Phone part two

Well, I did get the replacement phone, but in trying to use it I found that it doe not get service. I took it to the phone store and talked to them about it and they tried to change the service card in it, but that did not help. So I have a nice phone that I still cannot make calls on. I guess it is a step in the correct direction. Another replacement has been ordered. It should be here sometime this next week.

Mid - Night Run

The sound of that pager in the middle of the night is so terrible. Once it enters my dream, I start slapping the clock to shut it up. Then when I realize that is not working, I start slpping everything else on the night stand. I think one of the pagers I had before lite up when it went off so it was easier to figure out what the noise was from. Once I find the source of the noise and shut it up, I see what the text says and call back to the data center. After mumbling stuff to them I decide if I can talk the user through the issue or if I have to go in. If I can talk them through it, its great and I do not even have to get out of bed. Usually I end up having to go in. So I find clothes and start to get dressed. I close my eyes for a second and when I open them and look at the clock, oops, it was more than a second. I put the rest of the clothes on and drag myself to the truck. I slowly make my way to the problem, proping myself against the wall of the elevator, etc. The staff there are generally way too awake for my liking, and since I am there to fix their problem they are very happy to see me, even if it was an hour and half since they called or so. I doesn't take long to fix the issue almost every time, and them I make my way back home. I am finally wide awake by the time I make it home, and have to try to get back to sleep. As you can see by the fact that I am typing this at 1:40 am, that sleep may evade me for a little bit. Then in the morning I will have to try to remember what I did to resolve the issue and throw that into the ticket. Oh well, good night.

Service Announcement

My cell phone went for a swim. I will be without it for a little bit. I am oncall this week and next so I will be reachable by pager or the house phone.

Christmas

Here is our tree. When it was given to us it was too big for the room. I had to saw a good amount off of the main pole and leave a row or two off the bottom, and it was still too tall for a star or anything at the top. Lisa said something abbout possibly getting another during the after Chirstmas sales, but we may just stick with this one for a while... Free is good.

Chistmas eve Lisa and I went over to Mom and Dad's and the Christmas we went to Lisa's Grandma's.

For Christmas I got clothes, an MP3 player and a blender. I got Lisa a video camera that also does stills and a book with all of the cronicals of narnia. And we were given a Goerge Forman grill and a sandwich toaster.

The Verdict

It looks like the jury has already submitted their verdict in the United States v. David Cain Jr, Chris Cain and James Soha case. Less than three days for the jury to decide. All three were found guilty on several counts. The main one was found guilty on 17 felony charges.

http://www.wgrz.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=53507&provider=top

Cooking review - Apple pie

This turned out ok.

Cooking review - Slow cook Pot Roast

This turned out great. I have lots of leftovers.
Here is the recipe.

3 to 4 pound beef pot roast
I used baby carrots and potatoes (cut up) I like the red potatoes
2 envelopes dry onion soup mix
3/4 cup water

Brown the roast in a little oil in a frying pan.
Arange the spuds and carrots in the slow cooker, and put the roast on top.
Combine the mix and water and pour over everything in the slow cooker
Cook on low for 9 to 10 hours

Excused

I have been excused from the jury. They only kept two alternates on for the deliberations. I did not keep a good record during the trial. I did included some things I wrote down on a couple of occasions. I have also included a couple of news paper links to the case. I have not gone through the news articals yet, and there may be more. It has been a long drawn out play, with quite an assorted cast. The witnesses ranged from lifetime criminals and family to fire investigators and police officers. All of the witnesses were for the prosecution and their case lasted until last week. The defense’s case only lasted about an hour for all three. They only read in some stipulations. Closing arguments was rather interesting. The Prosecution’s arguments were very structured and they used Power point to present it. The defense got up there and proceeded to attack all the witnesses and to say that none of them could be trusted because they were all criminals and they got a deal from the government for there testimonies. One of the lawyers even said that they do not deny that the events happened, but the testimonies of liars was not enough to tie their clients to the events. During the prosecution’s rebuttal, he got up there and just tore right though the defense’s comments. It was great. Then the judge went through the charge to the jury. That seemed to take forever. It took more than a full day to go through all the indictments, what they meant and what needs to be met to convict on them.


19 October 2007

There are three defendants, each with their own lawyers. Two of the defendants are brothers and they sit at the same table with their lawyers, and the other is their cousin and he sits at another table with his lawyer. The brothers seem well educated and appear to have been well coached. They are constantly writing and counsel with their lawyers often. All of them seem to have been coached to not show emotions, and I caught one holding back a laugh after one of the judges jokes.

So far it has been a well structured argument. Each of the lawyers have very different personalities and tactics. The government lawyer seems to want to present his case in a clear, organized way. He brings in a witness and presents everything relating to that witness. The other lawyers very rarely object to anything he says or presents. Two of the defense lawyers just rub me the wrong way. One of them really does. His attitude really gets to me and I think the judge is starting to get annoyed. His way of disproving the witness is to try to discredit them by showing that they are lifetime criminals and therefore are probably lying to us, or that they have something to gain by lying to us. He asks the same question over and over for no apparent reason but to change the flow or drag out the process. He has not been able to trip any one up in their testimony. The Prosecutor has been objecting to his questioning a lot. He has be objecting that the questions have been asked and answered (at one point the judge’s response was that we got the same question five times and it was time to move on), that he has been looking for the witness to give an opinion, and what he was asking was not relevant.

There has been a few time that they have dismissed us so that the judge could talk to the lawyers. Sometimes they had us take a recess and other times they just had us go across the hall into the other courtroom. I am not sure what they had to discuss, but one time it was definitely about the one defense lawyer’s way of questioning.

29 October 2007

Another one of the defense lawyers started to bug me. She talks down to everyone. The way she speaks to people, her tone and the words she chooses really gets me. If she were to speak to me that way she probably would get a reaction out of me. She even asked the witness at one point if he could read (in her high and mighty way). [During closing arguments, she completely changed her manner and she did not talk down at all and put us on an equal level.] There have been a lot of witnesses already. One day they had the recording out of a police car that had one of the fires recorded on it. There was no sound and it was 30 minutes of watching a building burn. [It ended up being a different fire than the one the witness said it was, but was one of the other fires in the case.]

http://buffalo.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel06/extortion050806.pdf - origianal arrest
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1113158/rural_racketeering_case_is_a_backwoods_version_of_the_sopranos/index.html?source=r_health
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1127537/witness_details_how_vandalism_ruined_his_business/index.html?source=r_health
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/niagaracounty/story/214567.html - buffalo news 11-25
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/niagaracounty/story/217567.html - buffalo news 11-29
http://buffalonews.typepad.com/inside_the_news/2007/10/the-cain-trial-.html - buffalo news 10-22
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/niagaracounty/story/218299.html - buffalo news 11-30