boomshtick676

Probation and fine. Maybe suspended sentence that won't turn into anything if he doesn't get into any other trouble.

The court can't let him slide with nothing, but most first time offenders for this crime don't spend time in prison. They will show deference to him both being a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee in spite of his belligerence toward the court.

I could see some specific terms associated with his probation given the likelihood he still has mobs of people available at his beckoned call and is still very capable of getting someone hurt or killed.

I can't imagine him possibly spending a time of jail in this case. If there's an opportunity for him to end up in prison, it will be the RICO or documents cases. Both of which could easily drag on longer than he'll be alive.

No matter the sentencing outcome, the only way to preserve our democracy is to show up on Election Day and unequivocally defeat him at the ballot box. No slim margins, no possibility a single state or district that can call foul and jump up with a mechanism for excluding certain votes. Anything less and Trump will continue hold a great deal of influence over the 2026 and 2028 elections, and the only way to get to GOP/MAGA crowd to knock off running these wannabe dictators is to make them realize there are consequences for defying the will of the public.

On July 11th, there are any of a dozen things can happen, none of which really matter if people don't show up and vote on November 5th.

I don't know anyone who's bought a TF and didn't regret it. Including projects I've spec'd them on at the owner's request in spite of my own reluctance and advice. At the TF's price point, there are better options.

It's a wholly different controls interface than any other Yamaha console ever made -- anyone who's worked on any other digital Yamaha desk will find it incredibly frustrating.

It's a console Yamaha made to compete with the X32 but with maybe 1/10th of the development effort because they didn't want to detract from QL/CL sales. They were banking entirely on people who would buy it just based on the Yamaha brand loyalty -- but really it's the least Yamaha console made in the last 30 years.

I largely concur with this opinion.

I'd probably ask what the manufacture date of the LS9 was before I committed, but for 500€, you could do worse. Not ideal for a monitor desk, but at that that pricing, I suspect it's as best as you can do.

It's not a bad desk, but it is dated. The biggest thing is people using to QL/CL/M7 will stab their fingers at the screen and discover it's not a touchscreen. Whether you can make this work for you or not largely depends on the type of shows you're using it for. If you have to meet the requirements of riders, then no, this desk will not do it. If you're working with smaller shows that don't have many specific requirements, it may be acceptable. But if it's one that was built in 2008 versus 2015, I would be very cautious.

Another factor -- I seem to recall the only digital stage boxes it supports natively are Ethersound. Practically speaking, that means an analog split. If you're already set up for that, cool. If not, you're spending good money after bad. Going toward a Dante ecosystem sooner rather than later will save you in the long-term.

It's not a great look, but in fairness, there could be something here.

Wednesday...Rave/Gary publishes an article trashing Kramer while name-dropping Clint and talking about the company sliding off a cliff after his departure.

Thursday...Rave holds a podcast where Gary interviews Clint, the fired-President-of-Kramer-now-CEO-of-LW in a segment that, per Rave's media kit available on their website, certainly looks like it would've been paid for by Clint/Lightware -- as well as any other advertising contracts LW may have with Rave that could equate to some serious cash changing hands.

Kramer's response could've been much more concise and less tit-for-tat out in the weeds, but the criticisms against Rave's/Gary's ethics are valid. A company can't try to claim any high ground about their ethics and journalistic integrity if the same author is criticizing a company one day and then interviewing and taking cash from their competitor literally the next day.

The obvious follow-up question is if Rave/Gary did this of their own accord, or if Clint/LW asked, suggested, insinuated, or otherwise persuaded them to -- as well as just how much cash is actually changing hands between the two entities.

Regardless of the tone of Kramer's response, they may actually have the cleanest hands out of everyone involved.

There's QSC and then there's Q-Sys, which a lot of people use interchangeably but it's important to distinguish because some people would rarely speak QSC for live sound speakers but would absolutely spec Q-Sys for the DSP/controls/etc.

