Lionel Fastrack is popular, and in some ways it improves on earlier Lionel track. Unfortunately it’s also more prone to manufacturing defects. Here’s how to fix Lionel Fastrack.
Fixing erratic Lionel Fastrack
The most thorough article to date on the decision not to prosecute
Steve Pokin, the journalist who broke the original Megan Meier story, published an account today of the decision not to press charges.
Some of the things in the article trouble me.It troubles me that Jack Banas interviewed Lori Drew and perhaps Curt Drew, but didn’t interview Ron Meier at all, and talked only briefly with Tina Meier.
His justification: He has a property destruction case pending against Ron Meier. In a way that’s considerate of him–he could have used the opportunity to get Meier to testify against himself–but I can think of one way around the problem. Interview Meier with his attorney present, so that if Meier were to start to incriminate himself, his attorney could cut him off.
If I can come up with this workaround, then a prosecuting attorney ought to be able to as well.
It bothers me that each time something Drew said contradicted the many news reports that have been written, it means the news reports are wrong. It was obvious from the very first police report that Drew was trying to cover her tracks–in the report, she stated that somehow others were able to get access to the Myspace account and send messages to Megan. That’s an indirect quote, but it’s pretty close to the wording in the report.
The Meiers’ story has been remarkably consistent, even when they are visibly exhausted. The police reports on Smoking Gun aren’t forthcoming, and they aren’t consistent with what Drew is saying now.
I know from personal experience that when a traumatic event happens, your memory of it is generally very good–nearly photographic. Sometimes people refer to them as “flashbulb” events for that very reason. I can tell you every little detail about the car crash I was in four years ago, just as plainly as it happened yesterday.
So if someone has difficulty consistently recounting the events of a flashbulb incident, that suggests to me that he or she is lying.
I don’t know about law enforcement in St. Charles, but in journalism, if I’d ever come to one of my editors with an important story and I only interviewed one side, and I relied solely on two old interviews of one of the other participants (Ashley Grills), something bad would have happened next. Really bad.
For that matter, Grills and Drew dispute whose idea it was to create the account. Each say it was the other. Both women had different reactions to Megan Meier’s suicide. Drew felt less guilty after she heard Meier had attempted suicide before. Grills threatened suicide herself and ended up getting psychiatric treatment.
All of that is solid evidence that Grills has a conscience, ability to feel guilt, and knowledge of right and wrong.
Both Grills and Drew have track records of deceit and changing the story afterward. So which liar should you believe?
The safer bet is to believe the one with a conscience. She’s less likely to lie now.
Finally, I take issue with Banas’ statement that Drew never intended to “harm, stalk, endanger or harass.”
The police report Drew filed last year stated that some of the communication was of sexual nature.
Let me ask a question. If it turned out that Michael Devlin had made such a statement, would Devlin be in court right now, facing charges of harassment?
If it’s harassment if Michael Devlin does it, then it’s harassment if Lori Drew does it. Period.
Besides that, in a story published in The Age, an Australian newspaper, a neighbor states that Lori Drew told her about the fake account, laughed about it, and said she would “mess with Megan.”
So an Australian journalist halfway around the world found someone willing to say this was intentional harassment. Yet Banas won’t give this neighbor’s testimony equal weight with the testimony of an already established liar and deceiver.
I don’t live in St. Charles County but a friend of mine does. He tells me Banas has three more years in office.
This is precisely what recall elections are for. If you live in St. Charles County and see a recall petition, sign it. If you don’t see one, call the St. Charles Election Authority at 636-949-7550 and ask how to start one.
And failing that, I wholeheartedly endorse whoever is running against Banas for St. Charles County Prosecutor in 2010. Whoever that might be.
I’m sure I have company.
Updating Windows without a network connection
Problem: I have to get three Windows servers patched up to date tomorrow. I found this out about 3 this afternoon.
Second problem: No network connection to the outside world, under any circumstances.
Third problem: Any rewritable media used on said servers must be destroyed after use.
