My first training in the arts was at a young age of about 8, my parents thought I had crappy handwriting (they were right) so they enrolled me in a calligraphy class. I still have crappy handwriting. Well, actually, nowadays my Japanese handwriting is much better than my English handwriting. Since that time, I've tried hundreds of pens of all manufactures, anyone who is really interested in writing wel should visit an art store, especially one that imports lots of oddball Japanese pens. Anyway, I prefer fountain pens, mostly because nobody will ever borrow them so I never lose my pens to theft. IMHO the most bang for the buck is the Lamy Safari, it's cheap and writes well. I prefer the Lamy "joy" pen, it has a wider nib that satisfies my calligraphic urges. But you have to know how to write italic to use the joy pen properly. But my favorite pen of all time is a cheapo crap Cross ballpoint. Mine has the IBM logo on it, I got it as an award for selling my first $1million of IBM equipment. I use it solely for financial transactions, it's sort of a weird superstition of mine. Pencils are another story. Everyone should have a really good mechanical pencil. The best kinds have retractable points so you don't poke holes in your shirt pockets. The Japanese have this one completely nailed. The Sanford Logo II 0.5mm is my favorite, although it doesn't retract the tip. For a good retractable-tip pencil, the Yasutomo Grip500 can't be beat. Rotring makes awesome mechanical pencils, although I don't personally like the harsh German design, I find them uncomfortable and hard to hold.
...when I first saw it on FARK about two weeks ago. They had a cool link to a Civil War reenactment supplier that will sell you a modern-manufacture cannon just like the ones they used back in the olden days. Only $7000, powder and shot not included.
Anyway, I am reminded of a story I read a while ago. Some curators (Art Institute of Chicago or The Smithsonian or someplace like that) were examining an antique gun and found out it was loaded, and had been on display for decades with a full charge. The gunpowder charge was so old, they feared it was unstable and could detonate at any moment, so they decided to investigate all their other weapons. They found out that about 20% of their collection was fully loaded and nobody ever knew about it. They're desperately trying to defuse all these old weapons, which includes everything from relatively modern antique guns to old cannons. And they can't just pour water down the barrels because some of them have bullets in the way, some of the weapons would disintegrate if you got them wet, so they're in a real quandary. Now I wonder about the safety of all those cannons on public display in parks etc.
I once heard a musicologist say "music is just pure tone plus noise, and everyone has their particular preference for their favorite type of noise." Damn I wish I could remember who said that, it was brilliant.
No, I would have been right back under the control of the embezzling CEO if I'd gotten my job back. And you omitted one thing I wouldn't have, if I'd have fought this: my kneecaps. The CEO threatened to have my legs broken, and I believed he was fully capable of it.
Just how DO you get around a bad reference? I had the written references in good terms, but everyone who checked my resume called him and I never heard back again.
Unfortunately, the company was privately held, I blew the whistle to the 3 shareholders with 49%, and the embezzling CEO had 51%. The 49 percenters were just as anxious to cover this up as the CEO, they'd have lost their shirt if it had become public before the merger. But I have been convinced by this thread to go public. I will resurrect the data and publish it on my blog, and my blog has sufficient googlejuice to guarantee it would be the first hit if anyone ever searched the CEO by name. But the statute of limitations has expired, and there is nothing to be gained except revenge, and to cause trouble for the embezzling CEO's current corporation (and his gov't contracts). And that's good enough for me. Maybe I'll get a small amount of vindication too. But I wonder how this would look to prospective employers. Would I get extra bonus points for being an honest businessman who tried to stop a fraud? Or would I be labeled a troublemaker?
I went to the District Attorney. They laughed at me, and told me to move on and forget about it. You aren't listening. What could I have possibly gained? Revenge? I'd still be out of a job. The best I could have done was to get my old job back and back pay, and I'd still be under the control of the embezzling CEO.
I saved the data right out of a custom written DBase app. Yes, the records are in comma delimited format, who gives a shit about the headers? Maybe I exported them, I don't remember. If I have described this incorrectly, it is only because I haven't touched DBase in many years, and I don't give a shit if some/. troll wants to assert their technological omnipotence by calling me on something so trivial. You haven't been reading very closely. The lawyers said the illegal contract was unenforceable. And that wouldn't have stopped the CEO of one of the Top 50 California corporations from trying to grind me into the dirt with that same contract. He wouldn't have gotten his $50k, but he would have easily achieved the desired effect by forcing me to hire lawyers to defend myself. It's not easy fighting a rich fucker when you're broke.
