Mike’s Blog

The Summons

Early this year I was notified by the NSW Sheriff’s Office that I was on the jury roll for this year. This meant that at roughly any time over 2010 I could be issues a jury summons.

Sure enough, around March I was called up. Unfortunately this summons conflicted with a major product launch at work that I was critically involved with. My boss asked me to write to them to be excused. This involved hand-writing the reason why on the back of the summons and faxing it to the Sheriff’s Office along with a letter from my boss. Unfortunately we left this a bit late (a week before the summons date) so I had to ring up to confirm that I was excused.

The next summons occurred a couple of months later in May. They typically don’t accept work commitments as an excuse after the first time, but that wasn’t really a problem since there was nothing major going on and I felt like I might want to do jury duty anyway.

The Empanellment: Outside the Court Room

As per the summons, I showed up to Parramatta West District Courts at 9am, went through a security scan and was taken upstairs to the jury assembly area. There I showed the paper with summons on it along with some photo ID to some court officers who issued me with a jury calling card (essentially a number). I then went to sit down with a lot of other people, watching the TVs they had playing and reading the book I brought. They also had free tea and coffee for those so inclined.

Some time around 9:30 a court officer addressed us all and explained the process a bit more. There was only one case starting that day, so even though there were around 60 people there, only 12 would be selected. Also, the case was estimated to run 10 days (i.e. two weeks). Some people voiced their inncredularity that so many people were called just to fill 12 places. After she finished explaining things, people were given an opportunity to present their case to be excused by the court officers. This reduced numbers down to around 40.

The Empanellment: Inside the Court Room

We were grouped into three panels: E, F and G. Panels E and F were called into the court room, so there was around 25 of us sitting at the back of the court where the judge, crown prosecutor (with an advising solicitor), defence barrister (with an advising solicitor and the accused) and other court staff were waiting for us.

The judge explained what was going to happen next and why. The court assistant read the charges to the accused (inflicting grievous bodily harm, or alternatively, recklessly causing grievous bodily harm) and the accused submitted his plea of ‘not guilty’ to both. The  judge then gave an opportunity for potential jurors to request to be excused from this trial (only) and provided a number of example reasons, such as:

• not able to handle viewing graphic images (as there would be photos of the alleged victim’s injuries),
• feeling ill or about to fall ill (since it would hold up the trial if any were off sick), or
• important commitments (such as holiday trips, appointments) within the next few weeks.

Around 6 or 7 people lined up and the judge heard each person’s excuse in turn. Each person who asked to be excused was excused, although the judge was a bit skeptical about some of the reasons. Some reasons people gave aside from the above included:

• self-employment,
• looking after small children, and
• working for the Department of Defence.

The first two should have applied for exemptions earlier as they would have been successful. The last one the judge was quite skeptical about and stated that the courts were far more powerful than the DoD, but acknowledged he might be under a lot of stress and not able to perform his function as a juror so let him off from this trial only.

The remaining 20ish people had a copy of their calling cards put into a box and drawn at random by the judge’s assistant. When your number was drawn you went up to sit in the jury box. After 12 were picked, we each stood up in turn and the defence or prosecution would either remain silent, in which case you would sit down, or would say ‘challenge’, in which case you were excused. Around three people were challenged: a young women, an old woman and a middle aged man. Either two or all three were challenged by the defence. I can’t really speculate as to why they were excused, as there was another young woman and middle aged man in the jury still. I’d be curious to know what criteria they use. After three replacement jurors were found by repeating the process, the rest were excused and the judge explained to us more about our role in the trial and why it was so. We then took an oath to the effect of doing our jobs truthfully and as best we could.

The prosecution opened with a summary of his case against the accused, including what kind of evidence he was going to bring forward. I was impressed with how fair and impartial he seemed (which he is apparently required to be by law, unlike in the US). At 11:30am, we broke for a 30-minute morning tea and went into our jury room.

