Thursday 18 July 2024 22:18:43 1720927123

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I don't need to tell you that 'pyramania' is pronounced peer-uh-main-ee-ah do I? Pyre-o-maney-uh was a great album by Def Leppard and the relative obscurity of the wonderful Alan Parsons Project album might cause some confusion for those not sharing the eclectic interests of your host. Alan and Eric engage in a bit of humor here, in the next album some of the material was... well, just take it however your inner voice tells you. APP will - if the Republic and therefore civilization - survives and thrives for a good while - be ranked with the greatest musical artists of all time.

Monday 15 Jul 2024 10:17:21 AM CDT

OK, slow day so far. Apparently not much excitement over the weekend. I guess if they close the place.... lessee fourteen years ago... well OK. People have been complaining about it for that long too, mail taking months or just disappearing. Fact is anything going through Memphis is likely to have problems. I use the US mail exactly once every three months - the trash pickup for my place in Cross County is done by a company in Bay and they send me a bill every three months and I send them a check. Generally no problems, I could just stop in Bay once every three months and drop off a check. I asked them if they would consider doing it online like everyone else but the lady said the owner wasn't interested. Maybe I could pay once a year?

I don't remember or know if I ever knew why they closed the Jonesboro facility. Jonesboro - and the metro area - is growing like a weed and Memphis is shrinking like a raisin. Yeah I know, it's the post office.

Not so much NEA as central but the Memphis telly had it. On account of one or more of the perps or victims or both was from Memphis. White County is a good ways from Memphis, being near Little Rock. Which might explain some things. Judsonia is a little place too. I'm down in the central part of the state a bit, usually with family and friends that have business there - Searcy, Conway, most of those places aren't too bad. Little Rock is still decent in places. Believe I'll follow this story and see what happens.

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I don't pay much attention to these guys - I see them mentioned here and there in connection with various things. I live mostly in Cross County these days but still get up to Jonestown and Paragould a good bit. One advantage to being a little smaller and slower-growing is that Paragould only got their Harbor Freight and a new Tractor Supply a few years ago. I still drive on up most times I'm in Jonesboro because of them. The new TSC in Paragould is big and easier to get to and from. Jonestown needs to upgrade theirs in the worst kind of way, their Harbor Freight too. Lowes is still good.

Anyway - as the vegetable-in-chief said about a dozen times the other day in a 'press conference' - dunno much about these EAPDD folks. Says they're some sorta government connected thing. Does that mean they're spending taxpayer money? If so I would take umbrage at that money being misappropriated. Not like 90% of the money isn't being wasted anyway, but I guess I'd resent it a little extra if the authorized money-wasters are dipping some out for themselves.

Seems they found it after the suspect had moved on to greener pastures. Took a look at her Linkedin page and she's had a bunch of jobs in those kinds of things, Memphis Chamber of Commerce, something in Wynne called the Crossroads Coalition that has a non-functional website, the the EAPPD thing and now the San Antonio airport. Resume full of Linkedin gobbledylingo, ...primarily responsible for somethingorother, non-traditional partnerships and resources to do something, refine organizational vision and division of roles and responsibilities, the usual. Not sure what any of it means but wonder if non-traditional includes illegal stuff. Will Texas extradite her?

Anyway, as Joetato was saying, could you really have this much fun reading the other guys' sites? I click on the EAPDD website - it is functional, seems to be a Wix kit, they're pretty good - to see what they had to say for themselves. Wasn't anything about the erstwhile administrator. But like most sites do it's got somewhere, maybe at the bottom of the home page, the location and address and phone number and email and that stuff. Lot of them still put their email address out there instead of a contact form. That allows it to be more easily harvested by spammers - dunno how much of a problem that is these days. Contact for is better, hides the email address and lets you do other stuff like sending mail to various places automagically, filtering, whatever. Okey-dokey, the street address for these folks is 2905 King Street in Jonesboro.

