Deputy Charles Reynolds is testifying now. Doing a good job. The defendant told him he was coming home from the Railhead in Fort Worth and had had three beers.
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2.28.2007
Court TV - Kinda
Yahoo! Used To Be Just A Directory
Here is a screenshot of how its homepage looked in January of 1997. Now its difficult to even find the directory.
More Than 1 In 4 Women . . .
. . . have the HPV virus. In other news, Elisha Cuthbert defeats the HPV virus with an iron. Or not.
2.27.2007
Oh, No, They Didn't!
Tomorrow's Messenger will have a Page Two story about Wise County runners who finished the the Cowtown Marathon and Half Marathon. Despite my blazing finish of 2:03.04 in the Half Marathon (which still has people talking), my name will be shockingly omitted from the story.
I haven't been so humiliated since I got stuck in a Porto-Potty at the Wise County Youth Fair as a middle schooler.
I have been slighted. I hold grudges.
Roy and Skip, what have I done to forsaken you?
One of the nerdiest things I've done in a while: Experimenting with the Twitter box on the side that can be updated by the web, chat, or phone. I'll abandon it soon. It's kind of a cool idea but probably not very useful.
Edit: Considering the fact that it doesn't load 75% of the time, I'm not sure what it's worth.
The First Thing Lets Do Is Kill All The . . . .
There were rumors today of the possible demise of a couple of large Dallas law firms, and one of them gave me first lawyer job ever: Vial, Hamilton in Dallas.
Those days were mind numbing. I worked in the old Republic Bank building in downtown Dallas and, get this, I valet parked my car in the underground parking garage every day. Everyone wore expensive suits, ties, and shoes. "High tone" doesn't begin to describe it.
But I learned the concept of the billable hour. Every minute I worked on a client's file had to be documented so that the information could later be used to create a bill. We billed by the 1/10th of an hour - so if I began a research project I would jot down on a work slip the time I started and what time I stopped. Notes like "Start: 8:43 End: 9:11" were common. Every minute of every day had to be accounted for because we had a quota of how many hours we were required to bill every month. (And once a month a newsletter would be circulated around the office revealing how many hours each associate had billed the month before.) I have my faults, but I was extremely honest - I wouldn't cheat on my time slips. If a buddy called me in the middle of the day and we chatted for 18 minutes, I knew that I had lost .3 hours of billable time and that I would work 18 minutes later that day.
I wouldn't do that again for all the tea in China.
And since it doesn't matter much any more, here's a shocker: The year was 1986, and I was a 24 year old kid out of law school. My starting salary: $43,000 a year. That was obscene. (My job a couple of years earlier in undergraduate school was as a bank teller at around $5.00 an hour.) And if my salary back then offends you, you won't be happy to learn that first year associates in the big firms in Dallas are now getting $155,000 a year. And their lives are miserable.
These were some highlights of my first year (and my bosses really loved me):
- Bob Vial (the name partner) throwing a 13 page draft of an insurance coverage opinion I had written into the air as he dropped multiple GD bombs on me. I still remember the pages floating in the air and slowly landing all over the office.
- Bob Vial's secretary telling me to "sit your little ass in that chair and don't move" until Mr. Vial was ready to see me.
- Leigh Bartlett, my second boss, correcting a draft letter I had written in red pen with the notation "I don't intend to spend my Saturday afternoon correcting every sentence of your work."
- Mr. Vial and I driving back from a deposition together in his Mercedes when he decided to stop for lunch at Denny's. Freakin' Denny's!!!!! I still remember him telling the waitress that he wanted his french fries "extra, extra crispy."
"Springtown Bank Robbery Suspect Caught In Wise County"
"Decatur, TX (WBAP) - A man suspected of robbing a Springtown bank Tuesday morning was arrested at a Wise County convenience store. Deputies noticed 18-year-old Robert C Joplin, and the car he was driving, matched the description of the man who held up a Bank One in Springtown. Deputies say Joplin was arrested without a struggle and some of the bank's money was found."
That's all I know.
Pain
What a pain. That paragraph in last week's Attorney General Opinion by Greg Abbott is causing major headaches around Texas. No longer can a social security number be released in a document that is otherwise public. I'm not sure how Wise County is handling it - the county went to document imaging about 5 years ago and you can walk into the clerk's office and look up public records - many of which have social security numbers on them. So do they now go back and redact the SSN and rescan them?
2.26.2007
Oscar Shadow People
It's hard to explain if you didn't see it, but these images were created by a performing arts group that could mold its members' bodies into creative shapes. (The one in the middle is the logo from "Snakes On A Plane.") And I couldn't find the best one for "The Devil Wears Prada."
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