All this H8 Red

I've never been the subject of a protest before. It was very interesting. There was a protest downtown today, as union federal employees protested about the use of contractors. Being a contractor, I obviously have a differing opinion. Their point, as near as I could tell, was that they were upset at recent efforts to determine what agency functions could be outsourced. I understand this. I also understand that there are a lot of functions that are needlessly complex and manual that could be improved by developing systems to automate things that can be automated, freeing the government employees to devote more time and effort to things that cannot be automated. I'm not here to replace you, I'm here to help you. I tried to get several other contractors to join me in going over and getting hot dogs from their barbecue, but we all chickened out (what with our id badges clearly signifiying contractor and all...)

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I am the law

(15:59:23) griz: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30003.html
(16:00:10) rev: Ah legislators
(16:00:39)griz: I was going to say that people shouldn't be allowed to write laws about things they don't understand.
(16:00:53)rev: But then they'd never write ANY laws.
(16:00:59) griz: but then I realized that was an unnecessary elaboration on politicians shouldn't write laws
(16:00:59) rev: Not that that would be bad...
(16:01:31) griz: except maybe some really basic ones - like "don't kill people"
(16:01:54) griz: and they can write all the laws they want about sexual harrasment and nepotism - they understand those...

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Tell me lies

Mae pointed me to this interesting piece about the Tivo stats from the Oscars. While the dataset is not broad enough to come to any motivational conclusions, it is certainly interesting that the much maligned statement by Moore was one of the most replayed segments. Most mainstream news sources that I saw reported that he'd been booed from the second he walked on stage (though at least some of them later edited their reports to reflect the reality that there was no booing until he started speaking about the war and even then the response was fairly evenly split between negative and positive). I watched it, so I knew the "liberal" media was lying in order to make Moore look bad.

I've seen more and more posts recently about the "liberal" media. I can't take seriously anyone who considers mainstream media to be liberal. Someone yesterday referred to "CNN (hardcore liberal)". Obviously this person is not capable of being honest (or they are so far to the right that CNN seems liberal, which is more frightening as even Pat Robertson considers CNN to be moderate). There are mainstream media outlets that are moderate with liberal positions on some issues and conservative ones on others. There are no mainstream media outlets that are flat out liberal.

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When the lie's so big

I've had this conversation or some subset thereof more times than I can recall in the past several weeks. If you can't give me a REAL reason, then I don't believe you. Deal with it.

Last night was a v. good workout (kickboxing followed buy powerflex). I've been slacking lately about working out, I need to get in there at least 3x/week and I've been doing only one or two. I think I made up for some of it with all the home improvement projects of late, but regardless I plan on being more consistent.

Mae and I were talking last night about the perceptions that people have of others, and particularly the perceptions they seem to have about us. I've heard from a variety of people what sorts of perceptions others have of us (seperately and together) and I'm always entertained at how laughably incorrect they are. You think you know, but you have no idea. To give just one example, I'm much more volatile than Mae ;)

Off to add several thousand users to LDAP.

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TV Party tonight!

This is some funny stuff.

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Hey, look at me now

New reviews are up. I've tried several times to review Good Charlotte, but can't bring myself to listen to the whole CD. It's very predictable and boring. The new Hootie is good, but not really my kind of thing. Same with The White Stripes. I just don't get the appeal of them. Oh well. Taproot: cliche. Jack Johnson: wishes he was Jimmy Buffet. Liam Lynch rocks, I need more. System of a Down is increasingly silly. They're almost a self parody at this point. If they get any more ridiculous they'll have to change their name to Mudvayne. I'm fairly sure Glassjaw is the sort of band people mean when they refer to emo. I'm unimpressed. Whiny and irritating. Same for Saliva. Simple Plan is marginally better (they're not nearly as whiny, and they almost rock). Raveonettes: psychedelic garage rock. If you're into it, it's not bad. Revis is fairly generic rock/hard rock. Decent voice, not really suited to the material. Favorite is sort of emo with attitude. Not bad, has potential. BoySetsFire is a modern day Slayer. They probably say Heavy Fucking Metal. Last but not least, we have Unloco. Half this damn sampler is emo bullshit. It's better than country (what's not?) but nothing I would choose to listen to.

reviewed

• Concrete Blonde - Live In Brazil
• Linkin Park - Meteora
• Ministry - Animositisomina
• Godsmack - Faceless
• Flickerstick - Causing A Catastrophe

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Nobody's listening

Work has been insanely busy. I'm also working on the redesigning the site of the infertility support group and trying to spend more time playing guitar. So I've been busy. Much new music to review, and some tweaks that will become PABlog 1.3 sometime this weekend most likely. TTYL

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Don't fence me in

I put in my first fence today. Really not all that difficult. Dig hole, put post in hole, pour in concrete, let set, attach chain link, done.