What's so special about 2905 King Street? You may well ask, if you want to know what if anything is special about 2905 King Street or King Street generally. Or if you don't care but just want to ask the rhetorical question, you may well ask. Alright, just when I was thinking there wasn't much to write about, here we go.

King Street is a funny thing on maps, which is to say they usually get it wrong. It seems to broken up in pieces, or there are several little King Streets, or something. This one is across from Olive Garden and those places on Stadium now known as Red Wolf. I used to wonder when they were renaming all the Indian stuff in Jonesboro Red Wolf this and that and the other why they renamed Stadium. It didn't have a culturally insensitive or politically incorrect name, it's the road the stadium was on. The ASU stadium so... Anyway this King Street is across Red Wolf, long ago and not far away but in that place someone built a little office park. About a half dozen good-sized buildings down the north side of the street and another where the street turned south a bit towards that Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market on Creek Drive. Got it? I still go there some but usually go to the one in Paragould because they sell beer and wine. Ever been in one of those? The likker aisle goes the full length of the store.

The building in the corner across from the others was at the time I was there for a while was occupied by the local IBM office and another company I forgot. Whatever it was I used to go over there now and then for something. As I remember the IBM folks had once occupied the 2905 address and when the company I went to work for bought it. 2905 was two buildings, built just alike and close together - I guess about thirty feet between them. There was a little software company called B&H associates that made banking software for little banks like the ones in small towns. It was pretty good and I worked for one of the banks that was a customer. They visited us quite a bit, us testing new stuff for them and being of their first few customers. They asked me to come to work for them because I knew a lot of stuff they needed people to know. How to code (COBOL back then the main one) but I also knew more about Unix than 90% of the computer type people population because I was fooling around with it about ten years earlier than most. And they were looking into moving from their proprietary NCR hardware to the new cheap Unix-based stuff. That's a whole 'nother story.

The two buildings were joined together so there was a big room about thirty by a hundred I guess, the computer room was in there. Data centers they call them now. They had a sweet deal, late 1980s the mainframe era was about to end but the end was not yet. A small bank like the one had worked at - small town about 10,000 with two three small banks - would spend somewhere close to a million, maybe a little more, for a setup. Software would run a 100K with about 25K annual maintenance. Hardware maker got most of the rest, plus about 100-200K annual maintenance. Wasn't that much for the bank, everybody made good money and everybody happy.

Hang with me a bit and I'll make a connection, as James Burke used to say. The company was owned by three partners, each had expertise and experience in a particular area. Problems come along though sometimes and one partner had some domestic troubles and another was getting old and ready to cash out and retire. Third one was the sales guy, dumber than most sales people and that's saying something, wanted to buy out his partners and run it the way he figured it ought to be run.

He went to the Mercantile Bank in Jonestown, one of the biggest, and gave him his proposal to borrow a couple million to buy out his partners and a million to make the company into the next big thing. Company had been around a while and had a good reputation and good cash flow, young loan officer at the bank was getting ready to move on to greener pastures, she helped him get it all written up so it looked good to the board and he got his money.

The gory details are a small book by themselves but he was out of business in less than two years. Mercantile Bank was lucky to end up with an empty building on King Street - the money was all gone and most of the creditors got nothing. I'm just guessing but if the building went for much over 100K I'd be surprised. The gal that set up the loan was long gone too.

The sad epilogue to that story is when he went bust three of the long-time employees - me being one - tried to get him to sell to us for a reasonable price. Problem is a reasonable price to us - the company pretty much having a negative value - was a couple hundred thousand and letting him work for us and still have a job. He wanted another three million. We bailed (bouncing paychecks will do that) and went for another company that had bought a reseller license to the product, a little company about like B&H. A few years later the big huge companies started buying up the little ones at ridiculous prices. I had already left but the three guys that owned the company got a few million apiece. I learned a long time ago you can't fix stupid.

There were lawsuits going on for years - the bank trying to get blood out of a turnip and the turnip trying to get back the money he blew. Mercantile got bought by one of the big Memphis banks. I had a couple of accounts there and had used it for personal business for years. The first time I had to order checks they charged me forty-something dollars for a couple hundred checks (usually it was something like ten bucks or less) and I closed those accounts real quick.

