[geeks] knee deep

[Chris Byrne]

Hey all,

Well it's been an interesting holiday season that much is certain. As some
of you may have noticed I've had a somewhat long absence from any list
activity. Other than an occasional glance since late October early November.
There's a quite simple reason really, I've gone from being ankle deep in
shit to being knee deep in shit ;-)

'scuse me for venting to the list, but some of you guys will understand this
kind of thing better than most. And for those of you who don't, well you
probably ignore anything I post anyway ;-)

So here's the story.

I've said on the list before that the company I was CTO for was a joint
venture between a UK company and an Irish company. Notice I use the word
was. I further explained that the UK company had essentially gone bankrupt
and refused to meet their joint venture obligations. Here's what really
happened.

Around the end of October the UK partner decided that they REALLY wanted
their name, investment, property etc... back. The Irish partner didn't want
to give them this. A bit of a fight ensued. Essentially the result was this.
INSL Ireland Ltd. would no longer be a going concern as a separate entity.
All of the staff but for a single salesperson and a single junior engineer
would be made redundant and those two would be transferred to INSL UK Ltd
who wasn't actually bankrupt at all. They simply decided that INSL Ireland
Ltd. was becoming too much of a competitor and had to be removed. INSL
Ireland LTD would be kept alive on paper as a tax shelter for the Irish
partner and to preserve any intellectual property rights etc...

So basically my business was closed down on the fifth of November. I was
given pay through the end of November as well as my laptop and various other
things, and they would finish paying for my stored household goods to be
relocated.

It's now mid-January and they still haven't done that. My goods are sitting
in Oakland waiting for $5000 so they can be shipped.

Anyway I wasn't exactly happy with this but it wasn't a total shock after
what had happened in early October.

I immediately secured a consulting contract with a major financial
institution at a good rate. I put in about 10 days work before they had
their end of the year freeze for the euro changeover and the terms were
P.O.R. I invoiced them a bit more than a month ago and so far no money. Not
only that but I was supposed to start work back last week, but that's also
being delayed. In the meantime I've turned down several good contracts
because I already had this deal in place. Now they are telling me they may
not have budgetary approval for my services, but because of the contract I
cant take anything that would render me unavailable to complete those
services. Essentially I can't work 'til they tell me to, and they aren't
paying me. This is an unfortunately common thing in Ireland, and even more
unfortunately there's really no legal recourse I can take if I ever want to
work here again. It's pretty much a grin and bear it situation and I'm
getting by by taking one to three day contracts until the new work starts.
The good news is that once it does I should be OK for at least three months
and maybe six.

Shortly after I completed the first phase of the work, I contracted a
particularly nasty case of pneumonia. I still haven't really completely
recovered after four weeks

Finally here's the real killer.

My girlfriend and I have been together for about six months (since just
after my final breakup with Drea. She helped with the final recovery), and
are very much in love with each other. During the holidays my girlfriend
decided she was going to move out of her parents house and in with me. She
is of legal age to do this in Ireland. They rather strenuously objected to
this, but she was determined so she did it, with my help, while they were
out visiting family for the night. They came back to find her gone, and
immediately panicked. They threatened blackmailed and bullied every one of
my GF's friends that they knew to find out where she was. They then
emotionally blackmailed her into going back to talk to them. While she was
there they drugged her and have been holding her sedated in their home since
last Tuesday. They've taken away her mobile phones and changed their house
phone number as well. The only information I have is from one of her friends
who was VERY frightened to even be talking to me for fear of reprisal. Their
family has several senior civil servants in it including her father so the
local police aren't willing to do anything about it. They have been making
threatening phone calls and leaving nasty messages with both myself and my
and Lisa's friends. They have also been spreading slanderous stories about
myself and my friends calling us a ring of paedophiles and kidnappers. On
top of all that they have told Lisa that if she leaves home, or continues to
have any contact with me they won't love her or speak to her again anymore,
which would kill her. That's why she went back to talk to them in the first
place.

And to top it all off both my mother and my father are back in the hospital
with cancer.

Basically I'm just now coming out of the numb state of shock enough to put
anything intelligible into a list posting.

Some mornings its just not worth chewing through the leather straps.

Chris Byrne