Category: Life Stuff

Took a little blog hiatus but here’s a rundown of what has been going on with me

• Work – Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is awful, sometimes I’m just there for the money
• Residence – Turns out Tim H needed a roommate and I am able/ready to move out of my parents house, so I am tentively moving the first week of December into the house complex were Mike and Allison live off of Alameda/Paramount
• Church – Been spending a little more time on sound to hopefully reduce my time obligations on Sundays. Tim and I have got a team of new trainees going to help run things on a weekly basis and I’d be in more of a supervisor role
• Programming – My WordPress plugins have been steadily growing in popularity which means more people ask for support (check em out over on the right if you have no idea what I’m talking about). I need to overhaul the plugins to get ready for the upcoming WP 2.1 release. I also have ideas for several more plugins and a whole other website I want to start.
• Gaming – I’ve been playing some PC games in my spare time, the Wii looks tempting but I’ll probably wait till after Christmas before making a decision on it.
• Reading – I’m on book 3 of the Dune series and I’m loving it. It isn’t your typical “Star Wars” sci-fi and has a lot of great philosophical/political/religious aspects to it. I’m also waiting for the 5th book of the Storm of Fire and Ice series to be released.

Guess that is it for now.

On Monday I had to report for jury duty at the Downtown LA criminal courthouse, my second time being called upon to serve my civic duty. First time I served I was at Norwalk, got called in on a jury pool for an armed robbery case but didn’t get placed in the box and after 2 days I was done. This time around I got called on the first case of the morning and got placed right away in the jury box.

The case turned out to be for a gang-related murder and would have gone for a minimum of 7 days. We went through the standard questions, where do you live, are you single, what do you do, any prior jury experience, etc.. Defense asked questions and there was nothing I really had to say, there’s nothing that would prevent me from being fair. Prosecution asked us questions and I got a better idea of the case’s circumstances and the evidence available.

On Day 2, the DA went up and made a stink about the possibility of there being no physical evidence and if that would affect how we would ultimately come to a decision. I could see myself wanting physical evidence but that isn’t my choice and as a juror you can’t take the lack of evidence into consideration, only what is presented to you. I figured I could handle that and said I had no problems being fair.

After that the judge asks a few more follow up questions to the people obviously trying to get out of serving (the Russian guy who thought we shouldn’t have jurors got a 30 minute lecture) the councils started dismissing jurors in the box. Some of the obvious choices got the boot first and then bam, I’m off the jury and done with my service.

I’m still a little puzzled why the DA didn’t like me. The only thing I could think of was that I might not have been sympathetic enough since the bulk of their case was made up of witnesses. A couple other people surprisingly got the boot too. I’m not complaining, I’m just slightly intrigued about what is considered when choosing jurors. Well I’m done for a year.

Time flies when you are working. I’ve already been working full-time for over a month and my blog has been pushed to the back burner for no good reason. Compared to when I was in school full-time and working part-time I should have more time now to post, I just need to stay motivated. I should have a gallery up of pictures from a trip to the Long Beach aquarium tomorrow. If I don’t get it up yell at me.

At this point in life the question of plans for the immediate future is very common. I’m a pretty ambitious guy and I hold myself to a pretty high standard. I was an intern at Northrop Grumman for almost a year and a half and always knew that when the time for me to graduate came I would probably receive an offer from them, but I also planned on looking at other positions outside of NG. Well April 2006 rolled around and I wasn’t offered a position so I went ahead with my plans and found other potential positions.

By the second week of May I had several competitive offers I was considering but I weighed what I thought was important and ultimately went with my gut feeling and accepted one of my offers. That position is with DreamBox Creations in Diamond Bar. They do web sites and web applications. It is pretty kick back (ping pong table in the break room kind of deal) and very small (I’ll make number 11 or 12), both of which I like after coming off my stint with NG.

So what am I doing after college? Working full-time and hopefully having fun at the same time.