Quick Hits: Adventures In The Jury Duty Pool

On 12/09/2016 at 05:52 PM by goaztecs

Good afternoon Pixlpeeps! About an hour or two ago I was at Jury Duty. This was my week for duty but the first three days I was on Standby and like many (all) of us who were in this were hoping that we would go the entire week without stepping foot in a courtroom. Of course on Wednesday Night we got the call to show up on Thursday morning. The jury pool was broken up into two groups and my group went to a courtroom. I don't know what happened to the other group but I'm hoping they got to go to a courtroom as well instead of sitting in that jury room watching Home and Garden TV. Anyways we spent the rest of the day getting interviewed by the judge, and then by the lawyers. The questions were simple and straight forward, and one of the questions was “Have you or anyone you know have been a victim?” There were some really rough responses. The people were obviously excused and then there were the folks who were trying to get out service. There were a couple of folks who were just grasping at straws and just wasting everyone's time. These were the folks that truly angered me. Here was a person who could lose their freedom and for one selfish reason or another tried to use some truly flawed arguments to get out of service. One person wasted what totaled to be an hour out of two days using such flawed logic that there was a low sounding groan in the courtroom.

This is what I was watching while waiting to be called. It's a documentary series about the origins of Hip Hop on Netflix that I was able to download for offline watching (there was no way I was going to use the court's WiFi and I didn't want to use my phone as a hotspot.

Earlier this morning the court had picked its jury and the group I was in was dismissed. I decided to take a trip to IHOP because I wanted pancakes. Fast forward a couple of hours and here we are, typing this latest edition of Quick Hits while I finish downloading the freebie games I have on Origin onto my Steam Drive. Let's get started with Quick Hits with Chris!

Chris Watches...

Arrow – CW

Oh the cliffhanger was awesome even if you spend time on Twitter you knew it was coming. There are still some questions about who the bad guy is (I have an idea) and how the events of Flash might have caused all of this. I'm excited to see what happens in January with Green Batman.

Legends of Tomorrow – CW

Their cliffhanger was good, and the selection of bad guys was a nice team but it wasn't as strong as Arrow. The season has been going well with their current group but it looks like it might get ruined/go back to season one.

NFL Thursday Night Game – Twitter

Again I love that Twitter is being used in this fashion because while trying to kill some battery on my phone I streamed the game while on my laptop.

I was too tired to watch Top Chef but I'll check it out later on tonight. Thanks Bravo app!

Chris Reads...

I finished the script to Passengers and damn that is going to be one really cool movie. The story is solid and I can't wait to see the special effects for some of the things described in the script. At first I wasn't going to watch this film but most likely I will check it out after Christmas.

Pickups

I talked about this game on Monday or Tuesday (or Wednesday) and I bought it from Indiegala for $2.50. Since I spent over $2 they threw in a freebie racing game.

Music

I bought a couple of Christmas CDs from Barnes & Noble because they weren't being sold at either Target or Best Buy

I have to say this isn't my favorite out of their Christmas CDs. It wasn't as fun as the others but I'm still glad to have it part of the music library.

I love Kacey Musgraves' voice and any CD of her's I will buy. This Christmas album maybe my favorite album of the year and it has been playing non stop on my phone. It combines the right amount of fun traditional Christmas songs with a couple of new songs. The sound is a mix of old Country, Hawaiian, Motown, and that 40s harmonies. Her song with Willie Nelson has some sneaky humor in it about Willie and his love for stuff he smokes, and she absolutely kills it with the traditional songs. LOVE THIS ALBUM!

Originally I wanted to buy this when Target was selling them but $30 was a little high (and by a little I mean a lot) for a tape player

But since Marshall's had one for $8 it was a no brainer. I wish I would have kept my mixtapes from high school (I actually found one and what the hell was I thinking) so I am currently ripping some tape only copies of albums I have until I replace them with CD copies.

Alright Pixlbit I am off. Its nice outside and I might go for a walk. Have a good weekend!

That's all for now, more later!

-Chris

Here's a little Kacey Musgraves. I'm telling you folks this album is good.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

12/10/2016 at 01:39 AM

I was mugged once. That's probably the worst way I've been victimized in my life. That shit sucked. You feel so powerless and violated afterward. I know there're worst crimes... but that shit sucked.

goaztecs

12/12/2016 at 12:05 AM

Dude that's still a horrible experience, and I'm sorry you had to go through something like that.