Impossible? Believe it or not, no.Normally we keep a copy of Hfnetchk Pro in this environment for pushing out patches (copied from an Hfnetchk Pro server that does have a connection to the outside world), but someone saw fit to blow that server away. Ahem. Someone can expect a thank-you letter from me. And perhaps a thank-you present from my dog.
As for why servers with no connection to the outside world need patches to protect them from the outside world, well, I don’t make the rules.
So the answer in this case is to get my grubby mitts on ctupdate, a tool written by the wonderful German IT magazine c’t (their few English-translated articles are so brilliant, I wonder sometimes if I should learn German just so I can read the magazine).
Ctupdate will go download your updates, make an ISO image for you to burn to CD or DVD, and the result includes a nice menu so brain-dead easy that even a CIO could use it. (Oh, did I say that out loud?)
The catch? At present, a full collection of Windows XP or 2003 updates is nearly 800 MB in size, so make sure you have a fast network connection and either a DVD burner or a big USB disk if you plan to use it.
With a ctupdate-created DVD in hand, I can walk up to those isolated servers, pop in the disc, click a couple of buttons, have a cup or two of coffee, and then move on to the next one. Or better yet, copy the DVD to a network share, run the executable, click those buttons, have some coffee, and get on with the day. Problem solved.
This works for some slightly less convoluted situations too. If you expect to be asked to fix Windows PCs for a relative or twelve while you’re on Christmas vacation, prepare by downloading ctupdate, downloading all the updates, and either burning them to DVD or copying them over to a USB device. It works with Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 updates.
Installing Windows from a USB device
I’ve seen this done before, but this is currently the only guide I can find to Installing Windows XP from a USB drive.
If your computer has USB 2.0 ports and can boot off USB (true of most recent PCs), this is not only convenient–it should also be very fast.The computer may or may not boot quickly, but once it’s up and running, Windows should theoretically install in a few minutes. And if you slipstream your service packs, you can save that installation time too.
If you have the 32-bit version of Ghost, you can deploy images with this method too.
I installed MS Office off a USB stick last week, and it installed in about five minutes.
While your CD-ROM drive is connected to a faster bus, the USB stick has much lower seek times, and when you’re transferring large numbers of small files, such as during an installation, seek time matters more.
If you build a lot of systems, you need this guide. About a 2-gig USB flash drive ought to hold everything you need.
Decorating for Christmas again
My wife and I decorated for Christmas today, which used to be something I didn’t look forward to, but today I do, because it means I get to have a train upstairs for about six weeks.
I kept it simple this year.I set up a nativity set on the mantle. This year I resisted the temptation to put the Magi across the room, as I normally do–after all, on Christmas night they were just beginning their journey.
The tree is very simple–lights, an angel on top, and a few plain ornaments.
I put a simple loop of Lionel Fastrack around the tree and put a few ceramic buildings–mostly Dept. 56 but one is a knockoff–in the center to look like a village–a church, two stores, and three houses. It took about 20 minutes to set up. I’d like to do something more elaborate but I don’t have the time this year.
My ultimate goal is to make a two-piece platform out of extruded foam insulation. Then I can run wires through it for lighting, glue down some track, store it in two pieces in the off-season, and setup will involve hooking up a transformer, plugging the two halves together, and placing the buildings over the lights. It may be years before I can do it.
I spent a fair bit of time reconditioning trains this afternoon. I haven’t so much as run a train since summer, when I was taken for a scammer in Redding, California who was posing as a disabled Gulf War 2 vet.
It was nice to spend a little time running trains again. I can’t let a bad experience ruin it for me. Interestingly enough, our Lab mix, Angel, was content to just sit with me and watch the train. Last year she growled and chased after it. Today, the only growl was the motor and solenoid in the vintage Marx locomotive I was running.
That nativity set is bugging me. I think I need to go move the Magi further away.
What I learned today about Black Friday sales
Although a lot of people, including money saver types, recommend against buying anything at all on the day after Thanksgiving, I rolled out of bed and fought the crowds early this morning.