Yes, that's just what the lawyer said, the contract was invalid. But he said this was a fight with no payoff, there was nothing I could win except the right to disclose, which would get me nothing.
AFAIK, the statute of limitations is 7 years. That has now expired. Do YOU know where every 5in floppy from 7+ years ago is located in your storage boxes? Now please explain to me how to install a 5in floppy drive in a Mac. I haven't owned a machine with a 5in floppy since I ditched my Apple//c. And I sure as hell don't need MSAccess, DBase files are comma-delimited text files, I already have everything I need, except a reason to bother with resurrecting the files. The illegal nondisclosure contract is still in force, I'm still liable for the $50k penalty. Notice I haven't disclosed the name of the embezzling CEO. What I've said so far is already sufficient to invoke the penalty, the only thing stopping the CEO is that he'd have to come forward and admit to being the embezzler in order to pursue me.
It's easy to blackball someone. You just give bad references to anyone who checks up on your resume. That's why I had previously negotiated a written letter of reference with only positive remarks, which I most certainly deserved. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop them from doing evil deeds behind your back, like giving bad references over the phone, trying to deny your COBRA and Unemployment claims, etc.
oops, I forgot the funniest part: my CPU, which had the hard drive formatted, contained no incriminating data. It did contain lots of data on my sales deals in progress, which the company completely lost and obviously took a big financial hit for erasing.
Yes, I kept an offsite backup of the evidence. I kept TWO offsite backups, one was in a safe deposit box in a bank. I left out the part just before this meeting, where one of the VPs that I had blown the whistle to made me take him with me to the bank to retrieve and surrender the disk. Idiot VP thought I only had time to make one copy of the disk, this all happened so fast. I still have a backup disk. The embezzling CEO threatened to make it look like I was doing the embezzling, so it only seemed prudent to keep extra backups. Now that the statute of limitations has run out, I'm considering naming names publicly. But I have to find a machine that can read a 5in floppy with DBase formatted data.
How a whistleblower gets fired
on
How Were You Fired?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I was called into the CEO's office. There were four pieces of paper on his desk. One was a check for my last two weeks pay, the second was 2 weeks severance pay, and the third was a letter of recommendation in positive terms. The fourth piece of paper was a contract wherein I would agree to never disclose that he had been embezzling, since that would endanger his negotiations to sell the company and smear his "good name," and that if I ever told anyone, I would be liable for $50k in liquidated damages, as the contract clearly stated. I was told I would only receive the checks if I signed the contract. I refused, I said it was illegal to withhold my previously owed pay. He screamed at me until he was blue in the face. I signed the contract and wrote "signed under diress" underneath the name. Embezzler CEO tore the paper up and threw it in my face. He said he'd blackball me forever unless I signed. He threatened to have his buddies break my legs if I didn't sign. I finally signed, just to get the asshole out of my face. I immediately went back to my desk and found the VP, who wanted me to hand off any work remaining on my CPU, whereupon I found that my hard disk had been formatted by the CEO, presumably to wipe the evidence I had collected of the his embezzling. The VP was positively livid, but he knew the CEO had done it and not me. VP was tasked with watching me clear out my desk, and escorted me off the premises. I drove to the bank and immediately cashed the checks. Then I consulted a lawyer as to whether a contract signed under diress would be valid. The lawyer said I could probably win and have the contract nullified in court, but what would be the point? I'd be free to tell the truth about embezzler CEO, but I'd spend thousands litigating it and there wouldn't be any money in it for me. The best I could win was a wrongful termination suit, and I could get my old job back, oh boy what a prize! The asshole CEO blackballed me anyway, I haven't had a decent job ever since.
Oh yeah, that would work GREAT. A temporary glitch in the system, a little RF or IR interference, and suddenly the whole audience has their alarms going off in the middle of the show. And it would be almost impossible to figure out just which person in the crush of people exiting the theater is the one pocketing the device. But of course you could always put GPS tracking devices in them and chase people down, should only add about $100 to each device. Are you starting to get the point that this wireless gadgetry is a stupid idea in this application? One obvious solution has already been suggested by the people who have seen these things in operation. You make the users BUY the gadget, and then you don't care if they steal it. The other obvious solution would be to make the devices big and heavy enough to make them difficult to steal. I figure if they were about 20 pounds and about the size of a shoebox, that would be sufficient to keep people from pocketing them. It is far simpler just to wire them down. Remember, technology is not the solution to EVERY problem.
