We Want a Refund

This is a fact: it is illegal to talk on a cell phone in Connecticut while driving, unless you use a hands-free device. (Personally I think that part is stupid. It's not so much the phone-holding that gets people into trouble, it's the phone-using, but that's another story.)

So why is it that every time I realize someone is tailgaiting me, I look closer and find they are mindlessly yakking on the cell phone pressed to their ear. Or that the person next to me at the light has a phone pressed to their ear. Or the person turning through the intersection in front of me -- has a cell phone pressed to their ear!

A rough survey during my commute showed about 3 in 10 drivers are on the phone -- and that's only the ones holding the phone! Who knows how many more are talking on headsets.

So why aren't all these people being ticketed? I have yet to hear of ANYONE being cited for this highly dangerous violation. Frankly it's not likely anyone will be, because any trooper will tell you, the law is too difficult to enforce.

Accepting the truth of that -- I want my money back. A friend of my husband makes a great point. We should demand back all the money we spent paying legislators to draft, debate and pass and publicize the no-cell-phone law. It was a complete waste of time and of our money.

I suggest we transfer the money into the healthcare bucket to help pay for all the accident victims who will be hurt by this completely irresponsible behavior. So law or no law -- HANG UP AND DRIVE!

a-HEMA

Being something of a student of Web innovations, I'm always on the lookout for new ideas. Sometimes they are concepts I can use to improve our corporate websites, and sometimes they're just plain fun.

Case in point, a friend sent me this companion catalogue page for a Dutch department store called HEMA. You can't actually order from this page, but who cares? Just let it load, then sit back and enjoy. Turn up the sound, too if you want.

Enjoy this calorie-free eye candy.

D*MN!!

Boy, I didn't know how right I was. The mission was impossible!

I spent the last three weeks serving on a jury -- you knew that. But the fact that it was a murder trial puts it in a higher strata. So after spending seven of those days in deliberation, we ended up exactly where we started on the first day -- 10 of us said the defendant was at the crime scene and pulled the trigger, 2 said they weren't sure. In the end we were deadlocked; the judge had to declare a mistrial. That was frustrating enough. What happened next had us pulling our hair out.

The judge came to talk to us in the deliberation room. That's when we could ask all our questions about gaps in the case. The judge actually had the answers -- and ALL of his answers cleared up the doubts of the 2 hold outs. The defendant absolutely committed the crime. The 10 of us were right -- and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it.

So -- the good news, such as it is -- the defendant does not go free, he gets tried again. And being a full time drug dealer, he's in jail on other charges and won't be getting out any time soon anyway. The sad part -- this was NOT a drug deal gone bad where the victim was a criminal, too. Nope -- this scumbag popped one of the good guys. The victim was a 24 year old father of two, honorably discharged from the navy who was a criminal justice major. He was about to be hired by the department of corrections and had plans join the state police.

And while I hate the unfinshed business we were a part of, what is much worse is the victim's family has to go through all this again. It's a bad business. A very bad business and whether I did the best I could or not, I'm sorry it ended as it did.