Having seen a lot of the coverage on CNN this weekend, I can only hope for a rapid resolution to the hostilities. And that Aaron Brown reconsiders his current course of heavily abusing psychotropic drugs before going on the air. The man is broadcasting from a different planet. I've never heard such random questions, so many bizarre non-sequiters, and the reporters and guests are quite clearly disturbed by him. Insane.

Steve Martin is unquestionably the best host the Oscar's have ever had. Brilliant, funny, biting, and with impeccable timing and delivery. UPDATE I knew I'd end up blogging too soon. Michael Moore was brilliant. There were several great statements favoring a quick peace in Iraq and the safe return of our troops, which I support, but Moore got all the nominees in his category to join him on stage in protest of the war. As he noted "We love non-fiction. We live in fictitious times with fictitious elections that give us a fictitious president." Brilliant I say.

Oh, and I put up the latest version of PABlog. Release notes on the project page, you can download from zope.org (it's faster) if you'd rather.

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Pretty Vacant

"Microsoft software is carefully designed to keep your company's valuable information in, and unauthorised people and viruses out. Which means that your data couldn't really be safer, even if you kept it in a safe. Which is great news for the survival of your company. But tragic news for hackers."

This is from a Microsoft ad. Apparently their marketing department doesn't actually know anything about their own products. They probably use Macs ;)

So our plans for the weekend may change. Yes, I'm still doing fencing, but we had plans to go out with the bloggers and also to get together with anger + wife and we had even talked about going to see Dave and his band at Harrah's. Sick cats take precedence, however. With the probable exception of Tempe and Juju, I think I've dealt with more poop in the last 24 hours than anyone I know.

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Y'all ready for this?

The Department of Homeland Security would like you to be ready. Detailed explanations of the symbols are provided here. An example of such an explanation would be

Try to absorb as much of the radiation as possible with your groin region. After 5 minutes and 12 seconds, however, you may become sterile

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Die For Oil, Sucker

I don't believe that this is war is solely for oil, but it is a significant factor. The following is from Jello Biafra's I Blow Minds For A Living album.

---

So here's a piece I wrote against the war, and it's not out of date, I don't apologize for it. For all these people in the San Francisco Examiner and on TV who ridiculed the people protesting the war "Ho ho, you were wrong!": No. Killing a hundred thousand Iraqis for profit is much worse than being wrong. As Richard Nixon used to say during the Viet Nam war, 'Now more than ever'.

YOU!

You like you are just the ripe age to be drafted. Does that even bother you? Still thinkin about that? There was a sign at Jonestown behind Jim Jones' dead body and it said "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Which would you rather sacrifice your hot car or your life?

Die for oil, sucker.

Born on the firecracker Fourth of July raised on football and mtv, never felt what its like to have to fight to stay free. Vietnam just a Time-Life book memory. The mask is off again this time nobody cares but you can't keep dancing if your legs are blown away.

Die for oil, sucker.

You too can get you face shot off so arms race tycoons won't have to get a real job. The cold war is over, it was all a mirage. We could use that money we got problems to solve, but we're not allowed a chance at the peace dividend because our psycho president has got his head in the sand. Saddam Hussein so egocentric, he even replaced Mickey Mouse on watches with his own face. Last spring he was our tyrant we thought we could use. We sold him his guns and his nerve gas too. When he told our ambassador he was fixin to invade, April Glaspy told him "No problem, Uncle Scam wouldn't care". What kind of a Bush-league double cross is this? Cheap oil? The price has already gone up. This still might end up making Hiroshima look like a picnic. Keep in mind James Baker is a Born Again Christian. Does he believe in Armageddon and the Last Generation?

Die for oil, sucker. Sucker. Sucker.

You too can get your spinal cord snapped to save greedy kings from the greed of Iraq. Give your life for a country where women can't vote and people still get their hands and heads chopped off. In Saudi Arabia they'll stone you to death for sleeping with another person's husband or wife. Women can't go out alone, or show their face or even drive. And there's never elections, you ...

