CarlSeibert

Phew. Anxiety level back to normal. Found mobile theme link on mobile and it appears to be working fine now. Am still seeing "view first unread" inconsistently in full size browser. Some threads show it. Some don't. Will continue fumbling about and report back.

Make that " I can't consistently get to subscribed threads." Sometimes "Quick Links" appears expanded, sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't, I can't seem to expand it.

Can't seem to get to subscribed threads on my phone. Is the mobile theme just temporarily disabled?

This is probably a good moment to pause for a second to cherish people like Chris' parents and my uncle, who was not only rich, but got that way by being CEO of a major corporation, and was perhaps the most decent, humble man I've ever known. Because greed is universal. It's ironic that the people who want for nothing are more likely to be consumed by it than those who really have need. But it's in all of us. The trick is to keep it down to a dull roar. Given the right circumstances, most people will let greed override common sense, self interest or morality. That's how come confidence games work. And boy do they work! Think about the last decade. A big chunk of our economy had become a giant pyramid scheme. It was pretty obvious, but a whole society went along. A crime of astounding proportions, committed by so many people against so many victims that a lot of people would argue it shouldn't even be thought of as a "crime". Most of us will never doing anything much greedier/stupider/more self destructive than clicking on a "free vacation" ad and getting a computer virus for our efforts. But what has me freaked is that nowadays when somebody breaks free of the inhibitions that keep most of us trapped in mediocrity (and in a more positive light enable us to function as an orderly, sort of moral society) the scale of things has just gone off the chart. Here we have a petty embezzler who hit a company for $31 MILLION(!?) in credit card charges. Your standard operational grade Ponzi artist these days doesn't get on the front page of the newspaper unless his take is BILLIONS. (I kid you not. We've had two here locally in the past few months. The guy who took $1.4 billion was big news. The guy who took a bit less than a half-billion never got off the local page.) It's a creepy, weird world.

Hotel reservations, that is. Maybe I should add Wednesday......

Yesterday: Had a great lunch with Miguel (punctuated by Haiti phone calls) followed by a doctor's appointment (and the doctor was actually cool about the stream of phone calls). Today: Listened to Miguel's HE-5s in between more #@$%^& phone calls.

I built stands for my Apogees out of ordinary concrete blocks, tied together with all-thread and filled with sand bags. Apart from the teak skirts for appearance sake, they cost about nothing. Moving them around ain't much fun though.

I have reservations.

What? There's a Roscoe's in Chicago? Maybe we can have one in SoFla.... Frustrating day. Dealt with bad employee, then Haiti had earthquake. My coworker, who happens to run a charity down there with our fixer is ready to go, but the company in its infinite wisdom decided to send somebody from LA (where the new centralized international desk is.) So, I'm making arrangements to move somebody from New York freakin City (which last I checked is about 1500 miles farther from Haiti than we are) instead of our guy. Granted the LA person is one of the best two or three people in the world, but our guy ain't chopped liver. And he has a collapsed orphanage with 20 twenty now out-of-doors orphans who might appreciate a visit about now. This sucks.

I never knew that. I thought the principals just got old, business wasn't that great, etc. Whats the story?

Freezing our butts off. It's after noon and the widget on my screen says it's 39 degrees. This is not proper sub-tropical weather! Our house is relatively new, so it has heat. I can't imagine what it's like for the people who don't have it. Just huddle around class-A amps, I guess

Wow. That's pretty. If the guy on Agon doesn't work out, I think that Prospect Plastics makes dust covers locally. I've never seen their work, though.

My wife and her jewelry-designing friends all swear by the Optivisor. Personally, I have one of those desk lamp magnifier (with the fluorescent ring) and a Panavise with a couple different jaws.

x2 I have a no-fee checking account that I keep just a small amount of money in linked to PP. It just makes sense to limit your exposure.

Too big, is my point. The first stories have this person washing the money by buying designer clothes. Thirty-one million dollars in designer clothes would fill a giant warehouse. You'd have to hire a staff just to move the physical goods around. The scale of this thing is just weird. Or maybe the physical stuff was peripheral and the most of the money is sitting offshore somewhere. One the one hand it looks like absolute craziness. On the other, we have an enterprise that took some serious management and was sustained for a decade. Maybe it will all make sense in the final reel, but at the moment, I can't quite get my head around it.

