Random News Stories

[Jim Cassedy]

"WOMAN RE-UNITED WITH WALLET SHE LOST AT MOVIE THEATER 46 YEARS AGO"

I first heard this story on a radio newscast very early this morning when I was only ½ awake. At first I just assumed they found the wallet because it was the first time they had vacuumed since 1976, but then I read that it was found during a remodeling.

The short 'headline version' is:

— A woman in Southern California has been reunited with a wallet she lost 46 years ago at the historic Majestic Ventura Theater. An employee working on remodeling the theater discovered the wallet inside a crawl space, along with old candy bar wrappers, ticket stubs, and soda cans.

> Just plug the phrase "Old Wallet Found In Ventura Theater" into your favorite search engine, and you'll find dozens of video & print versions of the story, many of which show the actual wallet, which still contained a ticket for a 1973 Gratetful Dead Concert". Is that far out, or what, man!

--> I wonder what movie the woman went to see when she lost her wallet? I once found a 30 year old case of Red Vines in a storeroom. The theater probably could have sold it. - - like 'Twinkies" they seem to last for decades without decomposing.

[Bobby Henderson]

NORMAN, OK — A former Oklahoma resident is facing felony embezzlement charges for not returning a VHS tape rented in Norman more than two decades ago.

I must have missed this news story. Geez, just another thing to be ashamed about living in Oklahoma. The idiots in this state appear to be fighting really hard to change the state name to Jokelahoma.

[Frank Cox]

Looks like he's the yoho who's milking his court for entertainment and youtube popularity. Since when is that appropriate behaviour for a judge overseeing a supposedly serious process? Any of his "customers" doing stunts like that would probably be brought up on contempt charges, but it's ok when it's the judge that's playing clown prince?

[Leo Enticknap]

Well, that's the end of the pet tiger porn for this time.

From Gizmodo:

'Buttfucker 3000' Does Not Fly in Zoom Court

Judge Jeffrey Middleton, a rising YouTube star who hosts a live chat during Zoom court, brusquely dismissed a ding dong who showed up to an arraignment with the name “Buttfucker 3000.” Thank you, Twitter, for bringing the masterful performance to our attention.

Sadly, the official video was just removed, but Gizmodo viewed it this morning and a tweet memorializing the exchange is embedded below. “Bring this fool in,” Middleton told the camera, as a person monikered “Buttfucker 3000” entered the chat.

“Good morning sir, what’s your name?” asks Middleton.

“Me?” replied Buttfucker 3000.

“Yeah you, yes.”

“Nathaniel Saxaon, sir.”

“Your name’s not Buttfucker 3000, you yoho,” Middleton says dryly. “Logging into my court with that as your screen name. What kind of idiot logs into court like that?”

Saxaon muttered that he never typed anything like that and apologized, and Middleton put him in waiting room jail to think about what he’s done. Saxaon later pleaded guilty to possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of 90 days of jail and a $500 fine.

Middleton, who started his YouTube channel in April 2020, has since amassed nearly 13,000 subscribers. Other now-Middleton classics include pointing out that you shouldn’t Zoom to court from the driver’s seat of a car when you’re on trial for several traffic violations. (This video has also been removed.) Also, (not at all humorously) adjourning a hearing after learning that a defendant accused of abuse appeared in the same apartment as the plaintiff.

These are the results of three million hours from Zoom court in Michigan alone.

Middleton, aware of his growing fandom rapt by his no-bullshit brand, has even addressed the peanut gallery of YouTube live chatters. “We’ve started to become a popular spot for people to watch court proceedings, and that’s all good, we’re transparent,” he said. “But we’ve developed a community of followers who post things on chat which are grossly inappropriate. And so the prosecutor brought me some text from this morning from Gorilla Glue Number 4..and a bunch of other people who are posting inappropriate things on our chat feed, so I’m gonna turn it off.” (Some had previously chanted things like “SEND TO THE CHAIR!” and“WE MADE A TENT OUT OF ICE PISS SKIN,” amongst running speculation about a defendant’s guilt.)

Middleton has previously told Motherboard that the mixture of sloppy home tune-ins and a vast following has been “profound, and in some cases troubling.”

Zoom court has also blessed us with the Supreme Court toilet flush; “I am not a cat” attorney; Zoombombed rimming porn; and a doctor in what looks like a bloodied mask streaming from the OR.

You can tune in to catch more entertainment and hopefully messy bitches with Judge Middleton on YouTube.

[Leo Enticknap]

It's been a while since the last pet tiger story (if I remember correctly, the one in Phoenix who ate her owner, apart from his shoes), but this one was worth waiting for. From the Houston Chronicle...

The parents of the man linked to a missing Houston tiger said they do not know where the exotic cat has been stashed.

