Today I was summoned to the illustrious task of jury duty for Fulton County- yet another reason I have to not want to register to vote [they use the voter registry as one resources they pull names from]. It is supposed to be my civic duty, but I really would not want someone like me on jury at my trial; I am just not good at making decisions.
So here is a synopsis of my day; with lots of random observations thrown in:
I caught the MARTA train to downtown- it looks like they have a ‘small train’ that follows the main train at peak hours; I guess this is to catch overflow if the main train is full. There is no one on the small train, so I will use this from now on…
I got to the Five Points station at about 7:50, giving me about 25 minutes to get to the Fulton County Justice Center. I noticed that they have some incredible artwork at the main entrance to the Five Points Marta station- a half statuette of two goddess [topless] with all sorts of intricate work surrounding them- fairly Pagan looking actually… It looks like something from Highlander II almost. To make it look even more interesting, there is a layer of black crud capping all of the tops of the figures [from the exhaust of the electric trains?!?] that make them look very antiquated. I think it actually looks better with the black stuff on it… I must make a point to go back and take pictures of it when I have my camera…
I made it to the Justice Center [where is Superman and the rest of the league?] and went through the metal detector for weapons, etc. The detector at the court house is much less sensitive than the ones at the airport as I did not have to take off my shoes or belt- and I forgot to remove my pager.
There was also a note on the jury summons that no audio or video recording devices would be allowed inside the building- my Clie has an audio recorder that can store a concert worth of 128Kbps audio on a memory stick and my phone can record low-res videos- both of these were passed without a second look… so if I wanted to tape a trial for later use [no clue as to why I would ever want to do this], these could be kind of handy… :oP
So I am in a large waiting room with a few hundred other people. At around 10:00 twenty or so get called out; at 11:00 another sixty; and we break for lunch at 11:30 until 1:00pm…
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Jury waiting area after 2:00pm
I loaded games into my phone and Clie the night before, so I had things to amuse me for a while… Note to self: if ever called for jury duty again, bring laptop and headphones so i can listen to music…
I got some awesome city pictures on my phone- but it is only 640×480, so the quality really sucks; there are two cafeterias in the two [or three?] interconnected buildings, and one has a courtyard with metal birds suspended from the ceiling- about 30 or so… In all, there is a lot of incredible artwork in the buildings- I was pretty impressed.
I also noticed that Atlanta is a LOT cleaner than my previous residence- a suburb of New Orleans. Downtown just looked like it was better kept then downtown NO.
So back to the waiting room- where I proceeded to try to play Ultima III on my Clie. It works great on the Palm platform, but it is hard as hell and the save game feature doesn’t work correctly- I will need to see if there is an update. [also the MIDI music is really missing from the game- that made it worthwhile on the C64].
At 3ish I decide to go get a drink from the vending machine; when I return I find we have all been dismissed as the other courts did not need jurors…
Someone once told me that the US judicial system is setup as to encourage people to settle or drop cases before they make it before a judge as we would need 10x as many courts and judges as we have now; I now see this a little more clearly…
So, in recap; I got a day off of work and spent it playing video games and eating junk food. I received normal pay from my employer for this, and got another $25 from Fulton County for expenses as well. Oh, and I got home at 3:30pm. Not a bad day… :o)
Things to do: Take the MARTA to downtown one day and take pictures of lots of things. While there, visit the Cocca-Cola museum, Atlanta Underground and other neat things I could see from the window.