Banff - it's just fun to say

We took off to Banff for Thanksgiving this year with Soph's Mom. I pretty much have to leave town when I take vacation or I end up filling my time with projects, even if they're not explicitly work-related. Such as assembling the storage shelves that are sitting on the garage floor that I bought a week ago...

Anyway, we also figured it would be a good time to just chill with Mrs. Lin, and it was.

Crazy thing, though, was that Banff was having the same "warm spell" that the rest of the West Coast is having this year. Instead of the normal few feet of snow, there was almost none, only on the mountain tops. It was still gorgeous, but no snow, so no remarkable pictures.

There might not have been snow, but it was still COLD. Like zero degrees celcius. When we got there Wed night we spent some time at a hotel bar until Mrs. Lin's flight showed up. When we were leaving I put on my coat, gloves, scarf and hat. The only other guy in the bar called out to me as I passed, saying "Oh come on! It's not that cold out there! You're making yourself look silly. Take some of that off!" He was just joking around, but believe it or not we DID see a number of locals walking around that night at 11pm wearing just their sportcoats. It was ZERO DEGREES. Or colder.

Ok, ok. So you're thinking I'm a wimpy californian. Well, yes. I am. But it was still cold.

All in all it was a great trip. We spent the vast majority of time either eating good food (check out "Earl's" in town if you ever go) or sitting by the fire at the Rimrock Hotel drinking coffee or hot chocolate and reading books.

It was very nice. I could have used about another 4 days.

$2 for picture wire

I went to Osh this past weekend to buy $2 worth of wire to hang some pictures with. I ended up spending about 100x that. They were having a 10% off sale and I happened to see this ready-to-assemble steel workbench, and some extra storage. I don't do much "work" to justify a workbench, but I see it as storage, and my garage is a perennial nightmare.

I spent most of the weekend assembling the thing, but it ROCKS! I even put all my tools on the peg-board. But best of all, I got out some old computer speakers and set it up for easy hook-up to my iPod! awesome.

I know you're excited for me. Contain your excitement.

Now I just need some better lighting for the working area.

Last thoughts on Jury Duty

I'm a lame blogger... I had all these thoughts about the Jury process, but was then too lazy to write them down.

The most interesting part of the process is that they don't tell you the LAW until after you've heard all the evidence, including witnesses. Apparently the judge doesn't necessarily know all laws that will be relevant before the case, and doesn't want to bias the jury's reaction to the evidence. What it means, though, is that it's very hard to know what's important and what's not. Taking notes helps, but not everyone does it.

I really wish they did video recordings of the testimonies, and let the jury have computers to take notes on, although I suppose they don't want all the clickity-clack of 14 people typing away...

Anyway, you only find out the LAW at the end, during closing arguments, and when the judge gives you the law in a very monotone voice. Thankfully you get a copy of it to read in the deliberation room, but it's not a lot of education.

We ended up declaring the defendant "not guilty" because there was a distinct and reasonable possibility that his actions were in self-defense as defined by the law, or at least how we all understood the definition. In talking to the DA afterwords, though, it sounded like he thought we mis-applied the definition based on some set of esoteric law theories. Too bad none of us studied law...

I still think we made the right decision given the information we had available to us. An interesting process, though. I can now see why it's common perception that criminals often get off free. It's a heavy burden to prove guilt without leaving room for a reasonable alternative explanation. But it's a good thing, in the end, I think. It makes it much harder to put an innocent person behind bars.