I'm only 46, just on the edge of greylisting (I started really young). I actually went back to school and got 2 degrees in different fields, and then of course the money got sucked out of those too. America is turning into a ghost town, by the time GWB is done selling this country to Halliburton, there won't be a single job left except in the Army (and I'm too old for that).
I've built a system like this before, and I can tell you the one reason why they don't use wireless handheld gadgets. People will STEAL the damn things if they're not wired down. This is another classic case of why engineers should not be put in charge of product design. They're so caught up in the coolness of some new technology that they forget that PEOPLE are involved.
I try to convince myself I've gotten out of the rat race of Upward Mobility, and it's morally superior to have Downward Nobility. But I just want a fucken job. I helped build this industry in the early 1970s, now I'm supposed to be in the peak earning years of my career, but I'm locked out due to the bad economy. It sucks. There is nothing good about being unemployed.
I am reminded of a friend who was working for her PhD in Art History. Part of the final exam required her to be able to identify any image from the textbook with detailed info on date, artist, etc. She decided to turn her textbook into flashcards. Of course she immediately discovered she'd need TWO copies of the textbook to turn every photo into a card, since some images on one side of the page would cut into an image on the other side. Of course she needed 3 copies of the textbook since she had to study it too. And this was a $95 textbook, back in the 1970s when that was REAL money. Anyway, it is fairly easy to convert textbooks to PDFs on a scanner, I do it all the time. The easiest way is to cut the binding off the book, and shove all the pages in a sheet-fed scanner. Of course you destroy the book in the process, but you could have it rebound if you really cared to.
You are wrong. The UofI requires an author who uses his own textbook to refund his royalties directly to the students. Many teachers hand out cash on the first day of class.
Slashdot Mirror
My first training in the arts was at a young age of about 8, my parents thought I had crappy handwriting (they were right) so they enrolled me in a calligraphy class. I still have crappy handwriting. Well, actually, nowadays my Japanese handwriting is much better than my English handwriting. Since that time, I've tried hundreds of pens of all manufactures, anyone who is really interested in writing wel should visit an art store, especially one that imports lots of oddball Japanese pens.
Anyway, I prefer fountain pens, mostly because nobody will ever borrow them so I never lose my pens to theft. IMHO the most bang for the buck is the Lamy Safari, it's cheap and writes well. I prefer the Lamy "joy" pen, it has a wider nib that satisfies my calligraphic urges. But you have to know how to write italic to use the joy pen properly.
But my favorite pen of all time is a cheapo crap Cross ballpoint. Mine has the IBM logo on it, I got it as an award for selling my first $1million of IBM equipment. I use it solely for financial transactions, it's sort of a weird superstition of mine.
Pencils are another story. Everyone should have a really good mechanical pencil. The best kinds have retractable points so you don't poke holes in your shirt pockets. The Japanese have this one completely nailed. The Sanford Logo II 0.5mm is my favorite, although it doesn't retract the tip. For a good retractable-tip pencil, the Yasutomo Grip500 can't be beat. Rotring makes awesome mechanical pencils, although I don't personally like the harsh German design, I find them uncomfortable and hard to hold.
Ooops, I'm an idiot, the deadline is 6PM Pacific time. 3 more hours to go.
They lied. Sitefinder is still active, and it's past the promised disconnection time of 6PM EST.
Note that "making plans to shut down" does not equal "shut down."
...when I first saw it on FARK about two weeks ago. They had a cool link to a Civil War reenactment supplier that will sell you a modern-manufacture cannon just like the ones they used back in the olden days. Only $7000, powder and shot not included.
Anyway, I am reminded of a story I read a while ago. Some curators (Art Institute of Chicago or The Smithsonian or someplace like that) were examining an antique gun and found out it was loaded, and had been on display for decades with a full charge. The gunpowder charge was so old, they feared it was unstable and could detonate at any moment, so they decided to investigate all their other weapons. They found out that about 20% of their collection was fully loaded and nobody ever knew about it. They're desperately trying to defuse all these old weapons, which includes everything from relatively modern antique guns to old cannons. And they can't just pour water down the barrels because some of them have bullets in the way, some of the weapons would disintegrate if you got them wet, so they're in a real quandary. Now I wonder about the safety of all those cannons on public display in parks etc.
