Liquid Rhymes

I’ve been a member of 24 Hour Fitness since they sold me one of their “used car deal”-style plans where you sign up for several years with a lump sum, and then pay a reduced annual fee each year thereafter. I rather like the gym, which is utilitarian and has tons of gyms throughout the bay area.

As I’m on the annual billing plan I get an email from them every year indicating it’s time to pay, and they include a handy link in the email for you to click through and pay your bill.

Now this is all well and good, but when I attempt to log in they ask for a username and a password. First off, why do sites like 24 Hour fitness require a username instead of your email address? Do you really need an online persona for your gym membership account? This is an example of terrible product design, as I’m guessing the use main use case for logging into 24 Hour Fitnesses web site is to pay your bill. Why do I need a username to give 24 Hour Fitness my money?

Okay, fine, enough ranting about the username, let’s move on to the forgot username/password flow. 24 Hour Fitness asks for my last name, email, and date of birth. I personally think the email should be enough, and they should email me a link to reset my password. If someone has hacked my email then they can probably get into my 24 Hour Account – what can they do, pay my bill for me? As long as they require verification of the credit card there is nothing any hacker can actually do in my account.

After entering in my name, email, and birthdate they ask for a security question: the name of my high school mascot, and it’s case sensitive! Are you FREAKING KIDDING ME? I just want to get in and pay my gym bill – why does this site put up so many barriers to entry?

I ended up calling in and paying my bill on the phone, which is what their management didn’t want – they wanted a web site where people can log in and do this themselves and save cost. But their product managers, in the name of security, have built a web site that makes it so difficult to do simple tasks that I have to call them over the phone. Terrible.

Yesterday I posted part 1 of this story about serving on a criminal jury in San Francisco. I highly recommend giving it a read before this one.

The Defendant’s Story
Mr. Peters’ story is, not surprisingly, quite different from Mr. Sargent’s after Mr. Sargent left to go upstairs. In his version, after Mr. Sargent returns to his apartment a microwave door is slammed, so he wheels into the kitchen and yells “don’t break my microwave – you’re going to have to pay for it if you do!”. At this point he notices Mr. Sargent holding the gun in his hand, and is waving it around while yelling at him “were you in cahoots with them? Were you in on it?”. Mr. Peters, not believing that Mr. Sargent would actually shoot him, but being nervous due to a drunk and high Mr. Sargent wielding a weapon, decides that he’ll try to disarm him, and lunges for the gun. A struggle ensues, with Mr. Peters grabbing the barrel with two hands while Mr. Sargent moves behind him and engages him in a headlock. At some point he is able to wrestle the gun away, and Mr. Sargent, realizing he no longer has the upper hand, bolts for the door, grabs his bag, and heads upstairs.
Peters, believing that Mr. Sargent might return to try to re-engage him in a confrontation, locks the door and heads to the bedroom where he hides the gun under the dresser. Noting that he hasn’t heard the downstairs door slam – which would indicate Mr. Sargent has left the building – believes him to be upstairs at Boo’s house. Trying to figure out what to do – he is, after all, a convicted felon illegally possessing a firearm – he figures there are two ways out of the situation: he can give the weapon back to Mr. Sargent if he calms down and returns to retrieve it, or he can call the police and have them dispose of it. The first option he doesn’t control, and the second he is a bit apprehensive of as he’s got the smell of weed wafting through the apartment and is aware how the story would sound to the police, so he grabs some Yoohoo from the kitchen and starts to sober up.

And then the police show up.

There were a number of peculiar things to Mr. Peters’ story, including why he didn’t call the police immediately to report the weapon there, why he left the gun haphazardly under the dresser, why he didn’t hear a gunshot (but acknowledges one may have gone off), and why he thinks he may have blacked out during the struggle (but doesn’t know).

Deliberations
Okay, so it’s probably safe to say at this point you can deduce from the tone in my writing that I didn’t believe the “victim” very much, but to be fair, I didn’t believe the defendant very much either. But the instructions from the judge were very clear: the prosecution must prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, where a person would not have a reasonable doubt that the defendant may not have committed he crime. I walked into the jury room thinking that the defendant was not guilty of the shooting, but I was less sure of myself on the possession charge.

I was, however, happy to finally be able to talk about the case – during the evidence portion of the trial jurors are forbidden to discuss the case, even with fellow jurors. It’s a bit of a frustrating experience, as the evidence presented is just that, presented, so there is no room for being able to ask questions or figure out what’s going on beyond your own thoughts. The deliberations represented the first time we could have to actually interact with the information we had been given in the past week.

