chelle

Afraid of change? Maybe it's all coming to an end. Or maybe this place has been pretty boring lately and some people are trying to make it interesting.

What the hell; a send is worth a thousand words. No not that, he isn't coming to smith this weekend!!! he bailed! He's becoming famous for bailing.

Not all buddists think this way, Muffy. The Dali Lama says we each create our own suffering and have the power to end it. It's all about attachment and a dislike of change. These things weigh you down and make you suffer. Accepting that things change and what you are attached to (people, things, ideas) is only really here for the moment, frees you from worrying about the future and suffering when it doesn't work out the way you plan. For an interesting set of tenents about life check out "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz. An interesting look at Toltec philosophy which like most spiritual philosophys shares a lot with other ones. But his explanations make it easier to understand than some heavy buddist stuff I've read.

Looked myself up and found nothing....Guess flying under the radar works. Seems like there is a "twin" of me with my maiden name out in NY though. Interesting...

The fact that you seem to really believe this makes me sad for you.

its funny how our brain's work. i believe the guy. he probably didn't think...

If you're looking for climbers to shag the ratio of men to women on this site may not work in your favor... As for Dwayner...that's not his real name.

Years ago (back in the early days of the www c. 1996) there was a free site called 411.com. You could find people there. Looks a little more like the yellow pages, but has a Find Anyone section. Oops. Looks like it's a pay thing now...I guess it depends on how badly you want to find them.

I hate those Dovals. The biners spin around and you can't really tell which side is up. They suck.

I get a ton of penis enlargement spam, which always cracks me up. I've also been getting a bunch of emails with sanskrit type lettering. Have no idea what those people want...

Spirits and neutrinos. Are there other carabiners out there?

Don't get me wrong here Fairweather. I would love to see more campsites and fewer hotel rooms and $60/night tent cabins. I just don't think tearing down an 100 year old building that is in the historic registry is the right way to gt them. Also, I hate the Sierra Club, but the educational programs they run out of the monument are just about Yos history, John Muir and that sort of stuff from what I know. I don't think they use it as a way to get new members. If he has a problem with the Sierra Club just yank their privaleges for building use, don't demolish it.

Whatever...I think that situation and everyone's opinion is well documented from the bs I endured last year. It's in the past. Just like bolts, no one is truly interested in a discussion and I am not interested in their opinions.

Yeah, I'm sure I'll meet ya. Never said I was gutsy. My slides will be more of the pretty picture variety, than the "this is the way coolest fucking climb that noone in this room is man enough to do besides me" variety... If nominating you for the aid climbing style police is gutsy then I am guilty. Later, dudes. Off to work.

Naw. That was this thread.

There is never "no impact" when pension/401k managers are hired and fired. If the new manager takes the securities holdings in-kind and manages the portfolio to his/her liking in such a way that attempts to minimize impact, then there may be low impact on the market and on fund performance. Trading cost, timing of trades causing market impact (prices drop when shares are sold, and rise when the new manager tries to buy). We're not talking about a small amount of money here. It could take months to trasition the portfolios to have low impact. Any one of the funds that is firing Putnam probably has billions of dollars with them. Why do you think their parent company stock has been hammered over the issue? And the CEO of Putnam has resigned. Putnam is just one of many mutual fund managers involved in this situation who handle the trillions of 401k and pension money. A number of the top 20 fund complexes are charged with violations -- Fidelity and Bank of America are two more. Depending on how the situation shakes out this could have a very large impact on securities markets. The losers are the average joe/jane shareholder. The brokerages get paid coming and going. The fund companies get their commisions (if the shares are in a load class) and management fees regardless. And the "costs" are hidden in a lackluster share return, that the average 401k plan member barely understands.