The Jury Room

The jury room contained a large table we all sat around, a big TV, a kitchenette with a microwave and sink, two unisex bathrooms and some shelves and cupboards. We were each given a clipboard with some paper and a pen that we would use to take notes. Apparently we were lucky in that we had a big window. Some rooms have no window at all, which would have been quite unpleasant. For morning tea there were biscuits and tea/coffee.

Our court officer gave us forms to fill out, including our personal details like phone numbers and also our bank details for payment, which occurred on Thursdays.

We were required to surrender our mobile phones after contacting our family & work letting them know we’d been empanelled and for roughly how long. After that time phones were surrendered before entering the jury room when arriving in the morning (around 9:30am) and we got them back at the end of the day (4pm).

Lunch was also spent in the jury room, starting at 1pm for an hour. We were provided ‘gourmet’ sandwiches and fruit each day we were there, although if we had stayed longer than five days we would have seen a much-improved and varied menu. It wouldn’t be unusual for us to have to wait until some time after 2pm before being collected by the court officer and taken back into the court room, as various matters raised by the crown or defence sometimes had to be heard without us being present, as it could prejudice us.

On the second day of the trial during lunch we nominated one of us to be the foreman of the jury, whose job it was to sit in the seat nearest the microphone each time, to deliver the verdicts and to make sure we were all present before heading from our jury room into the court room.

The Trial

We heard evidence from witnesses, including neighbours (the incident happened in an apartment), police, paramedics and doctors. Evidence was submitted both by the crown and the defence. The prosecutors evidence was labelled ‘Exhibit A’, etc. while the defence’s evidence was submitted as ‘Exhibit 1′, etc. Evidence included photos, maps, hand drawings by witnesses done in the court room, videos of police interviews and later there was to be recordings of phone taps.

The judge would remind us at the end of each day not to talk about the trial to anyone, nor look up any information about it or talk to anyone involved in the case outside of the court room. While it was a public case, jurors are a special consideration in that they need to avoid anything that might bias us.

The judge took care of his other cases on Fridays (shorter tasks like sentencing) so we did not have to sit on those days. Most people had a long weekend but a couple of us went in to work. We had to nominate which we were doing so they could determine whether to pay us or not. Yes, they would pay us for doing nothing each Friday! Of course, the jury wage is fairly meagre (around $100 a day), so going to work is a logical option.

The Trial Aborted

On the fifth day of the trial before starting at 10am, one of the jurors was called out to talk to a court officer. We didn’t know it until we had waited in the room for about 2 hours, but this juror apparently had asked to be excused from the trial as they could not handle viewing the graphic images. The judge had said to us before empanellment that anyone in this position could be excused, but I suppose they were too shy or lazy to take him up on the offer. This meant we were down to 11 jurors, and after both sides had discussed the matter with the judge, the judge decided to abort the case.

The trial will need to start over again at a later with a new jury, free from bias. It’s a horrible waste of time and resources. I wonder whether the juror who pulled out was punished in any way. I’m sure the cost would have been in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We were just starting to get to know our fellow jurors and we were finding the case interesting. We all expressed disappointment about not being able to follow it through. On the plus side, we got half a day off and we were paid for it.

Finally…

The whole experience made me realise how much we value justice in our society. We spend a lot of time and money ensuring that only the truly guilty are put in jail. Obviously the system is not perfect, and it’s a shame that so much effort is needed just to get to the level we are at, but no one can say that we haven’t given it a good try.

Even though I promised myself I wouldn’t, I’ve resumed playing World of Warcraft again. When I started at Atlassian I was introduced to our WoW guild and it didn’t take long before they convinced me to return.

I played for one and a half years from the start of 2005 to mid-2006, where the friend who got me into it created an enormous guild who would do multiple MC runs every week and had quite a presence on the server. Eventually it became too much upkeep and the guild dissolved some months after I left. Besides the enormous time-suck, it was an amazing experience coordinating with up to 40 people at a time to accomplish tough goals.