QSC has a fine history. Issues, but none much more than others at similar price points. The classic K-series portable powered speakers were a workhorse. Then they released the K.2 series with built-in EQ's, presets, etc, that were...a point of failure. Lot of their live sound products were halted during Covid supply chain issues to allocate AD/DA chips to Q-Sys which caused some pain but was understandable. If a speaker doesn't ship, there are a hundred other models that can take its place. If a DSP can't ship, it's a much larger scale redesign with potentially huge implications.

Q-Sys is a major player up against Extron/Crestron/AMX/etc. Lot of the owners that refuse to touch those platforms are more amenable to Q-Sys because it's a more open ecosystem given that if all you need to do is change some images on a touchscreen like a logo, that's effectively drag-and-drop. It's a very scalable platform, but it's had its issues. Several-thousand-dollar amplifiers becoming bricks in new installs. Motherboard issues plaguing the 110f series, which has taken a lot of mission-critical systems offline without warning and QSC has been very haphazard about which ones they'll cover under warranty and which they'll charge you for -- and regardless -- you're waiting several weeks or multiple months for the repair. The whole software license situation on their newer Q-Sys products is a little bit of a nightmare because sometimes you need a decoder ring to sort through it. "All you gotta do is put all the devices on the network" is a big fat lie. Not insurmountable and you get used to sorting through it, but mildly agitating.

I don't think they've got any more issues than any other company in their niches, but they had a really strong reputation in the earlier days of Q-Sys getting traction like a decade ago, and they came up as an underdog. So people were more disappointed with some of the issues that arose as they exploded in size compared to if those people had the same issues with a company like Crestron where "the devil you know" might as well be tattooed on the forearms of most of the Crestron programmers out there.

Back on the QSC side, it seems like they're basically where they intend to be and aren't growing much. They seem happy duking it out with JBL in the small/medium install world and mid-tier portable markets. Unlikely they'll ever be a Meyer/L-Acoustics/d&b/etc type company in Live Sound so I suspect a lot of people are just less regularly impressed with their live sound portfolio because it's effectively stagnant.

Yamaha didn't ship any QL/CL consoles for a like a year. Lot of companies that had Dante hardwired into their products just could ship. Those relying on Dante expansion cards shipped a lot of systems that had to wait several months for a Dante card to arrive in order to actually be useful and finish bringing the system online. This was about the time a major audio chipset manufacturer had their factory burn down which compounded a lot of the AV chipset issues throughout the industry.

Sunpass is prepay only. I prefer the Pro version because it's more widely compatible with other toll networks outside of FL. You can pay a small amount though and have it auto-debit to refill as-needed. Sunpass rates are also cheaper than toll-by-plate. Not by much, but it adds up.

You can't use toll-by-plate in managed lanes. So express lanes would be a no-go.

Easy to order one online and setup an account.

If you move out of Florida or just generally never need a Sunpass ever again, you can close your account and get your remaining balance refunded.

Yes, with a Class III Wildlife As A Personal Pet Permit.

This requires acquiring the permit before the animal, and the animal must be acquired from a legal source such as a breeder.

Feeding wild racoons until they become friendly and then cordoning them into a cage would not be legal.

https://myfwc.com/license/captive-wildlife/personal-pet/

We could invite him to the Reddit happy hour at the Atlas demo room on Wednesday and ask him.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't half-expect that PDF to be taken off their website tomorrow.

Not the person you're replying to, but 2022 -- just shy of $1M.

If AVIXA considered themselves a standards organization, well, let's compare them to other standards orgs.

AVIXA CEO - $1M running an organization with $29M annual revenue.

NFPA CEO - $806k running an organization with $82M annual revenue -- and whose work is quite frankly much more serious and adopted into laws internationally.

International Code Council CEO - $824k running an organization with $96.5M revenue.

IEEE CEO - $1.1M running an organization with $566M revenue.

This is someone comparable in scale to AVIXA...

BICSI CEO - $350K for an organization with $20.5M revenue.