Those egotistical jerks in DC are playing games again. One CA rep is trying to use tearing down the LeConte memorial bldg to pressure the Sierra Club to back off on opposing more campsites. And how the hell are people supposed to get in and out of the park without a shuttle service. This is what our tax dollars pay for? BS legislation that takes up Congress' time. - - - - From the Modesto Bee 10/30/03 Controversial Yosemite bill scrapes by committee The 99-year-old LeConte Memorial Lodge in Yosemite National Park would be removed under legislation by Rep. George Radanovich. By MICHAEL DOYLE BEE WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- By the narrowest possible margin, the House Resources Committee on Wednesday approved legislation to add campsites at Yosemite National Park and "remove" the park's historic LeConte Memorial Lodge. The committee cast a 21-20 party line vote to approve the legislation by Rep. George Radanovich, a Mariposa Republican whose district takes in Yosemite and stretches to Modesto. "I'm pleased," Radanovich said, "and I think this drives home the point that progress needs to be made on the Yosemite plan." But the one-vote margin, and the failure to sway any Democrats, including Merced Democrat Dennis Cardoza, also suggested that the legislation in its existing form faces an uphill battle on Capitol Hill. The bill's next step is the House floor; it is not likely to be taken up there before next year. Radanovich was the only lawmaker at Wednesday's hearing to speak in favor of the legislation, while four Democrats raised concerns about it. In particular, the bill is attracting notoriety over its provision to dismantle the 99-year-old LeConte lodge, one of five Yosemite buildings listed as national historic landmarks. The Sierra Club operates the lodge as an education center. Radanovich, who regularly clashes with the Sierra Club, contends that the environmental group is hypocritical in pressing to reduce the number of Yosemite campsites even as the club maintains the lodge. Yosemite activist Ken Gosting, director of the Mariposa-based group Transportation Involves Everyone, also commented by telephone: "To just tweak the Sierra Club on an emotional basis is not up to par for a U.S. congressman. "The LeConte lodge provisions are a burden for the rest of the bill, some of which has some validity to it." The legislation calls for "removal" of the granite-and-wood lodge and "restoration of the grounds of that memorial to its natural state." Radanovich contends that "removal" could mean relocating the building outside park boundaries. Cardoza said he supported the bill's call for more campsites but said he had to vote "no" because of the Le- Conte provision. Radanovich said the bill would have secured a larger victory margin had it been considered earlier in the day, before a number of Republicans left the unusually long committee meeting. Seven Republicans and four Democrats missed the vote. "Its prospects are good," Radano-vich said, adding that the vote "just makes me more determined." Democratic lawmakers and environmental group representatives, including Jay Watson of the Wilderness Society and Courtney Cuff of the National Parks and Conservation Association, said the LeConte provision is only one part of the bill deserving stricter scrutiny. They also question how the bill might affect Yosemite's existing management plans. The legislation calls for returning "low-impact" campsites along the Merced River, where the New Year's flooding of 1997 washed away 361 campsites. Existing park plans call for keeping the Merced River area undeveloped. The legislation also prohibits the establishment of shuttle bus service for remote parking facilities or areas outside Yosemite's boundaries.

