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