I think I came out ahead.Having the ads ahead of time helps to plan out strategy. I don’t read Fat Wallet religiously like some people do, but earlier this week I found a link to a nice spreadsheet on Digg that listed all of the available deals, sortable by category, store, and everything else imaginable. That helped immensely.
A big part of the key is knowing what you want and sticking to it. Get into the store, get the biggest item right away, then go get the smaller items.
I nearly got burned by not planning for traffic. I figured since I left my house before 6, I should be able to zip through the commercial area to get to Office Depot in about five minutes. I was wrong; with the stoplights all on flash, it was worse than rush hour. My five-minute trip took more like 30, and the store was open by the time I got there.
I went in, but it was a waste of time. There were three things on my shopping list, and all of them were gone, including the little things. I grabbed a ticket for the printer I wanted, but when I took it to the register, I was told they were all gone, after I stood there by the register for 15 minutes. "Well, we’re a little busy now," was the smart-aleck reply I got from the stock guy when I asked why it took 15 minutes to tell me they were gone.
Lesson learned: If it doesn’t look like they have what you want and someplace else has it, leave. Immediately. It’s more productive to stand in line at a store that hasn’t opened yet.
I somehow managed to get to Office Max about half an hour before they opened. The line was already wrapped around the side of the building when I got there, but by the time the store opened, the line was much longer.
I know Office Max’s layout a lot better than Office Depot’s layout, so I actually managed to get everything on my list and get out of there quickly. The item I really wanted–the printer–cost $20 more there, but it was still a good deal at the higher price, and there weren’t any rebates for me to mess with.
If I’d been going to more than two or three places, it would have been a good idea for me to map out my route using Google Maps to eliminate any backtracking. That way, if two stores I wanted to visit were going to open at the same time, I could get to the nearest store.
The Office Max trip really drove something home: If you’re really serious about getting something, it helps to visit the store earlier in the week to get familiar with the layout, so you can get to the items on your list quickly.
Another important point: I didn’t mess with anything not on my list. Everything I bought came at a substantial discount. Part of the idea of Black Friday doorbuster sales is to get you into the store to buy other things because you’re there anyway.
And about that list: Before you put something on your list just because it looks like a good deal, ask yourself if you’d still buy it if it were full price. Last year I bought a USB flash drive and a spindle of DVD recordables because I needed them. This year I bought a bigger USB flash drive because I keep filling up the 1 GB drive I bought last year. These are things I would have bought anyway, but it was worth waiting for a good deal.
If you only use a printer once, it’s not a bargain, whether you pay $99 or $249 for it.
I also checked to make sure the price really was a good deal. Sometimes the prices at Newegg, Amazon, or some other online vendor are lower already. I didn’t buy anything that I could get cheaper online from the comfort of my living room.
Finally, you need to make sure you save enough money to make it worth your time. This year I saved more than $200, so it was worth getting up at 5:30 this morning to go do it. It’s not worth getting up at 5:30 and standing in line for 30-45 minutes to save $6 on a USB flash drive. Last year, since my savings amounted to about $20, I bought my stuff online and saved the trip. Of course the stuff ended up being backordered, so it took nearly a month for it to arrive. I was willing to live with that.
Today, I was home with my loot by 7:30. That’s as good as making $100 an hour. Actually it’s better, since it’s tax-free.
So, to recap:
1. Make a list of the things you want.
2. Make a list of the stores you’ll visit, based on the things you’re going to buy. Start with the store opening the earliest.
3. If possible, visit the stores earlier in the week and find the items on your hit list, so you’ll be able to find them quickly on Black Friday.
4. Locate the addresses of all of the stores, and plot out your route using Google Maps to avoid backtracking if possible.
5. Try to arrive at each store half an hour early. The less time you actually spend inside each store, the better. Most of the killer deals are gone within 20 minutes.