The first thing we did when entering the jury room was decide who the jury foreperson would be, and it was pretty simple because one young woman offered to do it, and no one else stepped up to contest her. The foreperson simply organizes the group and sends messages to the court, so it’s not surprising to me that no one else wanted the role. After brief introductions someone suggested we take a vote on the two charges, so we went around the 12 person table and each person got a chance to say what they were thinking with regards to the two charges.

As we went around the table a fair consensus began to emerge on the assault charge, 10 of the panel (including myself) believed the people had not proved their case – Mr. Peters may have been guilty, but it seemed more likely that something else happened that evening – and 2 of the panel believing he was guilty. What struck me as strange about the 2 that would have voted to convict was that they didn’t actually believe the evidence submitted by the “victim”, they just though that Mr. Peters probably did it. After a bit of discussion about the facts it became pretty clear that they didn’t feel strongly about the charge, and we quickly came to the consensus that we would vote to acquit on the assault charge.

With regards to the possession charge – felony possession of a firearm – a lot less consensus was on the table. The charge itself was not entirely straightforward, as obviously the defendant possessed the gun – it was at his house. The problem was that the law actually allows a felon to possess a firearm if all of the following are true:

• The firearm is possessed for a “momentary and transitory” period
• The possession is for the intent of disposition
• The felon does not attempt to conceal the weapon from law enforcement

Furthermore, the burden of proof is actually on the defense to prove that all three of the items above are true, as everyone acknowledges Peters possessed the gun. In addition, the burden is not beyond a reasonable doubt, but more likely than not that all three things were true for us to find him not guilty.

My thought was then that the fundamental question was whether it was more likely than not Mr. Peters’ gun, or if not his gun whether he intended to dispose of the weapon or keep it. In my mind the key items that helped me make the decision were:

• The fact the gun was haphazardly tossed in the bottom drawer while in a incapacitated position (ie with the slide back where it could not be fired) indicated the gun was likely not his.
• The fact that while neither side’s story was really credible, it seemed more likely to me that Mr. Peters’ version of the events were accurate than Mr. Sargent’s.
• The fact that the defendant immediately gave the weapon up when asked by the police, and referred to the gun as “the gun” (rather than “a gun”).

At the end of the day if I’m not sure of guilt or innocence I believe it would be the right thing to send someone to prison – I don’t know how I’d live with myself if I sent someone to jail who I believe might be innocent.

As a jury we went around the table a number of times taking votes, with each juror getting a chance to discuss the evidence that they were considering when making their decision, and then ultimately logging a vote (or a “not sure”). The various votes changed the mix in the middle – it was initially split maybe 4 not-guilty to 3 or 4 guilty with a number of un-sures – and our final vote was 9-3.

Finally we sent a message to the bailiff who came to get us, and we returned to the courtroom where the verdict was read. As the verdict of “not-guilty” was read I saw Mr. Raja, Mr. Peters’ defense attorney, shake Mr. Peters hand and congratulate him. The prosecutor put on a game face but she looked like she was having a bad day.

Takeaways From Jury Duty
It’s never a good time to take a number of days away from your normal life and go sit in a room with strangers for no (well, $15 a day) monetary gain, but I believe it’s an incredibly important responsibility we have as citizens. I’m surprised by the number of intelligent, responsible, respectable people I talk to who believe that it’s right to lie your way off a jury and that “only suckers or people too dumb to get off” serve on juries.

It’s also incredibly fascinating. Part of me has always wanted to be a lawyer – I find constitutional law especially interesting – and serving on this jury gave me a good look at how our legal system works. I was never bored throughout the trial, although perhaps the facts of this particular case, with it’s myriad interesting characters, are the cause for that.

Finally, I think it’s a great way to really understand people from different walks of life. There are so few opportunities in today’s world to really here how people think about fundamental issues like freedom and the law, as politics are really a modern day taboo in the workforce and common conversation. If you are like me, the only people you really have these conversations with are family and close friends, who often can think similarly to you as they are often in similar walks of life. The jury room gives you the opportunity to meet and interact with others from all walks of life, rich and poor, educated and not, young and old.

I highly recommend it. And you really have no choice.

I’ve been a bit MIA from the blog in the past few months, and like a lot of people, I’ll beg off on being busy. One reason I was busy was I was called and subsequently selected to serve on a jury here in the city of San Francisco, which I found a fascinating process. As the case ended yesterday we, as jurors, are allowed to discuss the case, so I thought I’d write about my experience. It’s a bit long, so I’m going to break this one up into two parts.

