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Cristobal

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1 hour ago, Contentious C said:

No, that sounds like 2019: where we pretend things are done in the name of "security", but they're so annoying and onerous that, to get around their stupidity, we do things that are considerably less secure and potentially more dangerous.

Word.  Some IT departments (or, more likely, the decision makers above them) just don't understand the "security/usability" balance.

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See the story on the last page? I didn't make it up for the punchline. Here's a Safe for Work picture of an A-Hole.

Spoiler

64312916_2140789499363524_21257061451746

 

 

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Ok.  Long rant. 

Got appointed on an aggravated assault on a family member.  Client allegedly pulled a knife on his brother and chased him.  Pretty simple right?  No.  Client was registered with DACA.  Came to the US when he was 8.  So, violent felony, he gets an ICE hold. 

Turns out he's a highly functioning with pretty severe schizophrenia.  Refuses treatment, occasionally has paranoid delusions (as does his mother), and when they get too bad, the family calls 911 and he gets picked up and taken to the mental hospital to medicate and recharge. 

"Little" brother is actually a semi-professional basketball player.  He's about Dwight Howard sized.  Just a gigantic person.  This is our "victim."  Client is a bout a foot shorter and at least 50 lbs. lighter. 

Night in question, client busts into little brother's room because he was talking shit.  They push each other around, little brother says I'm going to kick your ass, so client runs to the kitchen, picks up a knife.  Little brother didn't bother following him to the kitchen, just turns around and goes back into his room.  Client throws knife in sink, runs outside and sits on the stairs for the mental health people to pick him up. 

Except, the cops show up.  Cops with no mental health training.  They arrest him and charge him, despite there no actual danger ever and the family adamantly telling them they don't want charges filed. 

I wanted to set the case for trial as soon as I could, but I had to have him evaluated for his competency to make sure he understood what was going on and review his lengthy mental health history.  On jail visits he'd plead with me to tell them to just let him go and go home.  Told him I was telling everyone this case was garbage and they should dismiss.  The State laughed.  I consult with an immigration lawyer -- since he was locked up, he couldn't renew his DACA.  So now he has no legal standing to be in the US, plus a violent felony.  I lose, he gets deported. 

I set the case for trial.  Because judge isn't being reelected, he doesn't feel like trial.  We get reset to after the new year. 

Turn of the new year, new DA comes into power.  New prosecutor on the job, and I sit down with her and explain the situation.  A couple days later, she dismisses the case off docket.  I race to the jail to tell him the news, but ICE already picked him up.  It's out of my hands now. 

I check up with his dad once a month or so.  No real updates.  I figure, the violent felony is gone.  All he has to do is renew his DACA and he'll be fine. 

Yesterday, I talked to my psychologist about another case and she asks me about this client.  I said I didn't know.  I'll call the dad. 

Call the dad today.  Client is scheduled to be deported, voluntarily.  He gave up fighting and just agreed to be deported to a country he hasn't lived in since he was 8, with no family there, and more importantly, no mental health services. 

It feels like a death sentence, even though I won my case and did every single thing I could possibly do to help him. 

Fuck our immigration policy. 

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Kurtie: You've been practicing long enough that you don't really need to hear this from me (dropped out before law school). Sometimes the good guys lose, you just do what you can and if you know in your heart that you did your best, that's all one can hope for is to look in the mirror and say "I did my best!"

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3 hours ago, OSJ said:

Kurtie: You've been practicing long enough that you don't really need to hear this from me (dropped out before law school). Sometimes the good guys lose, you just do what you can and if you know in your heart that you did your best, that's all one can hope for is to look in the mirror and say "I did my best!"

But I didn’t lose.

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4 hours ago, Lawful Metal said:

But I didn’t lose.

I didn't say that you did. You won legally. This is what we call a Pyrrhic Victory after the Greek general who was famous for winning battles based on having a couple of hundred of his guys left (out of thousands) but they wiped out the enemy so hey, they won amiright? You won the case and based on our fucked up immigration policy, it looks like close to a death sentence for your client. Call it a win if you want to, I'd just say "I did my best and fuck our immigration policies".

Peace out,

 

OSJ

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So, my client testified, told the truth, lived up to his bargain.  This prosecutor, however, had no idea what he was doing, did not get everything out of my client that he could have, and it definitely did not have the effect it probably should have.  If he fucks up the rest of the trial, I wonder if he'll renege on his deal.  On the other hand, it was an all white jury, and I'm pretty sure there's a couple of Klan members on there that won't be happy with black guy killing a white guy.  Welcome to tiny county Texas. 