And that's all I know about 2905 King Street, can't tell you more 'cause I told you already so here we are... alright, let's see if anything else happens here in NEA before I close this chapter.

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Tue 16 Jul 2024 10:15:16 PM CDT

Mostly it was pretty small stuff, pizza thefts and new restaurants and such for a while. I guess stealing street signs is important on slow days. I used to drive through that area regularly but don't remember right off why, maybe a girl from my past. I used to look at that sign and wonder what a mockernut was or if there actually is such a thing. There is, and I probably googled it back then too. There is. Seem to recall it was a fairly nice neighborhood, probably people that steal signs may not actually live there so it probably wasn't locals. People from all sorts of places get around these days, people from Memphis going to Judsonia to kill people. Still trying to get some more info on that one, and that link just might have some.

The abortionist people that couldn't get enough signatures on the petition are gonna sue the state, as I wasn't expecting that. Another one picked up the Hoxie audit thing and the misappropriation of funds or whatever it was at the fancy nonprofit thing. Then things got exciting in Brookland when a fugitive from Mississippi somehow ended up there. At least it wasn't a denizen of Memphis this time. I clicked on the X-formerly-known-as-Twitter link on the KAIT article and saw no comments after it's been up there all day. So I left one. Wonder if anyone will see it... just kidding. I googled "Kendrick Anderson mississippi mugshot" to see if I could find out what he was wanted for, little too much trouble for now. I wanna know about the Memphis people killing people in Judsonia.

Got a call a while ago from a good friend in Paragould. I'm up there occasionally but not that engaged with the place any more. Apparently the decay is pretty bad. Or is decay the best description for rats and termites coming in wrecking your house, or causing destruction to your environs? Or is there another word? Lemme think some.

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Wed 17 Jul 2024 02:19:10 PM CDT

Just got back from Jonestown and checked the news. Not much, another child porn arrest, a teenager found dead after a house fire. Both of those are terrible, don't ask me to say if a child dying or an old man spending much of his life at least fantasizing about doing terrible things to children. Hopefully he didn't get a chance to actually do any. There may be a more awful crime than destroying the lives of children - and that's what it does, I know of a few - but I don't know right off what it is. Does nobody ever ever suspect these people? I guess someone eventually does suspect the ones that get caught but how many don't?

Telly site had a piece about Arkansas Republicans, probably since they're having the convention. Is that pic of Trump something else or what? If he wins it should take it's place with the Iwo Jima pic and some others people are comparing it to. If he doesn't win we're screwed and will have bigger things to worry about. If he wins he can hold back the darkness for another four years but after that it's anyone's guess.

Arkansas Republicans are mostly milquetoasts and some would be Dimocrats if they could get away with it - they just happen to live in places where on one is gonna vote for a dim so they run as Republicans.

No Johnny, your both sides garbage is just that. Garbage. And there is nothing to respect on the other side. As the brilliant Ann Coulter said (not that you need to be brilliant to see it) 'There are a lot of bad Republicans but there are no good Democrats.' You Republicans that are afraid of your own shadows say stuff like that when you don't believe it for a second because you're cowards. Don't like being called a coward? Stop being one.

Still pretty weak but...

Tone what down Jack? Republicans aren't calling for people to be killed, they aren't conducting their own amateur versions of Moscow Trials to try to put their political opponents in prison. Hell, Republicans won't even prosecute dims who are committing actual crimes.

For all that one Republican who definitely should not be reelected this time around. Dan Sullivan is a disgrace and no Democrat can be as bad as he is. I've offered my assistance (and some interesting information) to his opponent. If she is elected she will still be in a very small dim minority so I can live with it.

