Technology moves faster than the law

Lost my trial last week.  I wasn't particularly surprised by the verdict, but of course, I was disappointed.  As always.  Losing sucks, even if it isn't a surprise.  But, it was good to get back into the courtroom to do a trial, since it's been over a year since I've done a jury trial and my last trial (just in front of the judge) was in September of last year.  So, it's been awhile, which made it nice to get back in there and do another trial again.  Can't let my trial skillz get all rusty and out of use. 

In other news, there's some interesting stuff going on in the legal world recently.  The most interesting one, which I'm a bit late to comment on, is that SCOTUS agreed in January to hear two cases regarding the police's ability to search through a cellphone without a warrant when they arrest a suspect.  One case, Riley v. California, involves a smartphone; the other case deals with a flip phone and I think is probably less important in the grand scheme of things than the Riley case, since flip phones will likely not be around for too much longer, but smartphones and/or similar technology will be in the hands of more Americans as we move forward. 

So, let's discuss this case, searches incident to arrests, and why the decision that SCOTUS makes in this case is going to be extremely important for every citizen in the nation. 

I prefer to limit my human interaction

So, I got a new phone recently. It has the talk-and-text feature. You know, where you can talk into the phone instead of typing out a text message.
I think that used to just be called "talking on the phone."

2013

i am typing this on my kindle so we shall see how this works out...could be rather interesting...

So it's 2013 now. 2012 had a lot of crap moment in it. and by moments i mean months. But whatev. It is finally over and I have high hopes for this new year. Things can only get better, right? I sure hope so.

I am still on vacation this week. It has been super relaxing. i have been able to finally sew a skirt i have been wanting to sew forever and now i am making myself a new court bag. I have been able to get some household projects finished after living here for like six months. And i have been abl to spend lots of time napping with my kitties. If you ask them, that is the most important thing I have done. If i can finish my court bag in time I would like to start on another project while I have the time. I love sewing but I am still slow at it so it takes me awhile. but I love it!

Ok Hubert is getting all up in my face so it is time to go.

Ugh...

Amazon lied and said my book would be free this weekend but apparently it's not...sorry about that. Stupid technology...

My Phone Hates Me

Text from my friend: Are you coming to church today? Should I save you a seat?
Me: Yes! On my way now!
Me: Where are you shitting?
Me: SITTING! OMG, SITTING!!
Friend: Hahahahaha!
Friend: In the back.
Me: I'm going hell for texting that to you while you're in church.
Me: Left or right dude?
Me: SIDE. Left or right SIDE. Dang it...
Friend: I'm laughing so hard I'm shaking right now. We are on the left dude.

Dropped my phone in the toilet. Fml.

Whoa, smart phones!

So, apparently my smart phone has an app that lets me blog from my phone! (If any of you tech-savvy readers already knew that, shhhh...I'm slow on these type of things...).

And I can even post photos! So, here's a photo of my adorable but very strange cat.

Updates

Hat and I recently went to Dave and Buster's to take my mom out for her birthday.  She very rarely gets to do anything fun, so we thought it would be a good time for her.  It was--she had a lot of fun.  We also had a lot of fun.  And, in exciting news, we managed to win enough prize tickets to score this sweet 4-person picnic set: 

Really what sold me was the mini salt and pepper shakers.  They are soooo adorable! What can I say?  I like things in miniature.  So, now Hat and I can go on picnics and/or camping.  Which is pretty cool. 

In other news, technology and I have not been getting along well lately.  In the last week, both my work computer and my cell phone have gotten all weird and janky on me.  I've spent crazy amounts of time on the phone w/ IT at work dealing w/ the computer.  And I spent like an hour+ dealing w/ my stupid phone.  I don't understand why technology constantly needs to revolt against me, but it does.  And I hate it.  I'm going to end up prematurely being one of those people who are all like, "What? What's this new-fangled gadget? What's wrong with my 8-track? Bleeeeehhh...."  

Work has been rather calm lately, strangely enough.  It's refreshing.  I haven't felt like crying or punching the wall in frustration in like a month.  Actually, I think it was the murder trial that has helped the situation, oddly enough.  It appears (although I'm not positive) that I was not getting assigned nearly as many cases as normal while I was in trial, so when I was done with the murder trial, I came back to a mass of paperwork, but not very many new files.  So, this allowed me to 1) catch up on the stuff that had come in while I was in trial and 2) not have a billion court appearances right afterwards so I could really actually catch up on stuff.  So, I have been able to be ready and prepared in court and I've had time to meet with my clients and do other out-of-court work on the cases.  So, that's been nice and different.  It's nice not to want to run screaming out of the office because I hate everything ever.  

Wriggity-wriggity-wriggity-reboot

So, last Thursday, for some reason, all of South East and South Central MN was in love with reading my blog.  And they were all state workers, according to my stat tracker, because they all accessed it from the domain of state.mn.us.  This was oddly enough on the same day that this bill was introduced in the MN Senate, which would permit counties to withdraw from public defender representation for 2 year periods.  This made me slightly suspicious, as I know maybe 1 person who lives in that entire region and that would be it.  So, I'm not sure exactly what the southern portion of the state was doing with my blog, but I didn't like it.


As a result, I removed the last 8 years worth of blog posts, since I had no idea what they were looking for, and I have rebooted the franchise, a la every-new-movie-that-has-come-out-recently (minus the terrible Megan Fox acting).  So, while I will continue to keep blogging, my archives are now inaccessible.  I have not decided what will happen with the new archives, but the old ones have been removed. 


So, I apologize to anyone who had desperately wanted to read about my life from when I was 20 years old (side note--I can't believe I have been blogging for 8 years!), but that's the status.


In other news, I got first pick in my fantasy baseball draft this year.  Last year I was like 2nd to last and that sucked.  But this year, I was first, so that was cool.  I took Albert Pujols since he kills it every year.  I got a decent lineup, including the following players: 

•  Albert Pujols
• Victor Martinez
• Ben Zobrist
• Jose Bautista
• Elvis Andrus
• Juan Pierre
• Omar Infante
• Brett Gardner
• Mike Napoli 
• Juan Uribe
• Carlos Pena
• Austin Jackson
• Miguel Olivo
• Alcides Escobar
• Carl Pavano
• Jered Weaver
• Heath Bell
• Alexi Ogando
• Matt Capps
• Anibal Sanchez
• Jon Rauch
• Jeremy Guthrie
• Brian Wilson

So, hopefully I'll do well this year.  Last year I came in third, so I did pretty decently for my first time playing.  


Other than that, things have been pretty much the same.  Life at work is returning to normal again after the massively long trial.  I'm finally mostly caught up on stuff and I am working now on staying on top of things, so I'm no longer behind on everything.  So, that's nice.  This week is a pretty easy week--only 1 court appearance so I have plenty of time to work on stuff and wrap up anything that I might still have that I'm behind on.  So, this week is nice and stress-free.  Which is an exciting and awesome change of pace. 


In other news, I've discovered that "My So Called Life" is now available on Netflix Watch Instantly.  Now that I know about this, I will have to watch it.  It's been soooooo long since Jordan Catalano has been in my life.  That show is the reason I have always had a slight crush on Jared Leto, no matter how unattractive and/or weird he's gotten.  


Okay, that's all for now.