meditations

Amid all the ugliness...

My last couple posts have focused on some of the uglier aspects of life in the Pacific Northwest, but today a quick visit to the Seattle Times web site reminded me of why it's such a special place to live. Here's a stunning image of Mt. St. Helens undergoing a minor (well... not so minor) eruption. Click here to see the full sized version, which is even more spectacular.

More on Infospace

Following up on my previous post, there were a couple of final twists today as the Seattle Times investigative report on the wreck that was Infospace came to a close.  First is the almost unbelievable irony that when Naveen Jain was finally brought to heel for his multitude of questionable actions, the SEC got involved... by filing a friend of the court brief on Jain's behalf! Whoa, it's like The Sixth Sense or some other convoluted film, "I didn't see that one coming."

The final bizarre aspect (of many) to the story is the ongoing success of "bad old Infospace" --- as opposed to the "good new Infospace" run by Jim Voelker --- at keeping their dirty laundry under lock and key. As this article details, the jurist in key cases against Infospace,  King County Superior Court Judge Sharon Armstrong, consistently allowed Infospace to keep their documents in the case confidential. At times it seemed that Armstrong had evolved into an advocate for the company, and her logic to protect the company was extremely tortured. For example

Armstrong had ruled that many of the records were protected by attorney-client privilege and should be sealed. But the Washington Supreme Court said the privilege was lost once such documents were filed in court and used by her to make a decision.

Well... Uhh... yeah. I'm not a lawyer, but that's just basic case law, and her decision was overturned by the Washington State Supreme Court 9-0.

There's lots more along these lines, and you really should look at the entire article. I've got a feeling there's still a lot going on here that hasn't seen the light of day.

A Bad Day in Emerald City

Even though I've relocated to the Midwest, I still find time almost every day to catch up on the Seattle news via the internet. Seattle is one of the few cities in the US that still has two active (and competing) daily papers, and both the Times and the PI have web sites, fairly good ones actually after recent upgrades.

Most days the news from latteland is fairly dull... the Sonics are winning, the weather is variable, the Mariners have hope, Microsoft is less nimble than it used to be, etc. But today, today was special. A very cloudy day for the Emeral City.

First, realizing they had completely screwed up their case, the NCAA and the University of Washington folded early this morning and settled their case with Rick Neuhisel.  I'm not sure how much play this has gotten outside of the Pacific Northwest, but the quick version is that Rick Neuhisel is a slick, self-promoting, pathological liar of a human being. I fell for it initially, and was overjoyed when the UW lured him away from Colorado. But then there were recruitment scandals, lies about interviewing with the San Francisco 49ers, and further lies about his involvement in a high stakes March Madness pool in violation of NCAA rules. By the time the UW fired him my opinion had turned completely. Of course... never bet against the ineptitude of the NCAA and and college administrators. Neuhisel filed a wrongful termination suit, and while the facts presented  in court clearly showed him to be  a --- let's all say it together --- slick, self-promoting, pathological liar of a human being, it also turns out that the NCAA violated it's own by-laws in how they investigated him and, by presenting the wrong version of the by-laws in court, set themselves up for a mistrial. The UW, paragons of virtue by comparison, apparently chose to "wing it" when firing the most expensive employee in state history, kept inadequate records, and had a medium level employee issue a memo (which Neuhisel probably never saw ahead of time) condoning his participation in the gambling pool.  If Dante were still alive, he'd revise Inferno to have an extra ring of hell for all involved.

Compared to this, the news that Boeing fired Harry Stonecipher for having an affair with an executive at the company is small potatoes.  Still, it's another black eye for one of Seattle's most famous companies, and I suspect the worst of this story is yet to come out.

But none of this compares to the ongoing slow-motion train wreck that is the Seattle Times investigative report of Infospace during the dot-com bubble. As a senior Seattle technology person, I was well aware of Infospace and the reputation it had during the boom. Every serious IT professional I met suspected things weren't right there and wouldn't consider working at the place.  Moreover, just from reading his interviews in the papers it was obvious that founder Naveen Jain was (you all know where this is going) a slick, self-promoting, pathological liar of a human being. Later, I got to learn in far more detail just how bad things were, as I worked at several companies with ex-Infospace employees. The stories they told left me speechless --- and as my friends can tell you, that doesn't happen too often --- but none of this prepared me for the details coming out now that the Times has access to all the court documents, having filed (and won) a lawsuit to get them. Today's remarkable revelation wasn't that corporate executives bent the rules to cash in their stock options before the house of cards collapsed --- in our post-Worldcom existence that was long ago assumed ---  it's that one of the first and most egregious sinners was Ellen Alban, the house counsel for the company. Truly this was a company without a conscience.

Come to think of it... Dante would have to write an entire second volume of Inferno just to  handle these guys.