Pre-trial
I was called to report the week of October 18, and the instructions I received indicated I was to call the Friday before, October 15, to find out if I would need to report. On Friday when I called I was instructed to call again on Monday, and on Monday I was again instructed to call on Tuesday, where I was told to come in to the hall of justice the next morning. After reporting the next morning around 8:40 AM the juror pool sat in a fairly large (100+ people) room waiting for instructions. We watched a cheesy video that attempted to explain the process in the State of California, and a distinctly heard someone snicker when the video announced that California was the nation’s greatest state. I’m guessing perhaps all the talk about how California is broken throughout the election campaign is catching up with us.

After more waiting in the room a lady came in and announced that the next names read would need to report to courtroom 27, and they proceeded to call out a lot of names (I subsequently found out it was 130). I was one of these, so I packed my stuff up and headed down to courtroom 27. I don’t quite remember what happened next, but I remember thinking in the courtroom that the setup was very theatrical – the judge on a raised platform looking down on everyone, his clerk, bailiff, and stenographer beneath him, and the defense and prosecutor at different tables in front of him. To his right, or the left side of the courtroom when you enter, was the jury box.

I believe the first thing that happened was the judge, the honorable Newton Lam, asked if anyone had any hardships – and asked people to fill out forms if so. A good chunk of the room did, and I believe after they filled them out we had a recess and they reviewed them and excused a large number of people. At that point I think explained the case – a criminal one, with the defendant, Steven Peters, charged with assault with a semi-automatic firearm and felony possession of a firearm. He may have also explained the complete jury instructions, but I don’t remember that explicitly. The court clerk, an Indian lady with a very American name, then called up the first 18 potential jurors to the box. The prosecutor and defense attorneys then got to ask a number of questions of the potential jurors.

Making the Jury
Jury selection took the better part of two days, as the attorneys asked numerous questions of the people called to the panel. I noticed a couple interesting things during the process:

• Some people were doing their best to get off the panel, and thus were going to say pretty much anything to ensure they weren’t selected. When asked how they felt about hand guns they went on about how guns were the root of all evil and they couldn’t judge anyone innocent who had been charged with a gun crime.
• Two people made it very far in the process and weaseled their way out at that point: one young lady who worked for a beer distributor noted she had a business trip that would have to be canceled, and when the court seemed determined to keep her, returned from a break with the shocking news that “she remembered she had a friend who worked for the DA’s office”. The other young man was a software engineer for a startup video game company, and was concerned his company would lose a large contract if he were selected for the jury. At the point when we were going to be sworn in for the jury he piped up “what’s the penalty for not showing up to jury duty – is it a fine or jail?”. The judge conferred with counsel, and reluctantly – and angrily – dismissed the man. When the man thanked him he retorted “don’t thank me!” and gave a lecture on the importance of jury duty.
• There were a couple of interesting stories during the selection process. One man was an engineer by day and a “mind reader” at night. This prompted a number of funny questions from the prosecutor and defense attorney about whether he could “read their minds” or “determine what the defendant is thinking”, and it emerged that was really an expert in reading body language – and would need to control the circumstances to perform his trick. He was excused. Another old lady who had a really odd shape – she looked as if she were pregnant, but she was far too old (70s?) to be pregnant – had an interesting story about being a caretaker for a schizophrenic patient who had freaked out and called the police and reported her as a missing person on the previous day. She was quickly excused.

In the end 12 of us remained, and were sworn in for the trial.

The Trial
The facts of the case where these:

• The “victim” was a man by the name of Donald Sargent, a 50 year old Black resident of San Francisco. He had supposedly been a nurse for 23 years, although he hasn’t practiced medicine since 1991 (this doesn’t really add up, he would have been 7 when he started nursing)
• Mr. Sargent has a large number of health problems (including severe arthritis) and uses a cane and various medication, including soma (muscle relaxers) and medicinal cannabis.
• The defendant was Steven Peters, a resident of an apartment on Revere and 3rd street in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco – one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. Mr. Peters’ is black, and though his age was not mentioned during the trial I’d guess he is mid-to-late 30s, and one notable fact was that he was in a wheelchair.
• Mr. Peters lived on the first floor of a 3 unit apartment building, and had a “godsister” upstairs by the name of Boo (real name Cassandra). Boo’s house was affectionately known in the neighborhood as the “candy house” due to the fact neighborhood kids would come over for candy (unclear as to whether this was provided free of charge or whether a retail operation was being run from this home).
• On Friday, July 10 2010 Mr. Sargent (also known as “Sarge”) went over to Mr. Peter’s house to hang out for the weekend. Mr. Sargent, however, forgot to bring his cane and soma medication. He did, however, remember to bring his marijuana.
• On Saturday Mr. Sargent and Mr. Peters were hanging out and planning what to do for the evening, where apparently a friend of theirs, Didi, and her boyfriend were planning to come over, along with a friend of Mr. Peters, Passion. The two went down to a store and bought some food and beer for the night – a six pack of Budweiser and 4 tall cans for Mr. Sargent.
• On the evening of July 11, around 8pm or so, Mr. Sargent and Didi’s boyfriend were playing cards together at the living room table in Mr. Peter’s house, while Mr. Peters and his friend Passion were hanging out on the couch watching TV and enjoying themselves.
• While Mr. Peters does not know for sure whether there was gambling going on, he does recall money being on the table.
  During the game Mr. Sargent drank his 4 tall cans and one budweiser, and smoked some of his medicinal marijuana. Mr. Peters had a few budweisers and smoked the weed as well.
• After the game ended – where it was strongly hinted that it ended because Mr. Sargent was “wiped out” of all his funds – Didi and her boyfriend went upstairs to Boo’s house, and Mr. Sargent followed, with the intention of saying goodbye.
• After Mr. Sargent said goodbye to Boo he headed back down to Mr. Peters’ house to grab his bag and heat up a hamburger he had left over from the earlier trip to the store.
• When Mr. Sargent comes downstairs and knocks on the door he hears Mr. Peters’ yell out in an annoyed voice something to the effect of “all these people need to stop crowding in my house”. I also got the impression it might have been a slightly stronger “all these people need to get the fuck out of my house”.

The Victim’s Story
This is where the stories diverge, so let’s take the Victim’s story first:

According to Mr. Sargent, when he came back downstairs his intent was to get his food – he had a hamburger left over from their earlier trip to the store – microwave it, grab his bag, and head home. Standing in front of the microwave, with the front door to his right and the hall to the living room to his left Mr. Sargent turned around to find Mr. Peters pointing a gun at him. Shocked, he begins to attempt to talk his good friend out of shooting him and pleads for him to put the weapon away. The exact words escape me, but I believe the phrase “nigga, what you doing with that gun” was used, and Mr. Sargent insisted that the defendant didn’t say a thing while pointing the gun at him, just looking at him with “that look he get in his eye”. Mr. Peters then appears to go for the trigger, so he jumps in the air to avoid the gun hitting him in the chest where the it was pointed, and he’s shot “next to his hoo-hoo”. The bullet goes through his leg and he decides to go for the gun, and wrestles Mr. Peters to the ground, where he’s able to get the gun away from him and kick it under his wheelchair.

At this point Mr. Sargent jumps up and heads for the door, grabbing his bag and heads for Boo’s place on the floor above. When he enters Boo’s apartment he attempts to tell Boo and the other people over that he is shot, but they don’t believe him. He offers to pull down his pants to show them where he has been wounded, but with “so many womenfolk there” he decides it’s a bad idea and heads for the door. After leaving the building he heads for the bus stop, where he plans to take the bus to the Muni T train stop and then get the 22 bus to get home. Mr. Sargent, being a medic, says plans to take care of the bleeding and not get the police involved, but this assertion is somewhat belied an encounter he claims to have had on the way to the bus stop. He says he happened on a police officer, car number 081, and he tells the officer he’s been shot. The officer, however, doesn’t believe him, and after he offers to pull down his pants and show him the wound he is threatened with an indecent exposure ticket and quickly hurries on. Mr. Sargent helpfully offers that police officers in the Bayview aren’t very pleasant to people as an explanation for the seemingly odd behavior by the officer. He then gets to the bus stop where he finds a stick and an old rag and makes a tourniquet for his wound, and after waiting for a bit decides to walk to the Muni T stop to find the train. When the Muni arrives he explains to the officer he’s been shot and begs his way on as he doesn’t have any money, but again the driver doesn’t believe that he’s been shot. Mr. Sargent does note that he was on the Muni – where are the security tapes – “they got it on camera!”.

After another transfer to the 22 bus he arrives at his home on 16th and Folsom where he heads into his apartment, intent on stopping the bleeding. His friend, spotting him arriving, knocks on his door and enters the apartment. After 10 or 15 minutes of attempting and failing to stop the bleeding he heads downstairs to the front desk where he asks the clerk to call an ambulance as he’s been shot. The police are quickly summoned, and officers arrive asking him to provide information on who shot him. The police offer who testified noted that Mr. Sargent was rude and somewhat hysterical, but they were finally able to coax his “brother’s” address out of him – a 3-story apartment on Revere across from a Church. The officer who takes this information down notes that he actually said he’d been shot in the living room, but Mr. Sargent’s story during the trial is that he was shot in his hotel room.