Thu 18 Jul 2024 11:08:59 AM CDT

Nothing major going on, regular low-level mayhem not being major. All four of the gang have the misappropriation thing at EAPDD as the Jonestown paper has joined in. I said the other day I looked at the Linkedin page for the suspect and grabbed a sample of the standard gobbledygook

BTW they just copy and paste that stuff or use a resume generator, doesn't tell you anything useful. I was fortunate enough to avoid having to hire people until late in my career and I was looking for tech people so I could generally figure out if they knew anything. First thing to to is avoid Linkedin. In fact if I would look at the guys who didn't have Linkedin profiles first. At least with people who have to write code or maintain complex failure-is-not-an-option networks you find out pretty quick if they can't do it. In the bureaucrat universe it's not so easy - a guy screws up once and things go dark for five minutes people get agitated (those minutes were worth thousands of dollars each - good to be retired) and if there isn't a good explanation and especially if it happens again he's done. When you got a bunch of people sitting around figuring out how to get money from the people who have it and spend it incompetence or laziness or graft may not show up so quick.

Another thing we had was people looking a financial activity. A questionable credit card charge or invoice was cleared up immediately. I got a phone call any time my department had something unusual, when a new vendor relationship was established, anything that accounting didn't know about already, and there was a paper trail where I signed off.

I wonder of the folks at the San Antonio Airport know about this. Has anyone dropped a link to one or three of these articles on their fakebook page or emailed on to their management? Enquiring minds wanna know. Mine does anyway.

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So far the unfortunate incident in Judsonia looks like this - assembled from several sources:

Saturday before last (6 July) a report of a body on a road nead Judsonia was hit by a car. The body was taken to a hospital where it was determined that the person had perished due to gunshot wounds before being hit by the car. This was reportedly around 0330. The deceased person was later identified as Brendon Berryhill, a 17-year-old white male.

Apparently there were no witnesses but a surveillance video showed the victim being shot at a convenience store near Judsonia. The four suspects fled and were pursued by multiple local police departments as they fled towards Memphis. They were apprehended in Crittenden County (across the river from Memphis). The driver, a male of unspecified race/ethnicity, was taken into custody and the other three (black males aged 18-20) were released. The killing at Judsonia was not at that time known to the authorities. The three have since been arrested in Memphis and are awaiting extradition.

The victim was according to one source worked at a grocery store in Searcy. His stepmother lived in Searcy and his parents lived in Memphis.

Searcy (population about 24K) and Judsonia (just under 2K) are about 100-110 miles from Memphis. Both have - compared to other cities in Arkansas - comparatively little crime.

Sources:     THV11 Little Rock     The Daily Citizen - Searcy     KARK Little Rock    

Local guys, this may have happened nearer the center than than the northeast part of the state but Memphis (origin of the perps) is (sadly) right next door. How about staying on top of it?

See ya in a few days.

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There are pyramids in my head There's one underneath my bed And my lady's getting cranky Every possible location Has a simple explanation And it isn't hanky-panky [Chorus] I have read, somewhere in a book They improve all your food and your wine It's said that everything you grow In your garden would taste pretty fine Instead, all I ever get Is a pain in the neck and a Yap yap yap yap yap yap yap yap! [Verse 2] I've consulted all the sages I could find in yellow pages But there aren't many of them And the Mayan panoramas On my pyramid pajamas Haven't helped my little problem [Chorus] I've been told someone in the know Can be sure that his luck is as good as gold Money in the bank And you don't even pay for it If you fold a dollar in the shape Of the pyramid that's printed on the back See The Alan Parsons Project Live Get tickets as low as $66 You might also like Hyper-Gamma-Spaces The Alan Parsons Project In the Lap of the Gods The Alan Parsons Project Eye in the Sky The Alan Parsons Project [Post-Chorus] It's no lie (it's no lie), you can keep the edge Of a razor as sharp as an eagle's eye You can grow a hedge That is vertically straight Over ten feet high, all you really need Is a pyramid and just a little luck [Instrumental Break] [Bridge] Wuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwu ah ouh Wuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwu ah ouh [Chorus] I have read, somewhere in a book They improve all your food and wine And I've been told, someone in the know Can be sure of his good luck and it's no lie All you really need is a little bit of pyramidic help!

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