Today, I am one of the many fortunate people selected for jury duty. There were about 250 of my peers here this morning before they started raffling off spots in specific court rooms. Apparently, today is a slow day and this waiting room usually sees more than 500 people and is standing room only. I guess it’s not that bad; I don’t have to be at work, they have free WiFi for the jurors and, it’s Thursday. What does Thursday have that other days don’t? Usually, most cases have already been scheduled and a jury picked earlier in the week. Come Thursday, there’s few to no cases needing jurors. Take today for instance: Volume of prospective jurors is low (250 vs the normal 500-600), there was ONE case that was picking a jury panel and actually starting today, two cases that were just picking jurors today and two court rooms that have the rest of us in the poop pool on “stand-by.” It’s now close to 2 PM and we were instructed to be back from lunch by 1:30 PM. Nothing is really happening. Just a bunch of people watching a Wil Smith movie (the one with his son in it, the name escapes me). We’re all just sitting around waiting (hoping) for them to send us all home. It’s all very interesting.
Oh, on the wireless note: The courts here use some third-party provider for access. Kind of like you would see in a hotel. You connect, open a browser and they intercept the initial network traffic and direct you to a page where you either pay or enter in some access code to get connected to the outside world. Well, I had gotten the access code for today and began working on the side gig. Just before lunch, I had closed out all my windows to get ready to leave when I notice a Verify Certificate dialog that had been sitting there for a while. I’ve seen these before, nothing new there. But, this one took me as a surprise and I’m not sure if I should be concerned about it. At the very least, it “super unprofessional.”
Trust me ...it's super unprofessional
