Carousel of Hate

I was recently summoned to appear for Jury Service. I have been called and served on one prior occasion. The environment could not have been nicer. We had a huge room with lots of seating, telephones for local calls, plenty of food and vending options, a cyber cafe room with computers and free Wi-Fi. The biggest problem
was the lack of activity. In the 7.5 hours spent in the room they only called for two pools of jurrors. The other cases either were settled or continued. I was hoping to be selected but apparently it was not in the cards today.

-Jurror 460

I recently came across some materials that were mailed by Apple to me at an early employer.  I was particularly intrigued by the cover letter extolling the virtues of Macintosh/MS-DOS Compatibility.  The time frame had to be in the early 1990’s.  The products they were referencing were SoftPC and the Orange Micro Orange386.  The closing sentence “Thank you for taking the time to learn why your next MS-DOS computer should be a Macintosh.”  Is this some strange future prediction?  How interesting that today with the Mac product line transitioned over to the Intel processors, more and more people are making the Mac platform their Windows computer of choice.  Welcome to the 90’s again.

As a side note, I found it particularly funny that when doing some research the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article came up for Orange 386.

Yesterday I found out that The Finish Line was sponsoring a local run for The Human Race 10K.  I went to the web site and registered even though I was not 100% certain that I would run.  My original Nike+ iPod accelerometer had a dead battery so I bought a new one at the Apple store.  I went to the store at the local mall at 6:30, met up with some people I knew and after everyone got their shirts and packets we finally started at 7:45 (it was scheduled to start at 7:00).  The sun was fully up and the temperature was rising already.  I finished in 1:15:31, not my best time but a good run in any event.

I was recently on a Delta flight from JFK (New York) to MCO (Orlando) on a recently updated and modernized Boeing 757-200(E) which happens to be International configuration.  The first thing I noticed is that seat 1A is configured for crew rest with a small privacy curtain. The seat pitch was definitely not domestic, and they had foot rests and even quite fancy chair controls with two position memory even!  On the right front portion of the seat was a standard US grounded power plug and in the right arm rest a flip out video unit.  Finally I looked down to the left and noticed a small white piece sticking out.  I looked closer and it appeared to be a USB and RJ-45 port.  Could Delta be putting in the first pieces for in-flight data services?  I know JetBlue has been testing on-board wireless connections on their BetaBue aircraft, but the limitations make me believe this is of limited purpose.  

This is the sign I saw outside my brother’s parking lot in Washington Heights.  I stared at it for a few seconds before realizing what they intended to say.  No Parking Driveway.  Could this be a misplaced reference to the YouTube user drwav?  

I was at the self-checkout at IKEA today and as I pulled my American Express One card the clerk minding the stations walked up and asked why I as using an American Express card. I explained that it was my card choice. She then asked if I had another card, would I still use an American Expess card, obviously this woman does not know me. I said “of course.”. As I finished checking out she walked back up to me and offered me either a milk or hazelnut chocolate bar, I opted for hazelnut. I directly credit American Express for my free chocolate bar.

The hillbillies are loose again, and this time with a word processor.

Who would have thought. Eggs, bacon and potatoes for only $0.99.

I recently found out that IKEA offers free coffee in their cafe thirty minutes before the store opens!