The mother of Victor Hugo Cuevas, arrested Monday in connection to a Fort Bend County murder case, said she was unsure of the tiger’s whereabouts as authorities entered the second day of its search. She had never seen the striped feline, she continued.

“We have no clue,” Norma Strauss said Tuesday in a brief phone call. Meanwhile, a man with her said that he, too, did not know where the tiger — seen in a viral video with a Waller County Sheriff’s Office deputy — was taken. The tiger escaped its enclosure at an Energy Corridor-area home Sunday evening and shocked neighbors who saw it lounging in the grass.

Cuevas’ lawyer, Michael Elliott, said his client was not the tiger’s owner. He instead divulged the name of a man — whom the Chronicle is not identifying — he believes is the rightful owner.

The tiger, Elliott said, is a 9-month-old male named India.

Cuevas, who remains jailed, is scheduled to appear in court Friday in Fort Bend County, records show.

Prosecutors there on Monday filed their fourth motion to revoke his bond in a 2017 murder case, with court papers outlining several bond violations — including an arrest last November in Sealy.

Records show Sealy police officers arrested Cuevas on a felony evading arrest charge — and a misdemeanor driving with a suspended license charge. Details of that case were not immediately available. His bond was revoked Nov. 19 in Fort Bend County and he was arrested the following month.

A judge set bail at $125,000 after that incident.

His arrest on Monday partially stemmed from bond condition violations established after the Sealy incident.

Cuevas was ordered to remain at home from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m., records show.

The night of the tiger sighting, Cuevas fled his rental around 8:30 p.m. in the 1100 block of Ivy Wall Drive after corralling the tiger into a Jeep Cherokee. By not returning to his home that night, he violated the conditions of his bond, records continued.

He is also accused of fleeing two Houston police officers at a high rate of speed.

Probable cause documents show Cuevas bolted in the Jeep as the officers walked toward the vehicle, with the tiger inside.

The officers were forced to run back to their patrol vehicle and chase after Cuevas, records show. The driver refused to stop “as they continued to give chase through multiple blocks.” The officers then lost sight of the vehicle.

I like the "...partially stemmed from bond condition violations..." - I'm guessing that it didn't occur to the judge to specify that Cuevas wasn't allowed to keep pet tigers in his house! Reminds me of when I was a student in the 1990s. There was a lake behind the campus hall of residence in which I lived. Some students living in another corridor caught, cooked, and ate a duck from that lake one Sunday. In the aftermath of that incident, no action could be taken against them, because the university authorities could not find any terms or conditions in any of the relevant rule books that had actually been violated. No-one had thought to make a rule stating that residents must not catch and consume wildlife on campus, though, needless to say, one was immediately written in response to that incident.

[Frank Cox]

https://okcfox.com/news/local/oklaho...e-21-years-ago

NORMAN, OK — A former Oklahoma resident is facing felony embezzlement charges for not returning a VHS tape rented in Norman more than two decades ago.

Online documents show Caron McBride is a wanted woman for never returning 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch' on VHS tape in 1999.

"The first thing she told me was felony embezzlement, so, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack," McBride said.

McBride said she first learned about the charges when trying to change her name on her license after getting married in Texas.

"I went to change my driver's license, during this COVID thing you had to make an appointment, and so, I sent them an email (and) they sent me an email and they told me... that I had an issue in Oklahoma and this was the reference number for me to call this number and I did," McBride said.

McBride said the number was to the Cleveland County District Attorney's Office, where a woman there told her about the charges filed against her.

"She told me it was over the VHS tape and I had to make her repeat it because I thought, this is insane. This girl is kidding me, right? She wasn't kidding," McBride said.

Online documents show McBride was charged with felony embezzlement of rented property in March of 2000.

McBride told FOX 25 Tuesday that she doesn't remember ever renting the movie.

"I had lived with a young man, this was over 20 years ago. He had two kids, daughters that were 8, 10 or 11 years old, and I'm thinking he went and got it and didn't take it back or something. I have never watched that show in my entire life, just not my cup of tea," McBride said. "Meanwhile, I'm a wanted felon for a VHS tape."

Documents show the movie was rented at 'Movie Place' in Norman, which is no longer open.

The Cleveland County Assessor's Office said records show the business closed down in 2008.

Ed Blau with Blau Law Firm told FOX 25 Tuesday that even though there's technically no victim in the case because of the business closure, Cleveland County could still prosecute the case because charges and a warrant was filed against McBride.

"I mean, I didn't try to deceive anyone over Samantha (Sabrina) the Teenage Witch. I swear," McBride said.

McBride said over the last 20 years, she's been let go from several jobs without being given a reason why. She told FOX 25, now, it all makes sense.

"This is why... because when they ran my criminal background check, all they're seeing is those two words: felony embezzlement," McBride said.

We reached out to the Cleveland County District Attorney's Office on Tuesday to ask about McBride's case.

