An Open Letter to Whoever Cares...

Some months back I read an article in Wired Magazine written by Bruce Schneier about the sad state of airport security:

"Security systems fail in one of two ways. They can fail to stop the bad guy, and they can mistakenly stop the good guy. The TSA likes to measure its success by looking at the forbidden items they have prevented from being carried onto aircraft, but that's wrong.

"Every time the TSA takes a pocketknife from an innocent person, that's a security failure. It's a false alarm. The system has prevented access where no prevention was required. This, coupled with the widespread belief that the bad guys will find a way around the system, demonstrates what a colossal waste of money it is."

I have to draw a strict parallel between Schneier's views and the current climate of overzealous rulemaking in Texas. Every time some new mandate comes down from on high which is supposed to protect me from the unscrupulous sorts in the industry, requiring me to waste my time and money in an effort to play along, the system fails.

I've never signed a contract with lawyer nor litigant in my life, never printed a transcript with a secondary margin, and have led a pretty clean life, so why is it that all these "anti-contracting" measures impact my and so many other honest reporters' businesses so profoundly? Since we're all innocent, shouldn't this be a nonissue?

But it's not, and that's exactly my point. Texas reporters collectively waste literally thousands of man-hours jumping through these State-mandated hoops, and to what end? No "contractors" have been drummed outta business, frog-marched to the state line and told not to return, nor has the implementation of the Uniform Format Manual forced ER from our courthouses. Instead, I get to comply with all these statutes, along with the many that will surely follow, and my reward is the large hole left in my bottom line from 18 months of 10-pitch transcripts. Enough is enough.

So to the state association, lobbyists and whoever else deigns themselves capable of speaking on my behalf to the powers that be, let me make my position absolutely clear: I am opposed to any further rules unless they are intended to protect my work product from being copied by cheapskates, I am against any more psuedo "anti-contracting" legislation, and I'd really just like my damn pocketknife back!

"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music." - Vladimir Nabokov

Texas Rulemonger Alert #456,283!!!

Well, if I was looking for a little more fodder for the blog, leave it to the rule-happy bureaucrats in Austin to fill me with piss and vinegar yet again. The new e-mail circulating, at least around the Houston area, is that reporters will now either have to put quill pen to paper or use an encrypted electronic signature on all transcripts... no more signature stamps, no more powers of attorney, no more faxing in sig pages. Now, if you go to the Court Reporter Certification Board website, there's a disclaimer posted this morning explaining that this isn't quite law just yet, that it was merely discussed at the September 2005 meeting.

Now, while we get to breathe a collective sigh of relief that we haven't been transgressing some double-secret mandate that was kept under wraps for the last three months (similar to the amount of time it took for word of the 9- or 10-pitch resolution to trickle down), it just irks the ever-living crap outta me that, yet again, in their feeble attempt to hop in the Way-Back Machine and take us to 1985, before the time of national consolidated firms, marketing plans and boundless technology, I'm now gonna have to change my streamlined high-tech system in favor of either a method that was outdated when I was in grade school or go to an encrypted signature so I get to spend a little more time troubleshooting tech issues for folks that can't quite unencrypt it.

I understand the impetus behind all this nonsense, that if we make it impossible for out-of-state firms to easily conduct business in Texas, they'll all go away and leave us be with all the toys. Hasn't worked yet, and it ain't gonna, so please stop trying. The other argument is this will protect reporters by not allowing firms to repaginate transcripts and pocket the difference. Hey, if you need protection from the court reporting firm for which you're working, GO FIND ANOTHER ONE!!!

If we've got all this collective time on our hands to consider this inane kind of rulemaking, how about we get some statutes on the books that protect copying of our work product instead?

"In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work." - Milton Friedman

The Triumphant (sort of) Return of the Depoblog!

Just flat run outta excuses, folks. Trouble with this business, when it's busy there's not an extra ten seconds in the day for anything non-work or -family related, and when it's slow, it's so damned depressing, getting dressed seems like a gargantuan task, much less hittin' the blog. Survived equal doses of both over the last couple months with really no middle ground.

Had my share of noteworthy occurrences in the interim: Got inducted as President of the Society for the Technological Advancement of Reporting (STAR) and bought a 45-year-old car that I've successfully grease-monkeyed back to life. But the singular event that lit the proverbial fire under my ass to wax sarcastic yet again was my review of the deposition taken of a college buddy.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that in spite of the impossible standards to which we reporters hold ourselves, we are human and, therefore, fallible. Heck, we've all had an expert or two send back a bloodied and battered errata sheet that made us mutter, "How the hell did I miss that?" That said, my friend is a jack of all trades but expert in none, yet before even completing his educational experience and work history I noted "Arthur Andersen" and "Arthur Anderson" used in the same answer within two lines of each other, then "JD Edward's," "JD Edwards" and "JD Edwards's" software, all three intermixed seemingly at random. That was through page 10, the point at which I gave up.

The one rule I've always preached is "Being inconsistent is a much graver sin than being wrong." If you've got the most notorious accounting firm of the last quarter century spelled two different ways within the same breath, seems like you're guessing... and if you're flipping a coin on that, why should counsel trust anything in your record?

If anyone is still checking in here, I will likely be accused of being a hardass on this one. To be fair, I'm not screaming negligence or even incompetence... just simple indifference that five seconds on Google could've cured.

"Love will find a way. Indifference will find an excuse." -- Unknown

The power of positive thinking...

Well, while watching ABC World News Tonight last night, they had an interview with a man getting take-out at my favorite Friendswood Chinese restaurant, and the surrounding area looked just fine. Couple that with calls from a couple of my neighbors, one of whom who never left, saying that the 'hood looks good, and I'm gonna breathe a sigh of relief.

We're still out in West Texas and are planning on heading back home sometime Monday, loaded down with extra gas and plenty of food and water, just in case it's a 30-hour trip going back like it was for so many heading out. Tried to buy a couple more gas cans in Abilene this afternoon, but the whole city is sold out... and we're 400 miles from Houston!

I've been unable to get in touch with friends in the Beaumont and Lake Charles areas, but hopefully they evacuated in time and will get to come home to minimal damage. Time to turn our positive energies towards them. Save and except the tragedy of the bus fire south of Dallas, the fact that there were hardly any other reported fatalities from the evacuation or the storm is truly a miracle. As long as Texas Governor Rick Perry doesn't parlay all this national camera time into some higher office, we'll be just fine.

Thanks to all of you who posted messages, e-mailed and called to check in on us. All that good karma certainly had plenty to do with our rolling the Yahtzee it took to survive this storm in one piece.

"I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?" -- Ronnie Shakes

On the run from Rita...

Well, since Miller Reporting Group, slash, the ol' homestead is 20 or so miles up I-45 from Galveston, we've officially abandoned ship. We crashed with friends in Austin last night and are currently on our way to Abilene and Midland to give the grandparents some grandkid time while we wait to see if we still have a home, friends, a business, clients or a life.

We made Austin in a scant six hours yesterday afternoon thanks to an early start, GPS, four-wheel drive and my keen ability to mentally block out the screams of "Asshole!" from the cars around me.

Sometimes we need a little perspective. I've always regaled anyone who'd sit still long enough for me to launch into it the story of the Markman hearing which has always been my worst couple days to date. Sorry, but number one with a bullet will forever and always be when I sat for hours in gridlock with a million other people, all of us wondering if we just left our homes for the last time.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!" - Steve McCroskey