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Status Back Baby

Renee just showed me a report. A report of what reports are needed and formats and lots of other information. For this particular item, under the header of "Hardcopy" it says 'Yes'. Under "Online", it says 'No'. Then there's a header for "Hardcopy and Online". Sometimes this says 'No', sometimes 'Yes', sometimes 'YesNo'. And it's not consistent with the indications in the two other columns. I would think you could derive 'Is this report available in both hardcopy and online" by looking at the Hardcopy and Online columns. But that's just me.

In our conference room there are a lot of chairs around the perimeter of the room, and a large table in the center. Usually, we all sit around the edge and Mike1 sits at the table. Today Matt1 also sat there, at the opposite end. As the meeting went on and devolved into a discussion about what qualifies as a Final document and what qualifies as a Draft and who should review which, Matt got bored and started playing spin-the-cel phone. He was fairly subtle about it, he would make suggestive eyes and lick his lips at whomever it ended up pointing at. This was the highlight of the meeting, really.

So the Unisys people will be Observers at the training next week. We will be Assisting. Is anyone actually being TRAINED? Why are the Unisys people Observing? Because their contract doesn't allow for billing training. Or assisting. Just observing. So they're not being trained, they're observing. They get the workbooks and the handouts and get to ask questions. If there's a certificate of completion they'll get one of those as well. But they're not being trained, they're observing. I love bureacracies.

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Your most valuable posession

The funniest email ever sent. Seriously.

Morning people suck. One of them was actually badgering me yesterday to come in at 6:30 for a meeting today! Why? Because he gets in at 6 and really has nothing to do until everyone else gets in so he always tries to get people to come in early for meetings. I finally agreed to come in at 7.30 for a completely pointless meeting that didn't even really address what he said he wanted to talk about. Never again. You want a pointless meeting, it has to be during core business hours.

I've been thinking about our current political situation and I'm now wondering is this whole Iraq showdown actually a ruse? Walter Cronkite was in Kansas City talking about the possible effects of the war. He noted that there is a very real chance that it could lead to the demise of the UN, which so many fought and died for in WWII. Is the real purpose not to get Saddam out of power but rather to force the end of the UN? That has been a very public goal of many of the Administration officials and a longtime dream of extreme conservatives.

Should make for an interesting talk tonight: Jello @ the Galaxy on Washington. Be there.

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Jealous again

Long weekend. Much home improvement, not nearly as much sleep. Ah well. And tonight I must finish several projects (kitchen cabinet door hanging and new faucets for the wife). Seems like there's never enough time for everything. And there really isn't.

In the past two weeks I've gotten two very interesting pieces of snailmail. I received notification of an arrest warrant, addressed to someone with the same last name but with an address on a different street quite some ways away, which I mentioned before. Today I got a notice from the Missouri Department of Revenue, in regards to a missing Schedule A. My name is correct. My address is slightly off. Off in that they have me listed as living on a street which doesn't exist in Saint Louis. Anyone know where Slomler is? Has anyone HEARD of Slomler? I'm not entirely sure if I should be impressed with the USPO's ability to deliver mail based on only partial information, or if I should be frightened that this wildly incorrectly addressed envelope actually made it to the right place. Either way

Data entry people should not be illiterate or dyslexic

There is a mindset prevalent amongst a subset of the population that the only reason other countries oppose us in the UN is for the sake of being difficult. I've tried reasoning with these people, but obviously if someone accepts as an absolute truth something as absurd as that, you can't do much. I'll grant you that there are certainly likely times that it does happen, and times that the US does the same. I tried explaining the idea that just because the US wants something doesn't mean that other countries believe that it will be in their own best interest to go along. The response? "But they should, because we're right. They're just doing it to be contrary, because they don't like us." Gee, why don't they like us. I can't ever get a real answer out of these sorts of people. Could it be that they see the US actions as hostile to their own interests? Isn't that a valid reason for a country to oppose us in the UN? We do so for that very reason all the time (as we should). But these are the same people who firmly and completely believe that the US is always right in everything they do in foreign policy no matter what and have never done anything wrong. The only mistakes we've made are not fighting harder in Viet Nam and not providing more arms to the Shah of Iran. Interesting, if insanely ignorant, mindset. The US is not always right any more than any other country is always right. Sometimes we are, sometimes we are not. Welcome to reality. The other thing I find interesting about these people is they believe that the government is totally inept when dealing with domestic issues (I tend to agree with that opinion in many cases). I'm not sure ...

