May 2005

I received a certified letter two weeks ago informing me that my number had been pulled for jury duty in village court on Monday the 23rd. Nothing big, I figured, it’s local stuff, hardly sees anything more than misdimeanor offenses. Work is cool about these things, so I got the day off and headed to perform my civic duty.

I show up about 20 minutes early (9:10 AM or so) and sign in. It’s worth noting that the village court in this case is in a small strip mall off one of the main drags here in town. It’s ridiculous. We wait around, and the clerk finally brings around paperwork for us to fill out in order to be compensated for our service. We fill it out, we hand it in, we wait.

About 2 hours later, we get called into the selection room and against all odds, I get selected. I guess I look normal or something. So back into the waiting room, and we wait a bit more. It must be around 12:40 PM by this point. Around 1 PM we’re ushered into the courtroom, and the opening statements are made, shortly after which the defendant requests a recess. We file back into the waiting room. And we wait.

And finally around 2:30 PM or so, we get a note from the judge saying that a plea bargain had been entered, and we were excused from duty. So it was a lovely waste of a day, but it did let me get some laundry done. Hooray for jury duty!

My father-in-law has quite the collection of books. One the things I’ve recently turned up is the somewhat excellent Star Trek - Spaceflight Chronology that was published in 1980. Sternbach did the illustrations, so there’s some top-notch Trek-style starship stuff in here, and it’s at least entertaining. But what really got to me was the sheer level of divergence from what the book was predicting (and yes, I realize it’s Star Trek) and where we’re actually at in terms of spaceflight development. This might just be the “where’s my flying car” argument of the current decade.

It’s just amazing. I’ve found a decent online version that you can peruse, but I’ve simply got to list some of the highlights.

• 1983 - Space Telescope orbited.
• 1991 - We get samples of rock from Mars returned by a probe, and we have Cassini-Huygens a lot sooner than in reality.
• 1992 - the Space Shuttle program finishes its operational run.
• 1994 - Multinational manned missions to the moon.
• 1998 - Moonbase established.
• 1999 - Asteroid landing mission completed.
• 2001 - Mercury lander mission, complete with sample returns.
• 2004 - Mass drivers in use to return asteroid material to Earth orbit.
• 2005 - First baby born on Moon.

I mean, look at that - by 2005 we should be having babies on the Moon, and in 1980 someone was optimistic enough to put it on paper. I don’t know how I feel about the current state of the space program. . . wait, that’s a lie; I think it sucks hard enough to deflate a moonwalk ride at the county fair. But I can’t help but think we should be a little further along than we are right now.

So I’m reading the OSNews post about the great OpenSolaris trolling. I don’t know if it matters or not, but suddenly I had a very specific thought. But hey, here’s how my mind works…

Great Moments in Vaporware:

• OpenSolaris
• Duke Nukem Forever
• Transference

Thank you, and goodnight.