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3 hours ago, The Natural said:

Happy 4th of July xxx

Thanks @TheNatural! Just as you folks set bonfires to commemorate Guy Fawkes failed attempt to blow up Parliament; we Yanks celebrate the birth of our nation by getting drunk and blowing shit up. ? 

Considering what we put in the White House, I don't think this democracy thing is working out so well, could we be colonies again? Just sayin'

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Our crazy neighbor... Well to preface this, we live in a duplex which is nice and quiet, there's a regular house facing the street and what appears to be a side gate to the back yard. Well, as I said "appears to be", actually there is no backyard, there's another building, which is the duplex that we live in. The building is like 2/3rds which is our unit and the other third is the fron unit where the lesbian couple who have been here for years live. Linda is career military (USMC) and MaryAnne is on disability,  based on being goofier than a soup sandwich. We get along great: we're pretty quiet, they're generally pretty quiet. I say "generally" as when Linda is home they're quiet, however, she's spending the week in Cali with her mom, leaving MaryAnne to her own devices. 

Now MaryAnne is legit crazy, I don't throw terms like that around without substantial reason. She's in her late 50's - early 60's now, but there was a break of some thirteen years when she was incarcerated for murder on a 20-life sentence. Apparently she came home to find her husband in bed with another woman and went out the garage, grabbed a hatchet and chopped his head off while he was engaged in the act. Like I said, she got 20-life, but with time off for good behavior she was out after thirteen years. Now without Linda home to make sure that she's taking her meds, she's obviously not been taking them as was readily apparent when she came over to bum a cigarette and announced to Kathy "I used to be someone else, now I'm a giraffe!" Yeah, uh, okay... Anyway, Linda is due home tomorrow and cannot possibly get here soon enough. So far MaryAnne's been spending the day wandering around the block talking to herself with the occasional break to stop by, say something strange and then wander off again. All things considered, they're pretty good neighbors, at least we know pretty much what to expect, they don't have loud parties, and generally speaking are pretty cool. MaryAnne buys herself three cans of Foster's every weekend and has one for each day of the weekend. Now that's when Linda is home... Now that she hasn't been home and prior to the bit about being a giraffe, MaryAnne apparently closed the bar down last night and is either still buzzed from last night or just weirding out from not taking her meds; but suffice it to say, we're keeping a real close eye on things just in case she starts acting even stranger... Ah, life in a small town...

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Chapter Two:

Linda returned a day early and came over last night visibly shaken.  She asked what if anything we heard while she was gone as "The apartment looks like a bomb went off!"  She's really pissed off and talking about ending the relationship and getting the hell out of here. If she goes through with iit the landlord has said many times that if Linda were ever to leave, MaryAnne gets the boot with a quickness. I have real mixed feelings about this, as goofy as MaryAnne can be, at least we pretty much know what to expect and it could be a lot worse. George (our landlord) owns a couple of laundromats, half of a restaurant (with his brother) and half of two motels in addition to our place.  The duplex and another couple of houses he and his brother own are pretty low priority for him and he'll basically rent any of the other places to whoever waves money at him. We were the exception, as our place is literally brand-new and he wanted tenants who were going to be long-term, weren't partiers and would take care of the place; which is pretty much a description of us. Current neighbors have their faults, but are generally easy to deal with, they are cool about the cats and when Linda's home meds are taken as directed and we don't hear stuff about being a giraffe or similar nonsense. I know that at one of his other properties the "couple"  he rented to morphed into a group of eight  people who drank and fought round the clock and finally required the Sheriff to boot them out owing several months rent.  I would like to think that George learned from that experience , but I seriously doubt it. So we're hoping that they patch things up and that we don't have to deal with the crapshoot of new neighbors. Fingers crossed. 

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13 hours ago, JLSigman said:

Poor Linda. I can understand her frustration. Obviously MaryAnne needs more help when she's alone that Linda realized. I hope things work out for them.

More has been revealed... Apparently I slept through this Weds. night as did Kathy, but apparently MaryAnne was blasting mariachi music at 2AM and the neighbors in the front called the cops. MaryAnne refused to show them any ID and I guess they asked semi-seriously "Lady, are you crazy or something?" To which she responded, "You bet I am."  At that point they searched the house and found her meds in an unmarked bottle so they confiscated them which serves to explain all the weirdness that followed. (I'm getting this from Linda, who after a round of door-slamming and yelling came over to our place to calm down. She said something about "One more chance!", so I don't imagine anything is going to change. I can't for the life of me imagine why you would put prescription meds in an unmarked bottle, (but we've pretty much established that MaryAnne even with her meds is still a couple of hot dogs short of a picnic). 