On Wednesday, the DA's office said after reviewing McBride's case, they've decided to dismiss it.

Blau told FOX 25 Thursday that McBride will need to get her case expunged in order to clear her record moving forward.

[Leo Enticknap]

At one university I worked in many years ago there was a senior professor: a narcissistic, arrogant, bullying, thoroughly unpleasant piece of work, who was forever laying down the law to everybody else and expecting to be obeyed.

In her office, and totally against every rule in the institution's book, she had a 1950s vintage electric fire, like this:

electric_fire.png

One cold, December afternoon, the university's safety department knocked on her office door - we strongly suspected, acting on an anonymous tipoff. They found all three elements of the fire on, and sitting precariously on top of it, a pile of students' essays about two feet tall: easily about 10-15lb of paper.

She was given 30 minutes to remove the fire from the building, the alternative being that they would do it for her, after which she'd be fired on the spot (tenure protects academics from the consequences of a lot of misdeeds, but endangering the lives of hundreds of your students and co-workers is not among them, thankfully). That put smiles on a lot of faces for a long time afterwards.

[Jim Cassedy]

At the risk of delving into politics:
"POPCORN MACHINE REMOVED FROM NORTH DAKOTA CAPITOL AFTER TRIGGERING MULTIPLE FIRE ALARMS"

A state lawmaker's popcorn machine, which violated building policy, was removed from the North Dakota Capitol after it triggered
multiple fire alarms and caused legislators to evacuate.

State Rep. Mary Johnson (R), who owned the machine, had attempted to make a third batch of popcorn on Monday afternoon
when the alarms were triggered for the second time that day, sending firefighters to the building, according to the Bismark Tribune.
Johnson told the Tribune that she was unaware of a building policy that bans toasters, popcorn machines, frying pans, plate warmers
and other food appliances from being used in areas outside of the Capitol Cafe.

According to the rule, which was created by the Office of Management and Budget, facility management has the right to request
for the appliances to be removed if they are in violation of the policy.

State House Majority Leader Chet Poller (R) said that he also did not know about the policy, which was initiated in 2016.
He told the Tribune that popcorn served as a way to bring House Republicans together after the caucus had been "strained" due
to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Popcorn cheers people up for a reason,” Pollert said, according to the news outlet. “And now it’s gone, and that’s the way it goes.”

LinkToStory:

https://tinyurl.com/4uexprfc

[Jim Cassedy]

I remember those, Mitchell. I recall the sound-guy on one of the films I worked on bak then carried one of these around to capture "wild" sounds & sound effects, both for whatever production we were working on, as well as to add to his own sound efx library. I remember him playing back some tracks through the board & sound system in the mixing studio once and even the 'real' audio recording tech's were impressed by the sound quality it was able to produce.

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

While the Walkman was for cassettes, Sony in the early 1990's produced a DATMAN portable DAT digital audio tape recorder/player. Mine still works great!

datman.jpg

[Marcel Birgelen]

They should give people a free course how to increase mileage. While the base factor of mileage is obviously the car itself, most of what you can improve is by how you operate your right foot.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/15/busin...age/index.html

New York (CNN Business)A computer chip shortage has long been dogging the auto industry — and now, it will mean added costs at the gas pump for buyers of some General Motors pickup trucks.

GM said Monday it will build some versions of the Chevrolet Silverado and the GMC Sierra without a fuel management module that improves mileage by about 1 mile per gallon.

Unfortunately for buyers, even once the chips are available, GM will not be able to retrofit the engines with the missing fuel management module. So the decrease in mileage, to about 16 miles per gallon from 17, will be permanent.

Buyers will get a small consolation prize a $50 credit off of the list price of the vehicle. The mileage sticker in the window will also be changed to reflect a lower mileage, according to GM spokeswoman Michelle Malcho.

Wow, a whole $50 off ....

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've never understood the CD jewel cases and why they seem to last to this day and age. Those things are truly broken by design.

I still remember quite a few people carrying around a "Discman" in the later part of the 1990s. Their size eventually shrunk down to about the size of a CD jewel case. With added shock-protection, those devices were even semi-usable during sports or while biking. I still remember illegal mix-CDs becoming highly popular in Western Europe. It's true that those things never really fit into your pocket, but I have the same problem with some of the almost tablet-sized smartphones of today, yet people still are getting around with them...

I guess the reason for MiniDisc never really beating the mix-tapes back in the 1990s, is because both players and recorders remained fairly expensive, compared to portable cassette players and later iterations of portable CD players. It also didn't help that it took Sony many years to license the technology to other parties. Before mass-digital flash storage in SD and USB disks became the norm, MiniDisc was by far the most portable, near-CD quality storage medium available.

