Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

All For Naught

After a tiny bit of research, it seems that being an alternate juror is the lowest appointment one can have. Not only are you selected and forced to sit for the duration of your trial and are expected to pay attention to the entire case, but you don’t get to sit in on the deliberations, and your voice isn’t heard on the case at hand.

So I still have to sit for the remainder of the case on Monday, and possibly for some more instructions from the judge, but those instructions will probably include for me to go home.

This Is Why, Folks

I don’t normally include profanity in my own postings, although there is sometimes some basic profanity in the comments. And I’m ok with that as long as it’s a relevant expression of feeling and not flagrant meaningless obscenity or name-calling. With that said, I hope you will excuse what I am about to post, which is actually a comment that I recently received, and not my words at all.

I suppose I need to provide a little background. Back in 2003, I enrolled in a basic writing class at West Chester University as part of my program of “taking random classes and learning things without an intention of earning a degree”. West Chester is a state school; your basic step above a community college. The writing program was very basic, and although the teacher was proficient, he expected a proportional amount of effort from a 100-level class at what amounts to a continuation of high school.

One of our assignments included choosing a character from the movie American History X, and profiling him in writing. It was to be a longer piece; a follow-up to a shorter assignment from earlier in the semester. Please note - If you read these posts, note that they were added to the site before I started using WordPress, and the automated reformatting from the old system may have produced errors. Also, as with anything I write on Asymptomatic in general, I didn’t really proof the “post” part of these, whereas the written piece itself should be in a relatively error-free form.

The salient point here, the one that is lost in the case of the comment to which I spoke earlier, is the one where this is “part 2″ of my exploration of American History X. This post does not represent an indication of a sequel to the original movie. That said, I present the comment that I recently recieved on the “part 2″ post, which I am posting again here rather than allowing it through moderation:

Lawyers Eat Trees

Things have been quiet around Asymptomatic this week because I have been spending entirely too much time playing catch-up with email and other tasks in the evening. Why haven’t I been doing this during the day when I would usually expect to be able to do it? I’ve been on jury duty.

As a jury member, I’m not supposed to discuss the case outside of the courtroom. I take this matter pretty seriously, and I fully intend to abide by the judge’s order on that matter, at least until the trial is over. At that time I should be able to say whatever I want and, really, I have a lot to say. But I did want to expound on another topic that is an adjunct to my court experiences this week:

The Social Wall

We were sitting in a booth in the Burger King rest stop on the turnpike when I was struck with oour situation’s coincidental similarity to japanese rice walls.

The couple in the booth behind us had three children, boys from what I could tell. The father was doing his best to keep the children at an even keel - something at which I have personally been doing a poor job during this excursion.

I forget exactly what he was doing, partially because I was staring off toward the restrooms, but he noticed my gaze and returned a look of “why are you staring at me?”

Two Dinky but Useful WordPress Plugins

I’ve been using these two plugins for a little while, and they seem to generate interest in people when I mention them, so I have decided to release them and see what happens.

The first plugin, Auth Only, allows only logged-in users to access your blog. It also allows you to customize your login page by adding a login.php template to your theme. Using a login template will allow you to create a customized experience for your registered users.

You will need to use a plugin like the Role Manager to edit the capabilities of roles to grant view_site capability to whichever users or Roles should have permission to view your site.