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Obviously Influenced By The Devil

Stupid people with access to technology. This is bad. What a wonderful use of time and resources to come up with a powerpoint presentation that has a screen saying "just one question" and a follow up screen that has some lame clip art of a stressed out person saying "Is it Friday yet?". People should be docked pay for sending me crap like that. There are already two people on this project whose emails are all redirected to /dev/null. After almost a year of this, neither of them has yet to comment about me not replying to a work related email. I obviously haven't missed anything important by idiot-filtering them. Here's a tip: If more than 10% of the email you send has FW: in the subject, you need to rethink your habits. Particularly if you plan on sending me anything. I have an astoundingly large killfile. And yet I've never missed an important email. Just the crap.

GEEKSPEAK WARNING
Most government agencies have a directive of some sort dictating a Common Desktop Environment. And such is the case here. Windows NT 4 with Service Pack 6, Netscape 4.76 (seriously:4.76. In 2003), Microsoft Office 97, Microsoft Outlook Express. Most of the servers are Solaris/HPUX/Linux/AIX. And there are mainframes. Oh are there mainframes. Lots of mainframes. The tech support people are all fairly frustrated supporting NT. While NT is perfectly serviceable, it's fairly crippled. No hotplug USB, no multiple monitors, lot's of blue screens. It's pretty funny to see the look on their faces when I tell them I'm running Red Hat. Everyone wants to come see it. They gaze with longing. Forcing people to use NT is just wrong. New Dells come in with USB optical mice? Oh, I'll just take one of them for my system, since no one else in our group can use them. Except Mike3 who is running XP. Since he's SA he can get away with it. Spare video cards lying around? Cool, dual 19" monitors. I like my setup. And yet none of the non-tech people have any clue that I'm not running a Windows system. They send me powerpoints? Open Office. They send me Word Docs? Open Office. Zip files? unzip. The only thing I have a problem opening are the virii and the Windows Media files of lame things that they found online.

We have a bunch of new Dells. They have four sticks of memory each. They are labelled "128","128","256",and"256". I was not a math major, but I'm reasonably sure that adds up to 768. People are complaining that WSAD is rather slow and that running it along with the application formerly known as TogetherJ is simply not possible. It's fairly sluggish on my box as well, so we can't blame NT entirely. Odd. Gee, the systems are only reporting 512M of memory. We talk to LAN Support. Seems Dell has an interesting new approach to labelling memory. The ones labelled 256 are not 256M. Two ...

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I'm afraid of Americans

Brian Eno has some wonderful insight into the European view of Americans. Read it, think about it, comment.

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No time, time to get a watch repaired

There is some geekspeak scattered around this post and not labelled, sorry.

Everything always comes together on the same day. At the same time. And that is quite naturally the time everyone has to stop by to talk about whatever needs to be done (fairly enough). This has been an insane day. Seriously.

Started with a meeting on the bill payment system which has added yet more pages and they need updated sample screens ASAP. No prob, I expected several of the changes anyway as I didn't think the two user groups really understood how differently they both operate. They don't.

As I started on that, I got pulled into a meeting on BRIO reporting (setting up the BRIO server to transfer exported html to the WebSphere server) and got tasked with figuring out some technical details. Looks like it will be simple, but I can't hear about BRIO without thinking about this BRIO.

rev:http://www.briotoy.com
renee:too bad I didn't get that version of brio... it would be way more fun
rev: I was just thinking that
renee:maybe we can upgrade

New machines are arriving. Well parts of new machines. They are being delivered to the main office and the account rep is driving them here. But they don't all fit in her car, so she'll bring what she can today and borrow her husband's truck tomorrow for the rest. I'd transcribe the incredibly entertaining conversation about getting the machines and configuring them, but as it intertwined with tangent about BRIO and memory upgrades and now I don't even remember what else and involved Mike1 and Mike3 and Chris and Keith and was completely insane I doubt I could. None of us could follow the crosstalk and at the ended we agreed to talk about Jack Daniels instead.

CuteMatt then reminded me of a half dozen new images I promised for the portal page, supertabs, and side nav of the addres book application. They'd like those yesterday.

Security updates blah blah blah.