Some people recommend buying online instead of going to the stores, or buying the item earlier in the week and then price-matching it on Friday afternoon when the crowds are smaller. Make sure you know the rules; some stores won’t do this.
As for buying online, Office Max was selling its items at full price this morning. Office Depot’s web site wasn’t working, so they probably were honoring their prices but I wouldn’t have been able to buy them. Keep in mind that if you buy online, you’re at the back of the line, so you won’t get the item quickly and the store may weasel out of giving it to you at all.
Saving the world (but not necessarily your wallet) with biodiesel
So it looks like someone in Kansas is building diesel-electric hybrids. Just not really from scratch.
Johnathan Goodwin converts vehicles, new and old, to diesel-electric hybrids. His clients include Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger and Neil Young.
Young happens to hang out on one of the train forums I frequent (he’s the minority owner of Lionel) and they asked him to elaborate. Some people took him to task for ruining a classic by removing its original engine. He said the car was a beater when he first acquired it. He also said he does expect to get 100 miles per gallon out of it, and its range will be longer than one can safely drive nonstop. He’ll plug the car in at night, and for a short trip or commute, the car wouldn’t have to use the biodiesel at all.
The conversions aren’t cheap–Young sold some cars from his collection to finance the project. It typically costs $40,000 to convert a car. But it’s nice to see that the super-rich can convert their big cars to pollute less than my Honda Civic does.
It makes me wonder, though. If Young’s 1959 Lincoln Continental will get 100 miles to the gallon, what kind of mileage would a converted Honda Civic get?
Young also said that if cars using this kind of setup were mass-produced, the cost would be comparable to a Cadillac Escalade or Lincoln Navigator. That’s 2-3x what I paid for my Civic.
Let’s do the math. I drive about 400 miles a week. At $3 per gallon, I’m spending $34.29 a week on gas. According to what Young said, I could probably do all of my driving purely on plug-in power, but let’s assume the worst-case scenario and say I’d burn 4 gallons of biodiesel per week. Call it $12.
So I can expect to spend $1782.86 per year in my Civic. If I were driving one of these biodiesel-electric hybrids, I’d spend $624.
That’s a lot of money, but I’d have to drive that hybrid 17 years to save more than I save by driving my Civic. That’s 353,600 miles. A Civic can last that long if you’re careful with it, but will one of these hybrids? I guess it depends how good the rest of the car is.
Under the best-case scenario where I don’t use any biodiesel at all, the time drops to a more reasonable 11.22 years or 228,800 miles. That’s still a lot longer than most people are willing to drive the same car, but I could see myself driving one car for 12 years.
If gas hits $4 per gallon, then it takes 13 years and 269,231 miles for it to even out under the worst-case scenario, and 8 years and 175,000 miles under the best-case scenario.
Of course, Neil Young’s point is that not everyone wants to drive a Honda Civic, so the comparison isn’t entirely fair. If you want to drive something big that would get 15 miles to the gallon running if it were burning gasoline, the comparison is more fair.
At $3 per gallon, things even out at the 5.66 year/117,647 mile mark under the worst-case scenario, if you put a price premium of $20,000 on the hybrid version. Under the best of circumstances, it evens out at 4.8 years/100,000 miles. That’s not entirely unreasonable.
At $4 per gallon, it looks even better: 4.24 years/88,235 miles worst-case, 3.606 years/75,000 miles best-case.
Since most people like to keep their cars about four years, this is looking practical. And if these hybrids have a higher resale value than conventional cars, which is highly likely–ever price a used Toyota Prius?–it looks a lot more practical.
The CNN article says people are beating down Goodwin’s door to partner with him. I can see why, and I’m glad.
As for me, I’ve been trying to do the math and make things work, but no matter how I juggle it, I’d have to keep a gas-electric hybrid or a diesel car about 10 years before it would pay for itself compared to a conventional Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla. I’m perfectly willing to keep a car 10 years but I’m not sure I want to pay the premium up front. I did the math back in 2003 and ended up buying a Civic. At the time I made the decision based on $1.75/gallon for gas. Even if gas hits $4/gallon next year, it looks like the time isn’t right yet for me to change course.