Here's a cynical thought. $4-ish million dollars seems an outlandish amount of money to wash through credit cards. $20 million seems more than outlandish. I wonder if this person might be a fall guy of some sort, either through a straight frame-up (which is almost never done) or by the owners (or somebody else) seeing what's going on, or even seeing the potential and just making sure the controls were lax enough. Then the meltdown might cover up some sort of shortfall, either another embezzlement or business losses or whatnot. Or, the giant dollar figures could be pure BS for the benefit of the press. We've certainly seen schemes like that. Wayne - Could frame-up scenario work well enough to appeal to a rational person, or would the auditors be so sure to catch it that only another nut job would attempt it?(Exempting the trial-by-newspaper alternative, of course. That's mean and it may be counterproductive, but that doesn't make it irrational. God knows it's done enough.) Does anybody know if the suspect has been charged? Update: I just Googled. She's not yet been indicted. She's waived a timely hearing. In Federal criminal court, the grand jury is a rubber stamp, so indictment is just a formality. Also, in Fed court, just about everybody pleads out, (read into that what you will about the chances of getting a fair trial there) so a deal may be in the works. Koss is now claiming that the losses could be $31 million. Fantastic.

Major system upgrade. I went to the ENT doctor. His assistant vacuumed about a ton of nasty-looking gack out of my left ear. She was very impressed with the FR curve of my ears, BTW. The top couple octaves are waaay better on my left side now. It was pretty stunning in the doctor's office. The buzzing fluorescent ballast in the examination room (it was to my left) suddenly had real harmonics. Not a great thing in the specific, but it was thrill for me.

Colin, are you interested in other parts of the country? Should I ask around? There are lots of interesting people down here to arrest. Of course, in many of our police departments, you could actually be working for them.....

Must be the cold (by south Florida standards, anyway) weather. The voltage regulators on both of ours have gone on the fritz. It's like living in a cement mixer with two furry ping pong balls.

I actually didn't know/think they came is sizes at the ear end, since they squash and expand. (My 23 word review of Complys, BTW, is that I love them on my SE-420s, but I prefer the Christmas trees on my RE-1s. And fresh Complys sound better than older ones.) Jeff Koontz should know the answer to all questions Comply. [email protected]

Now I feel old.

Hand up. The tweed grills didn't invite much foolishness (Yes, there were two for most of my childhood, but I do remember the upgrade to stereo. I was about 5) and those tubes were waaay too scary to mess with.

Cool! (Another Apogee lovers speaks) Something feels more right about the world. My friend Howard is a Maggie dealer. I imagine these will be in his shop soon-ish. I'll report back when I've heard them. Mind you, I have no pressing reason to want to replace my Apogees. I just feel better that I could.

Their website is a placeholder page and the copy on it refers to the company in the past tense. Assumption is, well, we all know.... but I got the impression they were gone.

The saddest thing is that the people who have the most to lose in this are Koss' employees. They won't get a moment's attention in court, in the press or about anyway else, short of this forum. A bunch of loyal customers will get hosed, too. Nobody will notice or care about that either. I still have a burn about Chainsaw Al Dunlap destroying Scott Paper because I used some of their products in a hobby at the time. Of course, this is a little different because this doer was stealing FROM a corporation instead of FOR one - a point I'm sure her defense will raise. In my experience though - even before the public outrage over white collar crime - that argument's a non-starter with a jury. Even though this is an insane crime by definition - getting caught eventually is guaranteed - there isn't a snowball's chance she will flunk her psych exams badly enough to get anywhere with an insanity defense. (As Vicki pointed out) More often than not, I've seen clearly crazy people who one would think should warrant some sympathy take hard falls. And who's going to have a shred of sympathy for this person? And yes, Reuters quoting an unnamed person on Yelp truly took my breath away. Who the fuck was editing that story? (Rhetorical question, the editor's name was in the shirttail on the Reuters site, but my god! ......)