Renee came in about a half dozen times being the unfortunate messenger between myself and the gov person about this whole BRIO reports and permissions issues since the reports will live outside WebSphere. I tried to give as many conflicting answers as possible. Ultimately, we'll end up doing the Right Thing(tm) and making them login to the reports seperately using Apache authentication.

I forgot to eat lunch. And I have a dozen calls to make which won't get made today.

The sign at the grill in the cafeteria today read "Special: Grill Closed". That is definitely an improvement over their usual offerings.

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Everybody must get stoned

If you live in Missouri, you may be interested in calling your rep to voice your support for medical marijuana. That is, of course, assuming you support it.

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Words have no meaning

Mike1: There will be training upstairs next week on [some software I didn't catch the name of]. R and M will be there, but you can't be trained because [some political reason I didn't pay attention to]. You can't observe, or be trained, but you can assist. You'll get all the handouts and workbooks and you can ask questions, but you are there to assist.
R: They're really hung up on terminology, aren't they?
Me: They aren't FRENCH fries, they're FREEDOM fries.
K:Except that they come from Belgium anyway.

I sometimes wonder how I don't go insane. Then S & I will sit and catalog how people misuse words (mute point, irregardless, etc etc). That helps.

It's always vaguelly disturbing to get an arrest warrant notice in the mail. Perhaps even more disturbing to realize that it is addressed to someone with a different first name and middle initial. On a different street. In a different city. And it was mailed a month and a half ago. Our Postal System is sometimes a scary thing.

Tonight is party down with Sugar at Helen Fitzgerald's. Come out and celebrate him getting another year closer to incontinence!

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When the lie's so big

We are scared of the world now, and the world is scared of us. Bush officials...want a spectacular show of American invincibility to make the wicked and the wayward think twice before crossing us. Of course, our plan to sack Saddam has not cowed the North Koreans and Iranians, who are scrambling to get nukes to cow us. It still confuses many Americans that, in a world full of vicious slimeballs, we're about to bomb one that didn't attack us on 9/11 (like Osama); that isn't intercepting our planes (like North Korea); that isn't financing Al Qaeda (like Saudi Arabia); that isn't home to Osama and his lieutenants (like Pakistan); that isn't a host body for terrorists (like Iran, Lebanon and Syria). - Maureen Dowd.

Funny how all this focus on the lesser of many evils. Again, I'll reiterate my position:Saddam should go and should further be prosecuted for his many crimes against his own people. Iraq should have *real* elections. But this should be done with the support of the UN, not as a cowboy mission featuring Bruce Willis. I don't want the US to have to spend the next 30 years policing the place and suffering the mass of terrorist attacks that will come in the wake of us invading. But now that Cheney's pals at Halliburton have the contract to put out "potential oil fires" in Iraq, it's a done deal. There's profits to be made.

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Who needs sleep?

I hate bad metaphors. Particularly when they're a primary structure of my dreams.

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Just another manic monday

Ah Monday. I wish it was Sunday. This is that day of the week that I will get in about 2 hours of work if I'm lucky. The rest of the time will be wasted in pointless meetings (there are useful meetings. The ones held on Monday are not them.) or attempting to work while people talk at me about what they did all weekend. If I'm working on something, and I don't stop when you start talking to me about something non-work related, chances are that means I'm trying to concentrate on what I'm doing and don't want to be distracted. I may or may not be interested in what you are blathering about, and if I am I'll catch up with you later when I'm not quite obviously focused on something else. It reminds me of my days in retail. I could be crouched behind the counter, on the phone, opening the safe, and have my hands literally full while two clerks leaned against the other end of the counter bored. Yet invariably, people would hoist themselves onto the counter and balance precariously in order to ask me where they could find Dee-Lite or some such nonsense. "Gee, try looking under D. Or maybe ask someone who is not quite obviously busy if they can help you." Maybe I need to go back to that sort of response. Even if I'm interested in what you have to say, coming in and launching into what you want to say without checking to see if I'm busy is rude and irritating. If I'm paging through error logs trying to analyze a server crash, I probably don't want to listen to your story about the movie you saw the other night. I may want to hear about it later, but not now.

Linux Rock Star Rick Moen has surfaced in the desktop linux forums. This is the man who once said "Most of humanity doesn't care about you at all, and part of it doesn't like you. Deal with it. Preferably without whining to the rest of us." I'm thrilled to have him there, it should prove most entertaining and enlightening.