At this point Mr. Sargent goes with the ambulance to the hospital, and other officers are summoned to Mr. Peters’ home to investigate the incident. 5 or 6 officers arrive at Mr. Peters’ place and knock on his door. Mr. Peters answers the door and is asked “if anything happened at the apartment during the evening”. He responds “no”, and then is asked if the officers can search his home. He answers “yes”, and is then asked “if there are any weapons at the place”. Mr. Peters’ answers: “the gun is under the bottom right drawer under the dresser”. The officers then have Mr. Peters’ sign a search authorization form, he’s read his Miranda rights, and the police search his home and find a gun under the dresser, a 9mm with the serial number filed off, loaded, and with the slide pulled back.

In my next post I’ll discuss the Victim’s story, the outcome, and my takeaways from jury duty

I graduated from college in 1999, near the apex of the tech bubble. I moved back up to the bay area, which was experiencing a really unique historical period – jobs were aplenty and it seemed like everyone was getting rich off of internet stocks. Free drinks were everywhere throughout the city as tons of companies threw parties to try to find new employees to build web sites that would destroy the old brick and mortar businesses.

Fast forward a year and a half later and the bubble had burst. My company, Ask Jeeves, laid off over 25% of our workforce, and other companies were following suit or even folding. Americans, frightened by the crashing stock market (the tech heavy nasdaq lost over half it’s value – see chart below) decided to plow their money into housing.

And why not? For as long as I can recall my parents have always told me that “buying a home is the only/best way to build equity”. Many of my friends happen to be Asian, and for some reason Asian parents seem to believe that renting is “throwing your money away”. Better to rent as the home will always retain it’s value. This advice may have been true in my parent’s generation. But now, in the bay area, it’s complete bullshit.

The reason why is because housing prices, at least in the bay area, are completely out of wack with rents. When my parents bought the home I grew up in in Berkeley in 1977 they paid $40,000 (that’s $144,000 in 2010 dollars per the BLS inflation calculator – don’t make the mistake of thinking that $40k then is $40k today!) their mortgage was roughly equivalent to their rent. In 2010 this is just not the case.

I had lunch with a friend of mine today. He told me that he had planned to move out of his parent’s house recently and rent, but his parents told him that he was throwing his money away by renting, and that he should buy a house with them. Let’s take a look at whether this is a good idea. First off, he went ahead and bought a condo in the silicon valley area, and he ended up paying around $800,000 for the 2 bedroom unit.

Let’s take a look at how this transaction will work for him using the New York Times excellent rent vs. buy calculator. Any of these calculators have to have some assumptions built in. I’m going with these assumptions:

• I generally don’t think housing prices in the bay are are going to increase in the next 5 years, but I’m going to be generous and say that perhaps we’ll have 3% increases (I think this is high)
• that the opportunity costs of the down payment are 4.5% (ie that if he invested his down payment he could get a 4.5% return)
• that his home owners association fees are $300 (that’s pretty low in the bay area)
• that he puts 20% down (standard down payments these days)
• and that he could rent a comparable apartment for $3000 a month (I think he could, but I’m not 100% sure).

With these numbers the calculator tells us that buying a home is better than renting after 21 years!

Why is that? Because:

• The mortgage itself is over $37,000 a year (~3k per month alone)! Granted he can deduct this via his income at his marginal rate, but that still will put him at around $2,000 on the mortgage alone
• His property taxes, at the 1.25% California rate, are $9500 a year (or around 800 a month). Many people forget that property taxes are paid by the landlord in your rent
• 20% down on an $800,000 house is $160,000. You can invest that $160,000 a lot of ways and make money on it
• The home owners association fees on a condo aren’t deductible from your taxes, so this can be looked at similarly to rent

So on this condo it would take 21 years for buying to make sense! In addition to the pure financial argument against buying let’s also consider:

• He doesn’t need a 2 bedroom home now. He could rent a smaller unit now and upgrade to a larger one when his space needs change
• Moving is considerably easier when you aren’t encumbered by a mortgage. Many people argue that you can always rent the house if you need to. This is true, but you won’t be able to get back enough in rent to cover your mortgage, property taxes, and home owners association fees – so you’ll be losing money every month!
• If he meets someone and decides to move in with them his options are much more flexible
• If his income situation changes he can downsize to a smaller place (or move in with his folks!) or upgrade to a larger place without the threat of a financial disaster in the form of closing fees and selling into a down market hanging over him

There are many upsides to home ownership including a stable place to live and the ability to customize your residence, but you are definitely not throwing away your money by renting!