Fri Mar 30 06:45:32 EDT 2018 Slept from ten to five-thirty (when the Market Fresh forklift backup beep woke me). High of forty-three and mostly cloudy today. Work: - Work on MECS Done. I forgot today was a half-day at the office. Nice. http://floridapolitics.com/archives/260063-dan-adkins-hartman-tyner > “It’s a landmark decision, and for a guy like me, who’s been around for so many years, it’s a little disheartening,” added Adkins, who started in 1987 and rose to CEO and vice president from his Broward County base. “Things change.” > That change apparently included his relationship with his longtime employer: Since November, Adkins had been locked in a legal battle with H&T and its directors, accusing them of lying to him that he’d be paid “millions of dollars” upon sale of the company’s gambling businesses in Florida, West Virginia and Michigan. > But Adkins’ suit blames H&T director Heidi Hartman Wenokur, daughter of H&T co-founder Bernard Hartman and now company president, for “accept(ing) an offer for the sale of Mardi Gras Florida for substantially less than market value,” costing the company $20 million. The full terms of the deal were not in the complaint. > Adkins’ lawsuit, now moved to federal court, also says his “day-to-day authority has been stripped” and he has “effectively lost the ability to govern the enterprise he has been at the helm of for almost 30 years.” H&T also removed him from its board and cut his pay, the suit says. > Last Friday, H&T struck back by filing its own federal suit. It says the 60-year-old Adkins “engag(ed) in self-dealing, corporate waste, and gross mismanagement … conceal(ing) the poor financial state of H&T’s businesses caused by his misconduct so that he could … enrich himself and his family members.” > Adkins says he had intended to leave H&T ten years earlier “to pursue his own entrepreneurial interests.” In staying, he lost an opportunity to become a gambling lobbyist, in which he claims he could have “earned over $1 million annually.” > Hartman persuaded him to remain by promising him—falsely, Adkins says—that “upon a sale of gaming operations Adkins would receive millions of dollars if he built them up and made them more valuable.” > In his complaint, Adkins takes credit for gaining “additional gaming in both West Virginia and Florida, such as approval of card and table games” and “legislation in Florida that reduced the slot machine tax rate” from 50 percent to 35 percent. His efforts resulted in “H&T increasing in value by tens of millions of dollars,” Adkins says. > In its own action, H&T lobbed a litany of accusations against Adkins, including that the casino lost “millions of dollars each year” under his leadership. Also, it says he: > — “(P)laced several of his family members on H&T’s payroll even though they did not report to work.” > — Disregarded orders while the Mardi Gras Casino was closed to “cut payroll and lay off employees to cut costs, caus(ing) H&T to pay out more than $1.5 million in payroll.” > — “(C)aused H&T to ‘loan’ himself approximately $1 million, which … served no legitimate business purpose.” > — Cost the company “about $8 million in legal legislative fees and lobbying fees with no material results” over the last decade. > — “(C)aused H&T to loan outside lobbyist John Cavacini $75,000 on an unsecured basis without any authority from the Board of Directors.” Took off from work around two o'clock. Twenty-minute walk. Saw a couple of turkey vultures. Home: - Call Yvonne back about Easter dinner on Sunday at 3:30 Done. Told her I might be a little late. - Notes about use of qcow2 (creation of file, use in creating VM's, attaching to VM's, sparse?, backing up, snapshots, shrink, whitespace, etc.) Done. https://paulgorman.org/technical/linux-virtualization.txt.html Lunch: cinnamon roll, coffee, chicken shawarma bowl Dinner: hummus and pita