GEEKSPEAK WARNING!
If I have to develop for WebSphere, at least I can develop using Python. This looks like fun ;)

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Drink and cook the prodigal son, fondue forks for everyone

Busy day? I just spent four hours burying the cat!

Got way more done yesterday than we do in any normal day, as Mae notes. In addition to all that I designed the workbench I'm going to build in the garage (probably next weekend) and came up with my materials list. Yes, I am a DIY geek as well. Dinner last night with Jeff and Misty was a blast. That was the most intellectually stimulating outing we've had in a long time. Aside from the requisite "biggest small town" connection talk we hit everything from parenting to entertainment to philosophy and religion and even squeezed in some politics (note: my politics are closer to Jeff's than you might think, depending on the topic). Sadly we didn't get to talking about one of the most important things until we were leaving. Next time, we'll have to start with guitars and guitarists and music in general. I finally have a lead on some great classical guitar in STL, so I'm thrilled!

GEEKSPEAK AHEAD
Restructured comments in PABlog, fixed a security glitch, changed tree to use %m instead of %b for month (num instead of name), I'm about halfway to getting the redirect to last updated month going, and I expect to push the next build tonight. For next build I'm thinking about archives and maybe spell checking. I doubt spell checking will happen before 2.0. We'll see.

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Sun come up it was blue and gold

And it had no X. There were many errors on reboot. Blew an hour or so in the webfarm getting DB2 on the dev SunFire going. I think this would look great in my office at home, don't you? 876G of MP3. That would rawk.

"Why not just make the db2 user a member of root?"

I can think of a lot of reasons. But that's just me. Busy weekend ahead, with dinners and home improvements, and finishing up the next release of PABlog*. Hopefully I'll have time to also peruse the gift that Griz sent me: his backup of the FEC code so I can migrate it to Zope! Woohoo!

*due to limitations of the talkback_tree I'm pulling comments of the main page, changing month folders from abbreviations to numbers (e.g. Jan becomes 01) for ordering, and perhaps even checking to see if current month has entries and if not go to the previous month.

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Music is everything

New reviews up, I covered the Ramone's Tribute, and Norah Jones.

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Freedom of speech, just watch what you say

Funny. The United States, the "land of the free" is behaving more and more like Stalinist Russia these days. I suppose freedom of speech is an overrated right anyway. It's not like any of us have anything worthwhile to say anyway, right?

But I never thought I'd see the day when someone could be arrested for wearing a t-shirt. Particularly one that isn't profane. I have little confidence that our current Supreme Court would decide in favor of the First Amendment in this case. Which reminds me, what's the old saying about the apple not falling far from the tree. She even helped rig elections in Florida to help a Bush (in this case to stay in office rather than to gain it, however).

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Nothing ever turns out like you want it to

It shouldn't take 5 hours to complete a 15 minute process. Really, it shouldn't. Of course, with no CM, and no process, deployment of new applications can become tricky. After some investigation I discovered several layers of changes that needed to made to the test environment in order for the new module to work. Updates to privilege, user group, and page tables. Updates to LDAP. Even the occasional DBConnector class to be added to the classpath. We need to be more organized.

Tom Waits covering the Ramones is really incredible. The Return of Jackie and Judy. As Chris noted, it sounds like the Ramones caught in Mississippi mud. Full review coming soon. Suffice it to say that the Metallica and U2 tracks suck incredibly badly. So badly I may have to channel the prophet Toaster Leavings.

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Kill 'Em All

When people ask why I have serious reservations about the death penalty, and generally believe that it should only be used in cases where there is absolutely no question about guilt AND the crime is so egregious as to warrant such an extreme action, I like to cite stories such as this as the founding of my opposition:

In December, Texas murder defendant Leonard Rojas' time for appeals ran out, and he was executed. Sixty-eight days later, three members of the state's highest court for criminal cases explicitly concluded that Rojas' appointed lawyer was woefully incompetent and that the court's majority had ignored that incompetence while Rojas was still alive. The lawyer, David K. Chapman: had never handled a death-penalty case, failed to investigate Rojas' case, rarely met with Rojas, admitted he missed filing deadlines (one of which barred Rojas from any federal appeal), and had had his license suspended three times by the Texas Bar (once during the time he was representing Rojas). [Austin American-Statesman, 2-14-03]

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