I once heard a musicologist say "music is just pure tone plus noise, and everyone has their particular preference for their favorite type of noise."
Damn I wish I could remember who said that, it was brilliant.
No, I would have been right back under the control of the embezzling CEO if I'd gotten my job back. And you omitted one thing I wouldn't have, if I'd have fought this: my kneecaps. The CEO threatened to have my legs broken, and I believed he was fully capable of it.
Just how DO you get around a bad reference? I had the written references in good terms, but everyone who checked my resume called him and I never heard back again.
Unfortunately, the company was privately held, I blew the whistle to the 3 shareholders with 49%, and the embezzling CEO had 51%. The 49 percenters were just as anxious to cover this up as the CEO, they'd have lost their shirt if it had become public before the merger.
But I have been convinced by this thread to go public. I will resurrect the data and publish it on my blog, and my blog has sufficient googlejuice to guarantee it would be the first hit if anyone ever searched the CEO by name. But the statute of limitations has expired, and there is nothing to be gained except revenge, and to cause trouble for the embezzling CEO's current corporation (and his gov't contracts). And that's good enough for me. Maybe I'll get a small amount of vindication too. But I wonder how this would look to prospective employers. Would I get extra bonus points for being an honest businessman who tried to stop a fraud? Or would I be labeled a troublemaker?
I went to the District Attorney. They laughed at me, and told me to move on and forget about it. You aren't listening. What could I have possibly gained? Revenge? I'd still be out of a job. The best I could have done was to get my old job back and back pay, and I'd still be under the control of the embezzling CEO.
I saved the data right out of a custom written DBase app. Yes, the records are in comma delimited format, who gives a shit about the headers? Maybe I exported them, I don't remember. If I have described this incorrectly, it is only because I haven't touched DBase in many years, and I don't give a shit if some /. troll wants to assert their technological omnipotence by calling me on something so trivial.
You haven't been reading very closely. The lawyers said the illegal contract was unenforceable. And that wouldn't have stopped the CEO of one of the Top 50 California corporations from trying to grind me into the dirt with that same contract. He wouldn't have gotten his $50k, but he would have easily achieved the desired effect by forcing me to hire lawyers to defend myself. It's not easy fighting a rich fucker when you're broke.
Yes, that's just what the lawyer said, the contract was invalid. But he said this was a fight with no payoff, there was nothing I could win except the right to disclose, which would get me nothing.
AFAIK, the statute of limitations is 7 years. That has now expired. Do YOU know where every 5in floppy from 7+ years ago is located in your storage boxes? //c. And I sure as hell don't need MSAccess, DBase files are comma-delimited text files, I already have everything I need, except a reason to bother with resurrecting the files. The illegal nondisclosure contract is still in force, I'm still liable for the $50k penalty. Notice I haven't disclosed the name of the embezzling CEO. What I've said so far is already sufficient to invoke the penalty, the only thing stopping the CEO is that he'd have to come forward and admit to being the embezzler in order to pursue me.
Now please explain to me how to install a 5in floppy drive in a Mac. I haven't owned a machine with a 5in floppy since I ditched my Apple
It's easy to blackball someone. You just give bad references to anyone who checks up on your resume. That's why I had previously negotiated a written letter of reference with only positive remarks, which I most certainly deserved. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop them from doing evil deeds behind your back, like giving bad references over the phone, trying to deny your COBRA and Unemployment claims, etc.
oops, I forgot the funniest part: my CPU, which had the hard drive formatted, contained no incriminating data. It did contain lots of data on my sales deals in progress, which the company completely lost and obviously took a big financial hit for erasing.
Yes, I kept an offsite backup of the evidence. I kept TWO offsite backups, one was in a safe deposit box in a bank. I left out the part just before this meeting, where one of the VPs that I had blown the whistle to made me take him with me to the bank to retrieve and surrender the disk. Idiot VP thought I only had time to make one copy of the disk, this all happened so fast.
I still have a backup disk. The embezzling CEO threatened to make it look like I was doing the embezzling, so it only seemed prudent to keep extra backups. Now that the statute of limitations has run out, I'm considering naming names publicly. But I have to find a machine that can read a 5in floppy with DBase formatted data.