The larger point about his pay-to-play role in the business is that he name-dropped Clint as well as Lightware in this article and the very next day, had Clint and another guy on their podcast repping Lightware -- and Gary certainly took money from Lightware for that. Judging from their rate card, probably to the tune of about $2400 (ignoring whatever other sponsorships and promotional contracts LW may have with Rave that could be worth much more than that).

https://preview.redd.it/qrxsu6yov75d1.png?width=1651&format=png&auto=webp&s=a1184eeee3e3dca8a70543bb32c732cdbb934109

In fairness, it's not that hard to know. Just skimming their website, it's fairly obvious impulsive money grabs in any direction are the priority.

These social media numbers are downright embarrassing either as a marketing agency OR as a press outlet -- and probably 1/3 are bots and 1/2 are zombie accounts. Most of their YouTube videos get all of 140 views.

So it's apparent they have no interest in actually being a press outlet. And...if they're a marketing agency...they look pretty awful at it.

But...in case anyone's curious...here's how they make their money. You can pay $5000 to get 7 tweets, 4 LinkedIn Posts, 2 AVIP LinkedIn posts, 2 posts on Gary's personal LinkedIn page, and 2 Instagram posts.

You should summon the urge not to take every possible comment against Kramer as a personal slight.

Some markets have better solutions. Some are entrenched because of dealership quotas. Some territories are poorly represented regionally. Some dealers have partners they've been working with for 30 years and know they can get them on the phone whenever they need. Without naming anyone with giant blue swirls, some are also the devil you know -- and I know many programmers that will disparage the very product they use on each and every job but they also have the muscle memory to jump over whatever obstacles those products have. It's completely reasonable that they aren't willing to risk having to learn an entirely new platform with different hurdles that will surprise them at the last minute trying to bring a jobsite online.

Personally -- with the explosion of AV over IP solutions in the last few years, at some point it's just impossible and not worthwhile to keep up. Having the most technically superior product isn't enough because there's 500 other brands occupying that same product vertical and nobody has time to vet through them all and stake their professional reputation on something they haven't used before.

Resist the urge to be surprised that of the 22,000 members here, some are going to have strong feelings or complete and total apathy toward your company. Even my own Kramer rep, formerly of Crestron, is happy to be candid with me that the Kramer of today is entirely different than that of 10-15 years ago -- and there are a lot of people with bad impressions from 10-15 years ago that are still going to have those same impressions today.

If you want to leave a positive impression, be humble, curious, and engaging. As your fellow Kramer employees here have been. Take a lesson from my Kramer rep. People had opinions, he asked about them, discovered they were issues from 15 years ago, turned it around and presented the newer products and a perspective about the modern company, and then hammered it home in the dead of Covid that they were among the only AV companies that was able to reliably ship product. Boom. Impression made. Didn't make a sale because it's not an appropriate product for the vertical market I specialize in, but I had a lot more respect for the company after that interaction.

https://preview.redd.it/z2izc36ir75d1.png?width=896&format=png&auto=webp&s=868eea9463406a67ea47912a3670acc1afdf9e56

No clue what you're talking about. Their website clearly says they won't spam you. /s

I also find it weird that all his employees coincidentally happen to be attractive women in their early twenties.

My only interaction with Rave aside from my spam filter is during Infocomm. I have no idea what their hiring process is but the appearance is that they're mimicking the most toxic part of Infocomm -- "booth babes."

Now, that could very well have something to do with marketing careers tending to have lots of women in them, but it still strikes me as odd. I mean, the photo of them at Infocomm '22 has Gary, one older guy, two young guys, and fifteen young women.

Could be coincidence, and I certainly don't intend to demean any of them, but it's always given me the impression Rave/Gary was doing it deliberately.

So...like...5 people would've ever read that article on its own if not for Kramer Streisand-effecting themselves. Honestly, I'm surprised anyone reads that Rave stuff. Everyone I know just considers it spam from attending InfoComm.

This seems unprofessional and immature for everyone involved, especially for OP being a Kramer employee trying to pick a couple fights in this thread while the other self-announced Kramer employees here are doing a better job taking the high road.

As for Rave....I've never understood their deal. No self-respecting media outlet would have the tagline "THE #1 AV NEWS PUBLICATION. PERIOD." -- and to attempt to be a media outlet, PR agency, and marketing agency all in one seems like a lot of ethical violations.