I have to take six different medications at different times during the day and the last thing that I would want iis to get confused as to what's what.  (My blood pressure meds if taken to excess can cause immediate renal failure (which actually happened once) and the couple of times  that I accidentally doubled up on my pain meds (oxycodone 20mg) all sorts of hilarity ensued.) ? 

So I imagine that at least for the time being that they'll work things out. Apparently they've been together quite a long time and since their unit is so small George only charges them $400 a month. They both know that neither of them is going to find another deal like that. We pay $650, which we're ecstatic about. The same set-up in Seattle would run over $2000.00 Our only complaint is the lack of a washer/dryer hook-up which seems to be a recurring situation in George's properties... Did I mention that he owns a laundromat? I'm sure that there's no connection. ?

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We're dog-sitting for a neighbour this weekend. I've been looking forward to it all week because the weather is nice outside and they've got a pool and a hammock.

Meanwhile we've been waiting for weeks for our plumber to find time in his schedule to do some work. Well, guess who found some fucking time in his schedule?

My wife and son are over at the pool and I've been stuck here for the last two hours. The plumber isn't even here right now. He popped out for parts half an hour ago. Presumably. He didn't announce he was leaving, but the work's not finished.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I'm amazed... We're moving, Mrs. OSJ and I had a lon, long talk yesterday. I knew our relationship with our landlords was getting progressively more toxic (we live in an apartment that isn't up to code and for two years we've gotten the song and dance of "next spring" then "next summer" then dodging the question. Basically what should be the master bathroom is an empty unusable room that doesn't even have a proper floor in it. Any complaints are met with "You no like you move!" from the owner's Chinese wife (dare I say mail-order bride, because that's exactly what she is, George is like fifth or sixth generation Chinese-American, Mae is FOB. 

Okay, so I knew the relationship was getting toxic, what I didn't know is that Kathy didn't pay rent for June or July but told them "Fix the bathroom and you can have the money"! This resulted in a threat to call the Sheriff which was heartily laughed at, (You're going to have the Sheriff evict two disabled seniors when there's no lease, yeah, just see how far you get with that shit.)

So anyway, knowing that our nephew and his girlfriend who rtent next door to our old place have just bought their first house we called our old landlord (a Superior Court Judge who loved the ground we walked on), to see what might be available as he has several properties. Well how bout this, we're getting the place next door to our old apartment, the biggest of three units in the triplex and it has a washer/dryer hook-up NO MORE LAUNDROMAT!!! The sad thing is we have to give up some cats. We're keeping the two big boys Jackpot and Seven, little Tyrion, Cersei, and Jorkens. As much as I hate to let him go Sandor has become increasingly aggressive starting fights with Jackpot and Seven whenever the mood strikes him, Waldo picks on Tyrion too much and he's beautiful cat so I doubt there will be any problem getting him adopted, Sumuru is 10 and stone crazy, always has been and we've never been able to melow her out. I think she needs to be in a one-cat home. Sansa will go out to sister-in-law's place where her mom already rules the roost. 

I'm pretty cool with all of it except giving Sandor up and I know it's the right thing to do. Jackpot and Seven don't fight with each (they did once and now its mutual respect) they don't bother little Tyrion or Cersei and Jorkens is old and kind of in her own world. Fuck it, I'm going to cry when Kathy takes Sandor to the Humane Society.

Update. I put my foot down and accepted the responsibility of breaking up any fights, we're keeping Sandor! Yay!

Edited by OSJ
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Yeah, I just have to keep the super-soaker at the ready, nothing will discourage a potential catfight quicker than water. Maybe he knows I went to bat for him, Sandor's been rubbing on me all morning and just carrying on like he hasn't seen me for a week. I know cats are smart, but THAT smart? I dunno.

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Yeah, so really the only worry is Waldo and he's a gorgeous cat and smart as a whip. He'll charm his way into being adopted without a problem. Varys is a tuxedo cat and they're very popular, so again all good on that front.  We didn't pick out Bushi, she just ran in last summer and stayed, but again, beautiful cat should have no problem being adopted. Sumuru, if she behaves is fine but she's total Jekyll/Hyde without warning, I warn people away from her because she'll scratch your eyes out just because it's Thursday. She was the neighbors kitten and they decided they didn't want her so we took her ten years ago and she never has mellowed out appreciably. 

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