The work guild is much more casual and therefore not as much of a time-suck. The return was filled with nostalgia, but since there has been two expansion packs there’s a lot of new game content to explore (which I will probably never get through completely!). They have also improved the game to remove a lot of the annoyances and pointless time-wasting things to help reduce frustration.

You can follow the progress of my main character here.

Our beloved housemate Steve has moved to Melbourne. The weekend he moved down (January 30) was busy because:

• on Friday I helped Steve load his stuff into his rental truck,
• on Saturday I helped Nath move stuff from his old room to Steve’s old room, and
• on Sunday I helped Dyan move into Nath’s old room.

To top it off, I dropped Christine off at her dad’s so he could take her to the airport early Monday morning for her five week trip to Japan.

The moves all seemed to go quite well, although it was sad saying goodbye to Christine since she’ll be gone with her friends for ages. Before she left we launched her new cooking blog, which she has started to fill up quickly and will no doubt have loads of content to add when she returns. Maybe with the extra time I have I can make some improvements to my own site!

Well I can’t say I intend to make a habit out of this, but I have changed jobs again. This makes it the second job change and the third job I’ve had this year!

I had an amazing 6 months with Morgan Creative but after a partnering company unexpectedly withdrew their support, they weren’t able to keep me on. I was very sad to leave because I was working with awesome people on awesome stuff in an awesome location.

During my job search I was basically looking for three things:

• a larger company,
• a ‘cool’ office environment/culture, and
• a recognised name.

This led me to Atlassian, who have been growing fast. They’re a big name in software, especially for Sydney. The company is filled with really smart people and the culture is still very start-upish, which is awesome. I’ve been brought on as a Support Engineer for JIRA Studio, a hosted version of virtually all Atlassian products.

The whole process, from the interviewing stages to having just finished my second day, has been great. Everyone is very friendly and it’s clear that they really do care about people over processes. I think I’m going to like it here!

During the month of November I am growing a moustache. Not because it’s fashionable, but to raise money for prostate cancer research and men’s depression.

The Movember campaign has been running each year since 2004. Considering one in nine Australian men will develop prostate cancer in their lifetime, it’s a pretty worthy cause.

Movember 2009

If you’d like to donate to support the cause you can do so from my donation page. You can also rate my mo’ and see my progress to date.

Last year after moving out of my parents’ home I decided to ‘splash out’ and get a queen-sized bed and a nice latex mattress. Since Ikea is nearby it made sense to give them a go.

I ended up purchasing a Ramberg bed, which was curiously discontinued not too long after I bought it. I was also going to buy the mattress from Ikea but they were out of stock, so I had to go somewhere else for it (and sleep on slats and a foam mattress for a week or so).

When purchasing certain beds from Ikea, they  have to be bought in pieces – the actual bed frame, the mid-beam and the slats. I bought the cheapest slats, called Sultan Lade, which were $50 each (I needed two sets since I had a queen-sized bed). Interestingly these are the only slats not covered by Ikea’s 25 year warranty.

One of the slats broke very soon after purchase and another one broke just recently, prompting me to go out and get all-new slats. I wasn’t sure which ones I could use (there’s quite a range), especially since my bed frame was discontinued, so it was hard to research. Eventually I went out and got some Sultan Lillåker curved slats for $100 (I only needed one set thankfully, as one set contains two ‘rolls’ of slats).

The slats fit into the bed frame without any problems, but within minutes I discovered that the slats would slip off the mid-beam very easily.

I tried stuffing some padding in between the outside of the frame and the slats to force them to stay on the mid-beam. All this accomplished was that the slats fell off the mid-beam instead! I tried getting some twine and tying the slats tightly around the mid beam. This appeared to work for a day but the slats did still eventually fall off the mid beam. I also tried tightening the frame as much as possible.

The only other thing I can think of trying is to get a thin, strong piece of wood to place on top of the mid beam to effectively widen it.  I’m not sure if this will work or not, but I will update this post with the result!

