By order of The Court, I'm required to serve as a prospective juror this week. For the last two-and-a-half days, I've been on telephone/internet standby. That's right. Today's prospective juror now has two convenient ways to find out if he or she will be reporting to the courthouse.

In the old days (a.k.a. three years ago), you could only learn such information by phone. You would sit through a taped message - recorded by woman who had, through years of experience, eliminated any and all hints of energy and emotion from her voice - that would provide an update about each and every jury group. If you happened to have a high group number, you could, in theory, sort your entire supply of toothpaste by expiration date and flavor before hearing anything concerning you.

Thanks to the convenience of the new English-only, push-button menu system, prospective jurors who are competent in the use of Touch-Tone phones and the English language can now navigate through layers of options to find their group number and learn when and where they'll need to report. Web-savvy (or phone-averse) jurors-to-be can conveniently visit The Court's site (updated four times a day), click on the three-word link (jury duty status) buried in the middle of the 250-word main page and scroll through the subsequent canary yellow page packed with bold black and red text to learn his or her status.

How have these technological advances for my convenience affected me?

On Sunday night, I called and was told to call again or surf the site between 11:00 and 12:00 on Monday. Come Monday, I was told to check back after 5:00. I was lucky I checked during that hour because I noticed the groups just ahead of me were told during that same hour to report to the south county courthouse (some twenty miles away) by 1:30.

That cycle of checking between 11 and 12 and after 5 has continued for the last two days. Knowing that I might need to travel to the courthouse on an hour's notice has forced me to abandon public transportation and drive to work this week. It means that I not only have the joy of sitting in rush hour traffic, but I also have the pleasure of spending thirty dollars on an extra tank of gas.

With its newfound ability to rapidly update its phone system and website as its jury needs change, The Court has discovered a more efficient way to annoy me and (I suspect) other prospective jurors for our convenience.

I imagine a day, not so long from now, when The Court will seek to make the process even more convenient by simply having a computer generate and send a text message to John Q. Juror that instructs him to drop everything, report to the courthouse and fulfill his civic responsibility immediately.

How I miss the days of boring telephone recordings and properly sorted toothpaste.