Fixing choppy audio in Windows XP SP2
So I’m sitting at this 2 GHz PC with 2 GB of RAM and a reasonably fast video card, and the audio in Railroad Tycoon 3 skips and sounds a little bit distorted.
It’s maddening when the game played fine on 400 MHz systems. I did some digging, and bad audio seems to be a common problem in XP SP2, but solutions are rare.I’ll cut to the chase: A little-known hotfix, KB920872, fixed the problem for me. This isn’t the specific problem this hotfix addresses, but since it does affect the audio subsystem, I figured it couldn’t hurt.
It worked for me when all of the conventional fixes didn’t, and I haven’t seen this hotfix mentioned anywhere. So if your new computer can’t play MP3s or stream online video or audio as well as a Pentium-166 running Windows 98, try the hotfix.
The usual advice is to update or reinstall your sound drivers, and if possible, to use drivers from the manufacturer of the computer or of the sound board, rather than drivers that Microsoft provides.
In my case, I already had the newest manufacturer-supplied drivers, so that didn’t help. Utilizing the newest drivers from the manufacturer is usually a very good idea anyway, of course.
Another piece of advice was to install Windows and all the service packs and hotfixes before installing drivers and software. That’s a good practice–and I like to use something like nlite to slipstream all of those updates so the system doesn’t accumulate too much cruft. But I didn’t want to rebuild this system, partly because the vendor didn’t provide an XP CD or installation files on the hard drive, only a certificate of authenticity. (Doesn’t it stink when you have to pirate software you already legally own?) So that wasn’t a very practical option in this case.
Another suggestion I’ve seen is to go into the control panel and either increase or decrease the sound acceleration. I don’t like this option; you always want to use whatever hardware acceleration you can. You paid extra for it, after all.
Using discrete hardware as opposed to built-in sound doesn’t make a difference. I was using onboard, but I found people using Creative’s highest-end cards experiencing the same problem, which must have been maddening.
Finally, I found some people saying they had the problem go away when they upgraded to Vista. I don’t like that option either, because I found just as many people saying their audio skips in Vista but worked fine under XP SP2.
And no, I don’t know how to fix skipping audio in Vista. I haven’t seen it yet and have no plans to mess with it. Maybe in five years. Maybe.
So now I just have to figure out how to get XP SP2 to get along with my Firewire card. It seems to be a common problem.
My children, right or wrong
My good friend the Meiers’ neighbor (close enough, at a mile away) and I keep talking about this case. Hopefully you’re not so sick of Megan Meier to indulge me, because this appears to be a case of a parent being an ally, right or wrong, rather than being a parent.Steve once had a boss we’ll call Murray. Over lunch one day, Murray said he’d always stand behind his children, even to the point where he would lie on the witness stand at a murder trial, if it would protect a child.
That goes a few steps beyond creating a fake Myspace profile and using it to bully your child’s ex-friend, but both of them are symptoms of the same thing: Not parenting.
Lying to keep a child out of trouble or to gain information isn’t supporting your kids. It’s also not a parent’s job.
A parent’s job is to teach kids the difference between right and wrong and to help them learn from their difficulties.
I always knew when my dad was disappointed in me. I think sometimes Dad could be overly harsh, but part of that was because he knew I could do better. And part of it was the alcohol. And when I did something well, Dad was generous with his praise, and the rest of the people around him probably got tired of listening to him talk about me.
Dad could have done a better job, certainly, but the important thing was that he tried. For his shortcomings, we knew he would take care of us and support us.
But we also knew that if we did something wrong, there would be consequences.
It’s funny though. There weren’t consequences all that often. When my sister and I messed up, we learned from it and generally didn’t do something a second time.
Support also means something else. After we moved to St. Louis in 1988, I got to start over at a new school and make new friends. I didn’t have good friends at the old school. I made good friends at the new school, and my parents told me so.