Edit: Due to some strange circumstances, I never got around to trying out the ‘plank of wood’ idea. It turned out that during the construction of the bed frame, we failed to put in the screws as per these instructions:Luckily I found the original screws (from over a year ago)! After pushing and holding the sides in while screwing these screws into the frame to stop it from sagging out, the slats no longer slip off

Today, along with some other people from church, I volunteered to help out with the water tables for the City2Surf.

We had to get up at 6am to get there around 7:30am (picking some people up on the way). It was quite cold but not too bad for August. It was a nice sunny day too, which made things more bearable.

At our designated station (about 5km from the finish) we set up tables and filled them with plastic cups. We filled up the cups with tap water using jugs dipped into lined garbage bins that were filled up with hoses. We then layered cardboard over the cups to make a second level of drinks. Some tables had three levels.

The police were running up and down the course ensuring that it was free from vehicles. It was just as well, because one car had managed to find its way onto the course after the race started. The police quickly found him and got him to turn around just in time before the first runner came down our street!

For the next two or three hours after the race started I was basically standing in one spot holding out cups of water to the runners. It was a bit of a strain on the shoulders and lower back (as we were leaning over the table) but it was fun seeing the runners that were dressed in crazy outfits.

Apparently there were 75,000 runners this year, making it the world’s largest running event. Pretty cool! As volunteers we also got a special t-shirt, which was cool too It was pretty fun but a lot of hard work.

Shortly after I started my new job I developed a bit of a cough. It was quite annoying and lasted about two weeks, although there were no other symptoms besides coughing. I was glad it didn’t develop into a full cold.

However, just as the cough started to subside, I began experiencing a sharp stabbing pain around my lower right rib cage whenever I coughed. This pain increased over time and it became painful to move that area of my body.

After a bit of research (mainly here) I discovered that I had pulled an Intercostal muscle.

I bought some cough syrup, which did ease my coughing a bit. Fortunately the cough subsided just as the pain was getting quite bad. I also found that pressing my hand up against the sore spot as I coughed would lessen the pain a little.

It took about two or three weeks for the muscle strain to go away completely. It really mucked up my running schedule because I stopped when the cough started and, because of the subsequent muscle strain, couldn’t start again for over a month!

In retrospect I should have bought the cough syrup earlier, as reducing the amount of coughing even by a little bit could have helped me avoid the muscle strain entirely.

My parents (of all people) got me on to this new Facebook application called Farm Town (made by SlashKey). Normally I don’t add these kinds of applications because they’re generally time wasters, but since my parents were spending so much time on it (and had roped in my sister) I gave in.

Ploughing fields with onions growing in the background.

You basically have your own farm where you can plough fields, plant crops, harvest crops, sell crops (the main source of income), plant fruit trees, sell fruit, buy animals, houses, barns, fences, paths and even increasing the size of your land.

It also keeps track of various achievements and awards trophies based on that, which can unlock new abilities. For example, if you get enough neighbours (other Facebook friends playing the game who agree to be your neighbour) you will be able to sell items you’ve purchased instead of just deleting them.

If you’re short on funds you can go to the Market Place to ask for work harvesting other people’s crops. People have incentive to hire people because it doesn’t actually cost anything and the resulting crops sell for more than if they did it themselves.

It’s quite addictive when you start out but now that I’ve hit level 24 it’s starting to lose its appeal. There’s simply too much land to deal with and it’s not challenging to get large sums of money with valuable crops like onions and pumpkins.

I don’t really know why I’m posting about this game. Maybe I just feel it desrves it because of how long it has kept me entertained for

As a big fan of both Steven Colbert and Harvey Birdman, I was pleasantly surprised to come across this striking similarity between Colbert and the character he voices. Check out these two screen grabs:

The resemblance is uncanny.

Apparently Phil Ken Sebben’s twin brother (Bill) looks just like Phil, except that he wore his patch on the other eye