[Steve Guttag]

There was another aspect to the Cassette format that CDs didn't have, beside recording...their size. A cassette fits in one's pocket, shirt or otherwise. Its form-factor worked really well. CDs couldn't fit in a typical pocket and were less transportable, as a result. You needed a carrier of some sort and the stupid "jewel" cases were practically broken before you even got them.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The Walkman certainly didn't hurt the Cassette's cause. It was definitely a pretty popular format in the '70s and grew heavily during that era. If you were to look through various audio/stereo magazines in the '70s, particularly "Audio" which did a buyer's guide edition each year...you could see how many companies were offering cassette machines and how many models each offered. It grew geometrically in that era. It effectively killed off reel-to-reel except in the high-end market (for home use). For the person making their own recordings (either mix tapes or safety copies, if not originals of either music or recitals...etc.) your choices were Reel-to-Reel or cassette. 8-track was just pre-recorded stuff and were notorious for short operational life with inconvenient track changes.

Cassette made inroads on that too as most every car stereo (either OEM or aftermarket) shifted to cassette too. All of this predates the Walkman. The Walkman moved "stereo" into the portable world so that it could be with you, wherever you were (mass-transit into work, jogging, airplane...wherever).

Had Sony not done it, I'd think, eventually other companies would have gotten there too. Sony always has a way of refining and presenting a technology where esthetics have as much importance as the technology. It helps sell the format. The original Walkman was a sleek piece for its day.

Yeah, it definitely got traction in the 70s as a cheap and much more practical alternative for reel-to-reel systems, but the 80s were the era of the CD, especially the second half, which came with quite a few advantages, but the disadvantage, at least for the home user, of not being recordable, at least not until ubiquitous and cheap CD recorders and media came around at the end of the 1990s, weighted heavy. But the Walkman was the iPod of the 1980s and probably extended the life of the cassette to well into the 1990s.

I have no doubt that others would've eventually jumped into the portable personal audio space if Sony had not done it first. Apparently, Philips was working on their own device even before the Walkman hit the streets, but before the Walkman rolled onto the scene, their device still looked more like a more miniaturized portable tape recorder of the 1970s. Eventually they came up with the Sky Way D6621, about two years late, which was sold under many other brands and model names, but lacked the design and finesse of Sony's Walkman series.

Philips then did a lot of stuff that cost them a lot of money, but never got them anywhere. Like the failed Digital Cassette system called "DCC" of the early 1990s, which should've become the DAT for consumers. They failed to jump on the MiniDisc bandwagon, because of their competing but mostly inferior DCC system... Another such failed experiment was CD-i, which could've been the first CD-based gaming platform, years before any serious competitor came around. Heck, they had smooth, full-screen MPEG video from CDs back in 1991... They had Nintendo licenses... But they never marketed CD-i as a gaming platform, they instead choose to put the system into the most boring grey box and market the system as a boring "Edutainment" system. So how many kids wanted to have it? Zero.

If there was ever a piece of gear that I once owned that I loved, it was the Sony WMD6C Professional Walkman. Dolby B and C, lines in and out, variable pitch, everything. It seriously rivaled the Nakamichi CR7A in my home system for quality. It went all over the world with me. I seriously regret selling it, in part because a good condition one goes for $400 to $500 on eBay these days.

I'm still holding on to mine. It was constructed in a day and age that Sony products didn't just look sleek and industrial, they were actually still built to last. The thing can easily compete against any mid-range and most high-end fully fledged tape-decks out there.

I'm also still holding onto my BeoCord 9000, although I haven't used the thing in years. I've never really been a fan of Bang & Olufsen, as I consider them to be mostly overpriced, audiophile horse-shit in a nice design. But there is something special about this deck in how it records audio. Yeah, it's called by the fancy name of Dolby HX, but it seems to increase the dynamic range of anything you record with it. Yes, it actively messes with your recording, but the end-result for many, especially old records can be dramatic. Over the years I recorded many vinyl records over to tape using this machine and the tape recording often sounded better, much more vibrant than the original. Not just on the BeoCord 9000, but also on other cassette players.

IMHO, there were two important aspects of the cassette that this obituary didn't cover. First, though it was never conceived or intended as a high quality format, aftermarket manufacturers, both of equipment and tape stock, did develop it into an attempted replacement for the consumer 1/4" open reel technology of the '60s and '70s, in the '80s and early '90s. They introduced technologies such as chromium dioxide and evaporated metal particle tape, and higher end recording and playback decks, Nakamichi dominating this niche for most of this period.

Those improved tape formulas helped greatly in reducing noise and cranking up the fidelity of traditional cassettes, but I think the different noise-reduction schemes from Dolby also did their fair part in improving the tape-listening experience. I still remember metallic tape including either Dolby C or even Dolby S on a high-end deck to be virtually indistinguishable from most CD recordings with the audio gear at the time.