If a friend turns on a child, parental support would be to tell the child that’s not what friends do. It might also help to say that this was unexpected, and this friend fooled the parent too–assuming that’s true. Point to an example of a good friend, then assure the child that there are others like that good friend out there.
And when it came to romantic relationships going sour–which didn’t happen to me a lot, but tended to mess me up for a long time when it did–Mom would reassure me that the girl who broke my heart obviously didn’t know me as well as she thought she did. She couldn’t fix the situation and she didn’t try to.
The temptation is always to be your child’s buddy, rather than an authority figure. But kids need authority figures because kids are wrong. A lot. It’s one of the ways they learn.
A big reason why my sister and I are successful today was because we didn’t get to be buddies with our parents until we were pretty much legal adults.
It’s tempting to shirk that responsibility in order to compensate for other things that have gone wrong. That’s not the right way to handle things. If a parent feels guilty, the only remedy is to find and correct the source of that guilt. Not having as much time as you’d like to spend with the kids, or not having enough money to afford to buy everything you’d want to buy for them isn’t a license to let things slide. Make adjustments, learn from them, find ways that the kids can learn from them too, and always keep in mind that those first 18 years aren’t about having fun, they’re about teaching another human being how life works.
I never thought I’d say this, but it’s only 18 years. There’s plenty of time to be buddy-buddy with the kids once they’re grown. And those years will be a lot better if parents spend those first 18 years being parents.
Not only that, the world will be a better place too.
Despite what that final message said, the world isn’t a better place without Megan Meier. But the world would be a far, far better place with fewer parents who facilitate, encourage, and participate in that kind of behavior.
Parents aren\’t supposed to act this way
There’s an episode of “Everybody Hates Chris” where a thug tries to get Chris to start stealing gold chains for him. Toward the end, Chris’ dad finds out, confronts him, and says that if he goes near Chris again, “You won’t go to jail. I will.” Chris’ dad then goes on to tell the thug exactly what he’ll do to him. And that was the end of it.
That’s how parents handled things in the ’80s. My dad did something similar when I was in 7th grade.
I guess today, some people set up fake Myspace profiles. Don’t read the story (or what follows here) if you’re easily upset.Megan Meier had an on-again, off-again friendship with a girl who lived down the street. After she ended the friendship for good, she started turning her life around.
Megan’s mother had banned her from Myspace because she and her ex-friend had created a fake profile with a photo of an attractive girl and used it to talk to boys. Soon before she turned 14, Megan’s mother lifted the ban.
Soon after, Josh appeared, wanting to be added as a friend. So began a six-week acquaintanceship. Megan was on cloud nine — she finally had a boy who she thought really thought she was pretty.
Then came an abrupt message: “I don’t know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I’ve heard that you are not very nice to your friends.”
It was all downhill from there. The next day, more disturbing messages followed. And Josh was sharing her messages with others.
A day later, Megan was dead by her own hand.
Josh had inside information on Megan and her relationships. Sort of. You see, Josh didn’t really exist. He was a fabrication of Megan’s ex-friend’s parents, created to see what Megan was saying about her former friend, and, obviously, to mess with the sensitive 13-year-old.
The thing that bothers me the most about this is the total lack of remorse. The mother said she heard at the funeral that Megan had attempted suicide before, so she felt less guilty. As an ambulance came down the street for Megan, the mother told one of the other people involved that she probably shouldn’t mention the Myspace account. And after Megan’s parents found out about the hoax, they destroyed a foosball table they had been storing for their so-called friends and dumped the pieces on the lawn. The hoaxers had installed a security camera–I wonder why?–and caught the incident on tape. They had the gall to press charges.
One family loses a daughter. Another loses a foosball table. The family that lost the foosball table is the one pressing charges. Megan’s father’s hearing is on Thursday.
Adults ganging up on a 13-year-old is not appropriate behavior. Thirteen year olds do a fine enough job of ganging up on one another and messing with each other’s minds. They don’t need adults–who are supposed to be role models and authority figures–jumping in.