I was called into the CEO's office. There were four pieces of paper on his desk. One was a check for my last two weeks pay, the second was 2 weeks severance pay, and the third was a letter of recommendation in positive terms. The fourth piece of paper was a contract wherein I would agree to never disclose that he had been embezzling, since that would endanger his negotiations to sell the company and smear his "good name," and that if I ever told anyone, I would be liable for $50k in liquidated damages, as the contract clearly stated. I was told I would only receive the checks if I signed the contract. I refused, I said it was illegal to withhold my previously owed pay. He screamed at me until he was blue in the face. I signed the contract and wrote "signed under diress" underneath the name. Embezzler CEO tore the paper up and threw it in my face. He said he'd blackball me forever unless I signed. He threatened to have his buddies break my legs if I didn't sign. I finally signed, just to get the asshole out of my face. I immediately went back to my desk and found the VP, who wanted me to hand off any work remaining on my CPU, whereupon I found that my hard disk had been formatted by the CEO, presumably to wipe the evidence I had collected of the his embezzling. The VP was positively livid, but he knew the CEO had done it and not me. VP was tasked with watching me clear out my desk, and escorted me off the premises. I drove to the bank and immediately cashed the checks. Then I consulted a lawyer as to whether a contract signed under diress would be valid. The lawyer said I could probably win and have the contract nullified in court, but what would be the point? I'd be free to tell the truth about embezzler CEO, but I'd spend thousands litigating it and there wouldn't be any money in it for me. The best I could win was a wrongful termination suit, and I could get my old job back, oh boy what a prize! The asshole CEO blackballed me anyway, I haven't had a decent job ever since.
Oh yeah, that would work GREAT. A temporary glitch in the system, a little RF or IR interference, and suddenly the whole audience has their alarms going off in the middle of the show. And it would be almost impossible to figure out just which person in the crush of people exiting the theater is the one pocketing the device. But of course you could always put GPS tracking devices in them and chase people down, should only add about $100 to each device. Are you starting to get the point that this wireless gadgetry is a stupid idea in this application?
One obvious solution has already been suggested by the people who have seen these things in operation. You make the users BUY the gadget, and then you don't care if they steal it. The other obvious solution would be to make the devices big and heavy enough to make them difficult to steal. I figure if they were about 20 pounds and about the size of a shoebox, that would be sufficient to keep people from pocketing them. It is far simpler just to wire them down. Remember, technology is not the solution to EVERY problem.
I'm only 46, just on the edge of greylisting (I started really young). I actually went back to school and got 2 degrees in different fields, and then of course the money got sucked out of those too. America is turning into a ghost town, by the time GWB is done selling this country to Halliburton, there won't be a single job left except in the Army (and I'm too old for that).
I've built a system like this before, and I can tell you the one reason why they don't use wireless handheld gadgets. People will STEAL the damn things if they're not wired down. This is another classic case of why engineers should not be put in charge of product design. They're so caught up in the coolness of some new technology that they forget that PEOPLE are involved.
I'd give credit to the person I stole it from, if I could remember who it was.
I try to convince myself I've gotten out of the rat race of Upward Mobility, and it's morally superior to have Downward Nobility. But I just want a fucken job. I helped build this industry in the early 1970s, now I'm supposed to be in the peak earning years of my career, but I'm locked out due to the bad economy. It sucks. There is nothing good about being unemployed.
I am reminded of a friend who was working for her PhD in Art History. Part of the final exam required her to be able to identify any image from the textbook with detailed info on date, artist, etc. She decided to turn her textbook into flashcards. Of course she immediately discovered she'd need TWO copies of the textbook to turn every photo into a card, since some images on one side of the page would cut into an image on the other side. Of course she needed 3 copies of the textbook since she had to study it too. And this was a $95 textbook, back in the 1970s when that was REAL money.
Anyway, it is fairly easy to convert textbooks to PDFs on a scanner, I do it all the time. The easiest way is to cut the binding off the book, and shove all the pages in a sheet-fed scanner. Of course you destroy the book in the process, but you could have it rebound if you really cared to.
You are wrong. The UofI requires an author who uses his own textbook to refund his royalties directly to the students. Many teachers hand out cash on the first day of class.
...that every time the Feds go after "terrorists," all their guns are aimed at innocent citizens?