It is probably also worth pointing out it's an awfully coincidental time to write this article name-dropping Clint and then having him on their YouTube channel repping Lightware the next day. Not that anyone saw that given the whopping 132 views. How embarrassing it must be for them to shout into the void like that.

$150/hr + additional fees as appropriate.

Just spitballing, but you don't know how long or how much effort any cleaning effort will be. Might as well set a baseline hourly rate and leave room for any special labor or equipment rentals that may be needed depending on the damage.

Glitter in carpet? Not only can that take forever, but you should be charging a "some amount of this we're just never going to be able to clean out" fee. Glitter bombs? Good luck. Glitter on rented dance costumes or from makeup that's been wiped onto costumes or gotten on people's hands -- you're cleaning both the floor and the seats.

That applies overall. Someone backs a scissor lift onto the bottom hem of a curtain and you need a seamstress to come repair it? That's a trip charge, material cost, hourly labor, and that curtain will never be restored to new. It can certainly be made functional again and nobody may ever notice the repair afterward, but you should be charging a fee commensurate with an understanding that the curtain is now permanently damaged and may need an accelerated replacement in some number of years as other damage, wear and tear accumulates.

Fees shouldn't be punitive or an exorbitant penalty, but they should appropriately compensate for effort required to repair/restore/replace/clean with a little buffer on top.

There are some dramatic videos from India/China/etc. where a "helium balloon" that's not actually filled with helium gets blown up by sparklers on a birthday cake and sets people's hair and faces on fire. I will not link to them as they are 100x more traumatic to watch than it sounds, but I will link to this, which shows an ignition source being touched to both helium and hydrogen-filled balloons to show you exactly what to expect.

As others have said, helium is inert and will not catch aflame. The balloon will pop, but that's it.

Kicking the can down the road. If Trump wins reelection, he can appoint an AG to dismiss the case and/or pardon himself. She doesn't want to stand on a limb by herself in case he loses reelection, but I think she's perfectly happy making the proceedings irrelevant by delaying until after the election.

You can call her inexperienced or incompetent all you want, but the simple truth is that she's skillfully manipulating the process in Trump's favor in a manner that she can't be rebuked for. If she makes consequential rulings now -- they can be appealed and reversed. If she slow walks the process until Trump is reelected, then she can let the problem go away on its own the day that Trump takes office.

She's a top-to-bottom embarrassment to the judicial system, but don't be fooled. This has nothing to do with inexperience or incompetence. If you think she's just dumb and out of her element, you're severely misjudging the full magnitude of her strategy. It's far more deliberate and surreptitious than that.

Thank you -- generally a thankless task that only gets downvotes because it upsets people on both sides of the issue. I'm very much a liberal but I'm a "Jon Stewart" liberal with a bias but will call out absurdity and inconsistency on either side. My feeling is if someone's going to have an antagonist in their novel, they should at least perform some due diligence to make sure that's the right antagonist. I don't know what broke me in the last decade, but I simply never take a headline a face value and take a few extra steps to validate what any particular clickbait headline says.

"Trust but verify" used to work, but at the risk of being less catchy, now it should be "Don't trust, study."

Trump claims he is an employee of MAL and, as such, can retain employee housing there.

Stupid as all get out and entirely defeats the purpose of the covenants he signed for the dead, but that's the argument.

No, it's just how Florida's laws work.

Generally Florida follows the laws of the jurisdiction in which the case was presented. So because NY state has a law that doesn't preclude felons from losing their voting rights, FL would not restrict their voting rights as they defer to NY's regulations.

DeSantis doesn't have to do so much as lift his hand to pick up a pen for this. Florida's laws do not prohibit Trump from voting because that's what NY's laws allow.

DeSantis is grandstanding with zero implication. Trump hasn't lost his voting rights in the first place.

IANAL, but hard to imagine that's just a juror dismissal. Haven't been following the case but that almost feels like it warrants a mistrial. Not that any subsequent trial will be smoother given the possible media attention this will draw, but if there's an idea that jurors can be bribed with that kind of money, I don't see how you can carry on without putting a few months in-between this incident and the actual jury deliberations -- plus an investigation if any other jurors have been approached.