I have firsthand experience in this. When I was 13, I was living in a little redneck town, attending a small school. I was ambitious and a deep thinker, and my classmates didn’t know what to make of someone like me. The way to get to be somebody in my combined 7th/8th grade class was to go to convenience stores and steal dirty magazines. Since I didn’t steal dirty magazines, I didn’t listen to Michael Jackson, and my dad drove the wrong brand of pickup, I quickly became an outcast.
Mostly they messed with my mind, but on three occasions it actually turned violent. The third time, happened during a softball game in PE. A kid named Joey–Someone I thought was my friend–bulldozed over me as he ran past second base.
I told my dad. Dad said he didn’t know what he was going to do, but he’d do something.
A few days later we had a softball game against another school. I was starting in left field. Joey started at third base. As he took his position, Dad walked up behind him.
“Hey, that was really cool how you mowed down David the other day, wasn’t it?”
Joey turned, grinning from ear to ear, until he saw that it was my Dad talking to him. The look on his face told Dad all he needed to know.
“I’m gonna have a lot of fun beating the [expletive] out of you, kid.”
Dad didn’t actually lay a hand on Joey. He made him a deal. If Joey left me alone for the rest of the year, Dad would leave him alone.
Joey made good on his end of the deal. I lived to see June, we moved away over the summer, and I never saw him again.
I’m not entirely convinced that the way Dad handled this was appropriate. But this was the third time something like this had happened and it was obvious the school authorities were unwilling or unable to put an end to it themselves. Dad’s confrontation with Joey happened during a softball game, in full view of our teacher (who was also the coach) and principal. Dad had Joey so rattled that he committed errors in the first inning, and when Dad started jawing at him again in the second, neither of them asked him to leave.
As inappropriate as Dad threatening Joey with bodily harm might be, it was a whole lot more appropriate than messing with a 13-year-old girl’s mind for six weeks, impersonating an interested 16-year-old boy, and sending a hormonal teenager on an emotional roller coaster ride before pulling the rug completely out with a final message that ended with the words, “the world would be a better place without you.”
Dad’s intervention was swift and clear. By the third inning, it was over, and with no lasting damage. About 10 years ago I heard Joey was going to college in Kansas City, which was quite a bit better than how some of our other classmates turned out.
I’ve seen a lot of outcry to unmask the identities of the people behind the forgery. I believe I have a pretty good idea who they are, but I don’t want to print something that might be incorrect. By searching public records I was able to locate a couple who fit the profile in the story. I believe the ringleaders are now age 40 and 38–certainly old enough to know better, and I would think old enough to have better things to do than harass 13-year-old girls.
The Meiers have said they won’t file a civil lawsuit against the couple who ganged up on their daughter and drove her to commit suicide. They want laws changed so that what they did would be illegal.
I disagree with that. I don’t know how you make what the Meier’s neighbors did illegal, and even if you did make it illegal to create a fake Myspace account for the purpose of harassing teenagers, the law would be impossible to enforce.
This is the perfect situation for a civil lawsuit. File a wrongful death lawsuit, saying that the family emotionally harassed their daughter for six weeks and drove her to suicide, and sue them into bankruptcy. You can’t send them to jail and you can’t bring their daughter back, but you can take away their $200,000 home and with it, much of their ability to do the same thing to someone else in the future, and, perhaps most importantly, you get them out of your neighborhood.
The Meiers probably don’t want the money. No amount of money will bring their daughter back. But this legal tactic is probably the only way they can get the one thing they do want–for their neighbors to leave. Not only that, it sends a message to people everywhere: Do not act inappropriately on Myspace, or there will be severe consequences, up to and including losing everything you’ve spent your career working to accumulate.
If there’s money left over after paying the lawyers, I’m sure they could find some worthy cause that could use the money to make the world a little bit better place.
And with those neighbors gone, Waterford Crystal Drive in Dardenne Prairie, Missouri would undoubtedly be a better place.