KnightDriver

12/10/2016 at 04:13 AM

I did Christmas music for like two days. That's about enough for me.

That cassette tape to mp3 is pretty cool. I converted all my tapes to cd some years ago. I used to occassionally pick up a used cassette tape of music and convert it, but I haven't seen any in a while now. I've also gotten rid of all my tape players. Sometimes I think it might be good to have one around just in case, but I really haven't seen a cassette tape in a long while. Even my used record store, which I just went to the other day, doesn't have them anymore.

12/12/2016 at 12:08 AM

I have my Top 100 Christmas songs playlist on my phone but the only thing I'm listening to is the Kacey Musgraves CD. I love Christmas music and I'll be listening to it right up until Jan 1st.

I need to get a portable CD player. For all the CDs I own I don't have a portable CD player. The last one I had I gave away. The local shop I believe still has some tapes and the local thrifts still stock them but they have all the easy listening stuff.

12/12/2016 at 01:22 AM

Kacey Musgraves is pretty easy on the eyes, I'll say that.

Someone on one of my podcasts was joking about not knowing what a CD was. I thought it was funny because, really, they seem pretty out of date with dowloads and streaming and all. Even thinking about music as files seems a little old fashioned. What's a file? I just turn on a streaming service and hear the music. It' is the cloud, man. Dig it?

Just kidding, though. I just bought some CDs and vinyl this week. Of course, I just ripped them to my laptop to play on my iPod. Then they get put in a folder or recycled.

12/12/2016 at 11:47 AM

Indeed she is.

Funny, a podcast I was listening to was interviewing the owner of an indie label and he said that they cut out having download codes that are packaged with their vinyl because nobody uses them. They will either stream the content or listen to it on vinyl. Heck my younger sister and my younger cousins, all they do is stream music. They don't want physical or downloaded files anymore. I guess physical media is kept alive by us handful of folks.

I keep all my CDs in binders and recycle the cases but I keep all the inserts.

12/13/2016 at 02:07 AM

I'm doing a very specific mix right now. I'm picking whole albums from a particular year and listening to them on shuffle for a whole month. Initially I wondered if my streaming site, Last.FM could do such a thing easily. I haven't checked but it seems to me it might be a pain to arrange. Maybe on Spotify though. I thought I could save myself some time by doing that, but I really love getting the files together. I might look into it though. Time is always a consideration and I wonder sometimes if I spend too much time on such things as music mixes. These youngsters wouldn't think twice about it though. They'd make it happen on a streaming site.

12/13/2016 at 11:43 AM

I haven't used Last.fm in years but I would think it would be easier on Spotify because of the ability to use playlists. I like that approach for your playlist. I have something similar but I arrage my playlists through life events like high school, college, etc.

12/15/2016 at 02:33 AM

Neat. I'll have to explore what I can do on streaming services soon.

Ranger1

12/10/2016 at 10:13 AM

That cassette thingie is a must have for me! I have a pretty big collection of cassettes from various folk musicians and other groups that were never big enough to be commercial or have since disappeared off the face of the earth and will never be found on CD. I had a cassette player in the Outback, but the Forester only had a six CD player. I do have a working cassette player in my boombox, but I don't know how good it is.

Ah, jury duty! It seems like everyone who doesn't want to serve gets picked and those of us who would love the experience never will. I'd get excused for any trial involving domestic violence or rape, though. I have family members who have been victims and I know I wouldn't be able to be impartial.

12/12/2016 at 12:15 AM

Its such a cool thing to be able to digitize tapes. The funny thing is that when I copied over a rap album the sound of the tape sent me back to when I would walk around with a Walkman. I get why some people just absolutely love the sound of music on vinyl. Its an instant trip back in time.

You know going into it, I was kind of dreading it because my previous experiences I've been either excused before hand or excused during selection (all because of work or school situations. One of them I knew was most likely this huge murder case of a little kid and there was no way I could handle that) but after sitting in the courtroom if I was picked I felt I could do the job. That's a lot of responsibility but I was up to it.

PixlBit