidence, I think you'll find the defendant not guilty...I mean guilty." The defense's opening argument was more polished, and outlined their plan: the defendant was tired, and not a bright guy who didn't understand the tests that the officer performed that we would see in the video.

The prosecutor called her first (and only) witness, who was the officer who made the stop. Actually, she called the witness, then left the courtroom for a good 90 seconds before returning with the officer. It was somewhat anticlimactic. Anyway, turns out the defendant had run a stop sign and the cop had to slam on the brakes to avoid him, then he did a traffic stop and did the field sobriety test. Luckily, APD has video cameras on all their cop cars so we could see the defendant doing the tests. As it turned out, the defendant only spoke Spanish - the cop spoke Spanish too but there were some translation issues that came up later...

The first test is to follow a pen with your eyes while keeping your head still. The defendant had a big problem with this - he kept saying that he was tired and wasn't used to doing this sort of thing so he kept moving his head (at least according to the police officer - the video was zoomed out enough we couldn't see very clearly). The second test is to walk nine steps forward heel to toe while watching your feet and keeping your arms at your side. This was somewhat bizarre - he clearly was having trouble understanding and took a few steps asking the officer if he was doing it right. Then he did nine steps pretty good and then took nine steps backwards, without turning around. Apparently in Spanish the phrase for "nine steps back" and "nine steps backwards" are pretty much the same, although the officer demonstrated so I'm not sure what the deal was.

The third test was to stand one one leg with the other leg raised six inches off the ground and hold that for thirty seconds (counting "one thousand one, one thousand two..."). Obviously there was a misunderstanding again, because he lifted his leg, counted "one thousand one", then stepped forward, lifted his other leg, and counted "one thousand two" in a Pink Panther-esque walk.

Anyway, we got to watch this in court, as well as a court-appointed transcription/translation to English. At one point, the prosecutor asked a question, the defense attorney objected but the officer answered anyway, which made the judge kinda peeved.

It was interesting to watch how they had to introduce something into evidence: the process was ask the judge to approach, show the evidence to the court reporter, ask the witness to describe what it was, then bring it to the other attorney to see if she had any objections. At one point she did but didn't want to talk about it with us around, so we got led back to the jury room while they hashed things out.

The whole process was pretty interesting: it felt kind of odd that obviously all the lawyers were very prepared and such and their audience was us: six basically random people off the street. I guess that's how the system's supposed to work, though. It was kind of awkward at times - we saw them outside of court once or twice and they didn't say a word to us - in fact, they'd often look away to ensure nothing improper happened :-)

Wording was clearly important to both of them: the prosecutor always used the term "field sobriety test" while the defense almost always said "coordination exercises" or "government test". In fact, the defense called the prosecutor the "government attorney" a few times, which the prosecutor actually pointed out in her closing argument!

The closing arguments were pretty short - interestingly, the prosecutor went first, then the defense, and then the prosecutor again, which the judge justified by saying the state "had the burden of proof", which is of course true but seemed a bit off to me. Then (right around 5:00) we retired to the jury room - the judge said to let them know in 30 minutes or so if they wanted them to order dinner for us.

At this point I had gone back and forth about the case a lot - the defendant had definitely failed some of the sobriety tests, but it did seem possible that he just didn't understand some parts of them, and on some parts he did do pretty well. Of course, he also ran a stop sign. Upon entering the room, I asked who wanted to be the presiding juror (i.e. the foreman/woman) to which there was 5 seconds of silence and the guy next to me said "the first one who says something". So, yes, I did become the presiding juror, which I was kinda excited about.

I wanted to take a straw poll at the beginning, but other people wanted to talk for a bit first, so we went over the evidence and quickly decided we wanted to watch the tape again, so I submitted a request for that to the bailiff. We watched it and talked again and realized we were going to be there for a while so we had them order pizza and soda for us (thanks, Austin taxpayers!) At some point we took a straw poll and the results were: 3 not guilty, 2 (including me) guilty, and 1 undecided.

Pizza came and we ate and chatted some more. The discussion got a little heated at times - the guy next to me, who was the other "guilty" vote, was prone to making inflammatory statements which pissed others off, and the guy next to him had a flair for the dramatic and brought up totally irrelevant points. ("What if he's an illegal immigrant?" Well, we don't know that, and if he is or isn't, so what?)

Eventually I came around and decided that, while he was probably drunk and definitely shouldn't have been driving, there was enough doubt that met the burden of "reasonable", so I switched to "not guilty", and at 7:20 PM the last holdout also changed his mind. (turns out he used to work crazy night shifts and often drove tired) I signed the "not guilty" line of the charge, we filed back into the court, and the judge asked me if we had reached a verdict, to which I replied "we have, your honor" which was awesome :-) He then read the verdict (without asking me if it was correct!) and then thanked us for our service.

He then said that we were free to talk about the case (or not if we didn't want to) and that the lawyers were usually interested in talking to the jury. So I hung around and talked to them, which was pretty cool. They said they usually tried to pick who they thought the presiding juror would be but guessed the guy next to me, although they did say that I seemed to be enjoying the experience (guilty as charged!). We talked about what we discussed in the jury room and why we eventually voted not guilty, although it was a close case. On the way out I chatted with another lawyer who explained that in voir dire, they only get 3 peremptory strikes of potential jurors - all the other strikes have to be "for cause" (i.e. if both sides or at least the judge agrees there's a possible bias).

Anyway, the whole thing was a fun experience, even though I had a ton of work to do, and I definitely hope to do it again some time, even though there were long stretches of boredom and I was tired most of the day. I felt proud to be part of the legal system :-)

flu marches on

Mon, 04 May 2009 19:57:33 GMT

and apparently Travis County has its first confirmed case! That's exciting, I guess. Keep washing your hands, etc. Here's an article describing how schools decide when to close - it really makes a big difference in the spread of viruses if they close as soon as they see a few cases. Of course, then the virus doesn't spread and people complain about "overhyping" the threat and such...which is true, but if we hadn't taken it as seriously it would have been worse.

Car Warranty Racket Exposed on Today Show - I wonder if these are the jerks that keep calling me? I hate those guys.

Talking Gadget Theater II: The Kindle 2 and iPod Shuffle perform Wrath of Khan - their enunciation is pitch-perfect!

Space-racism is bad: And 17 other not-so-subtle lessons learned from Star Trek

Houston Health Department on twitter

Sat, 02 May 2009 23:36:30 GMT

I just helped my mom set up HoustonHealth on Twitter. Follow her for the latest on swine flu (excuse me, 2009 H1N1 influenza) in Houston!