that can shake this tenuous economic recovery. Especially if 401k and pension plan administrators start widely firing money managers and there are no buyers for all the stock that may need to be sold. And I sure am glad I was able to cash out my retirement fund stock in Putnam's parent company earlier this year. - - - - - - From today's NY Times: November 4, 2003 Extensive Flaws at Mutual Funds Cited at Hearing By STEPHEN LABATON WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 — The mutual fund industry, plagued by a series of recent scandals, was battered on Monday by new details of widespread trading abuses, the removal of the top executive at a big fund company and the disclosure by federal regulators that the industry faced an imminent wave of government lawsuits. The scandals also produced their first senior government casualty when Juan M. Marcelino, the head of the New England regional office of the Securities and Exchange Commission for the last 10 years, said he would step down amid criticism that his office failed to investigate promptly a whistle-blower's accusations in March about problems at Putnam Investments. Putnam, the nation's fifth-largest fund company, said on Monday that its chief executive, Lawrence J. Lasser, would be leaving in the wake of recent accusations by federal and state prosecutors of civil fraud by the company. As a result of those accusations, six states and New York City have told their public pension funds to stop using Putnam as a fund manager, and others are considering similar moves. On Capitol Hill, where federal and state officials testified on Monday at a Senate hearing on the mutual fund industry, lawmakers have begun to call for significant changes in regulating the industry — which is in its greatest turmoil since it came under federal oversight more than 60 years ago. Mutual funds, which manage money on behalf of their shareholders by buying and selling stocks and bonds, control some $7 trillion in investments for 95 million investors, and the industry's reputation as a haven for unsophisticated and small investors has taken a beating. Several lawmakers have introduced legislation that would require directors of mutual funds, including board chairmen, to be more independent from the management of the funds. But federal and state officials and other experts said on Monday that the problems were not with the regulations but with lax enforcement of existing rules. Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, who has moved more aggressively and quickly against the funds than his federal counterparts, attributed the problems to complacent directors — a shortcoming that has also troubled some of the nation's largest corporations and the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Spitzer said that in future settlements with funds, he would demand that the penalties for serious infractions include returning fees to investors. "We have opened up a window into a morass of problems," Mr. Spitzer said at the Senate hearing. "This is a window into what has been foggy, murky and impossible to understand." Stephen M. Cutler, the head of the S.E.C.'s enforcement division, said at the same hearing, by a Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee that investigations and a recent survey had found widespread suspicious trading practices. They ranged from overcharging many customers to giving preferential treatment to the largest ones, including confidential market information. "The `unholy trinity' of illegal late trading, abusive market timing and related self-dealing practices that have recently come to light are matters that affect us all," Mr. Cutler asserted. "And they go right to the heart of the trust — the covenant, if you will — between mutual fund and other securities professionals and the individual investor. As my colleagues and I have gathered evidence of one betrayal after another, the feeling I'm left with is one of outrage." Mr. Cutler also said more than 25 percent of brokerage firms that sell mutual funds and 10 percent of the funds surveyed had permitted customers to engage in late trading that may have been improper. Such trading involves buying or selling shares of a fund at the 4 p.m. closing price at some point later in the day. Documents from nearly one-third of the brokerage firms, he said, indicated that they might have helped customers engage in possibly improper trades by such methods as concealing their clients' identities through special accounts. He said that more than 30 percent of the fund companies had disclosed information about their portfolios selectively, to certain shareholders, giving them the ability to place advantageous trades. Mr. Cutler and Mary L. Schapiro, the top regulator at NASD, said a joint inquiry had uncovered that at least one in five investors in Class A shares of mutual funds — those that impose a sales charge upfront — were not given discounts on large trades and, as a result, were overcharged an average of $243 each in the last two years — a total of at least $86 million. Mr. Cutler said that "a significant number of brokerage firms" would receive notification this week that they were likely to face agency charges of securities law violations for overcharging customers. The firms were obliged to provide the customers with discounts for buying shares above certain limits, but failed to, Mr. Cutler and Ms. Schapiro said. Ms. Schapiro said that about two dozen brokerage firms would be accused of failing to provide discounts to mutual fund investors. "There was pretty systemic failure," she said. While only three senators appeared at today's subcommittee hearing, there is deep interest in the issue in Congress. Both the Republican chairman and the ranking Democrat on the full Senate Governmental Affairs Committee criticized the S.E.C. for not moving sooner or acting before problems were brought to its attention by Mr. Spitzer. Senator Susan M. Collins, the Maine Republican who heads the committee, said, "I question why the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has regulatory responsibility for the mutual funds and their broker-dealers, has failed to detect these practices, to impose appropriate restrictions on them, or to penalize those who appear to be misusing investors money." The senior Democrat on the committee, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, issued a similar statement. "The S.E.C. was far too late to the table in addressing these problems," Mr. Lieberman said in a letter to William H. Donaldson, the S.E.C. chairman. "Now that the problems have come to light," Mr. Lieberman wrote, "I am once again left to wonder: why did the watchdogs fail to bark? Mr. Cutler acknowledged that the commission should have acted more promptly against Putnam. In March, a Putnam employee reported that some union members were day-trading Putnam funds in their 401(k) plans — moving money in or out within a single day — in ways that other investors could not. Mr. Cutler said the agency could not always handle such complaints when it receives an average of 1,000 tips a day. "Do I wish that we'd have brought the Putnam case two months ago instead of two weeks ago?" he asked. "You bet I do." The Boston office of the S.E.C. had neglected a tip from a whistle-blower in March about problems at Putnam Investments — which prompted the informant, an employee at a Putnam telephone call center — to take his information to Massachusetts securities regulators. They have since made a major case against the company based on the tip; other accusations of improper trading practices by Putnam have also been made recently by the commission. The S.E.C. said Mr. Marcelino, the head of its New England office, had decided to step aside, "given the recent press coverage of certain matters involving the Boston office, to minimize any further distractions for his staff as they continue the critical work of the office." Three officials said Mr. Marcelino had been forced to resign by Mr. Cutler after Mr. Cutler became dissatisfied with his account of the incident. Mr. Marcelino, who in nearly 20 years of service at the commission has received several agency awards for distinguished service, did not respond to calls left at his home and office for comment. Mr. Cutler, in an interview this afternoon, said Mr. Marcelino had made a "personal decision after a distinguished career to step down and I have to respect that."

Brrr!!!! It's gonna be way COLD ...but I'm still planning to head down and chase the sun.

No need to dredge that up again Dave. I feel Ricardo's pain... As for nominations...it's a toss up between Glassgowkiss and Necro. Or are they the same person?

Agreed Rudy. Anonymity makes spraying much easier. Although a few people around here say there assholes in real life too, most I've met from the board are not the same jerks in person that they "play" on-line.

Maybe he's still recovering from his hangover...

Was watching "The Italian Job" last night and noticed that Spiderman makes a brief cameo in the crowd when they blow the road from under the truck in LA. Anyone else notice something funny like this when watching movies?

I heard of someone else nailing on Zodiac on a solo ascent this summer... Damn aid climbers! You know who you are.

Sips, they were sips... That stuff is my favorite. Hey Paco, we need to see the photos!