Always a bridesmaid

Got a summons for Dallas County jury duty. Didn't get picked; I never get picked. This time I didn't even get sent into the pool of possibles for picking over by the laywers. :-(

Some random notes from the experience:

• This one was at the George Allen building bear Union Station, not the Frank Crowley in the "immanent threat of danger" part of town.
• Since it was about a block from Union Station this made a DART rail ride down there a no-brainer. The summons even included a pass for a free DART ride.
  
• The ride and walk were relatively painless. Total unwanted-confrontation count: 4. Two babbling, arm-waving lunatics on the train there, one (rather pleasant) street person begging on the walk back, and a boundary-challenged fellow on the way back who insisted on "reading" me his newspaper and making random, aggressively ignorant commentary on them.
  
• There is an open wifi feed in the Jury Pool room, but it is a proxy and you have to pay for access. $5.95 for the day, IIRC. Didn't pay it. There was a belo-guest open AP in the nearby Belo building, but the signal was so weak I couldn't get a lease. I read a book instead.
• If you come in the court building entryway closest to Union Square there is no indication where the jury room is. And even when you find it there is nothing on/near the door to tell you where it is. The court wrangler kept referring to the "bailiff's office" but did not say where it was. I figured out where it was, and there was no signage indicating it was the bailiff's office. There were lines with people standing in them with no indication what the line was for or who was running it. I am not claiming the court building should hold peoples' hands; I am saying they should at least give us enough info to figure it out for ourselves. Man, that was frustrating.
• Those were some of the saddest vending machines I have ever seen.
• There is vandalism, gang-looking scratches on the glass/plastic surfaces of our DART rail station.