Oh, you mean that when you get the PDF, you get a print-friendly one "free" with it, not that all the PDFs are free. Gotcha.

In Acrobat, go to View -> Navigation Panels -> Layers. This will open up a sidebar panel that shows the layers in the document, if there are more than 1. Click the eye next to each layer to hide/display it.

Can't get it to work. I can find the menu option, but I can't get any layers to open.

But I think this is a bit of a tangent. I'll keep trying, and if I get any more stuck, I'll PM you. Sound OK?

Anyway, back on topic, Adam obviously knows more about the layout of game books than anyone here. Could you surmise what Pinnacle is doing differently, that makes laying out two different versions efficient for them? As opposed to what was/is done at CGL? I don't think you'll be revealing any trade secrets by discussing layout techniques.

Is this thread about layout issues?

Okay so I decided to listen to this little talk, and am I the only one that got pissed right out the gate. Seems to me like Randall is trying to throw Jenifer under the bus and basically blame her for everything that happened. Anyway that is what I hear him doing. This is just plan BS, and more and more I just can't believe the way that this is all going down. More and more even though I love Shadowrun completely this company is making it almost impossible to buy their products due to the nature of the individuals making the game. Jeez guy could it have been you know the fault of the guy that took out the money? Maybe he should have been able to say to himself, "well I know that all this can't all be mine I should sit down a do some math here"... its just amazing!

Jennifer Harding was not their original book keeper though. Not sure who it was, but Jennifer Harding was upped
to their book-keeper late last year. She was the middle book-keeper. And, admittedly, the book-keeper before
Jennifer Harding does have some responsibility for not catching what was happening and saying something about
it. Just as David Stansel-Garner has some responsibility for the Freelancers not getting paid as he was the
Operations Manager, and seeing stuff gets paid on time is what an Operations Manager does. The Colemans have
responsibilty for not thinking about what they were taking out of the bank. The other owners have responsibility for
not wanting to see the books more often. In essence, it is a situation where, ultimately, everyone probably has
some responsibility regarding the situation. Jennifer Harding, having come in after everything had already
happened, is probably the only blameless one in the whole situation.

But, you know what? Mistakes happen. It sounds like CGL is trying to avoid those errors again. It should not
happen again.

Regarding that podcast (intersting stuff around minute 35):
There are apparently different opinions on the duties of management. It is really simple. You manage it, you are responsible for it working. Even if your staff does not perform, you are responsible. You hire staff too late, your responsibility. Liquidity control? Guess what. Paying bills? Also. "Not noticing red flags" will get a wageslave promoted or fired.

I listened too. It wasn't exactly throwing Jennifer under the bus (though the impression I had lends it to be her as the book keeper not up to the task, but he never mentions her by name). As Randall pointed out, they were basically not paying attention to the books as closely as they should and not being as business savvy about accounting procedures. They are not the first small business to run into these kinds of issues.

EDIT: Yanked my post. Saw after I posted that the mods closed down the PDF part of this discussion.

Yeah, the book-keeper mentioned as "Not up to the task" and the one he puts some blame on was not Jennifer.

Bull

That may be, but it's ultimately the Controller's job (and the CFO's, or President's, whoever's ultimately in charge of zebookz) to be up to that same task. Accounting standards and corporate law changes in the past 15 years or so have put the onus squarely on the CFO/Controller to make sure everything is right, or it's their ass.

The bookkeeper didn't do it right? Okay, believable. That the bookkeeper's boss didn't review the books and catch it? No no no.

Its a fair point, the international standards are bastards at time for trying to get rid of the loop hole of someone below me fucked up but its not my fault.

At the end of the day the boss earns the big money because he has the big responsibility

These are all sentiments that are nice but don't necessarily bear any resemblance to reality.

If anyone at IMR had been doing their fiscal duties well, there probably wouldn't have been fiscal mismanagement. There's plenty of blame to go around. Randall has previously admitted to some culpability for not paying attention as he should have. I haven't listened to the interview to hear what is said about the prior book keeper.

That's why I thought it was pretty important early on to establish when Jen started working as book keeper. She had only been at the job months, and the financial review apparently started while she was there. The majority, if not all of the questionable draws were done before her time. She was in the unenviable position of having to clean up someone else's mess.

Previous statements from IMR, which sounded like they had been drawn up by Randall seemed sympathetic to Jen and others who quit around the same time.

I was under the impression that part of the problem here was that CGL lacked any sort of proper book-keeper until Jen was brought in to sort through the mess that years of slap-dash procedure had produced.

That could very well be - but that's dangerous, as we've seen. I do have a problem believing that they didn't know proper accounting procedure if they had the license for that long; their legal department is going to know what can get them into trouble and advise them on how to continue.

If they didn't have an accountant, do you really think they had a legal department?

Well they're in court, so...yes?

Honestly, in many circles 'bookkeeper' and 'accountant' are interchangable. An accountant keeps the books. Either may or may not have a CPA, CMA, or IA cert. There are talented and horrible accountants and bookkeepers.

No matter what, you have somebody keeping the records, and somebody looking over their shoulder to verify it. It's a cost of doing business. Either you're doing it in-house, or you have a firm doing it for you. In this case, there was an in-house bookkeeper. IMR/CGL is not small enough to do their accounting on a cash basis, and if they're a public corporation then both bookkeeping and internal auditing are required by the SEC.

There is a huge difference between a Legal Department and a Lawyer form a Firm representing them in legal disputes... one is in-house, and the other is not... My guess is that if they were wroking out of a residential house, they had no legal department... There are also differences between Public Companies (Traded on the various Stock Exchanges) and Private Corporations (those that are not)... The rules are different for both.

Keep the Faith

Yes, yes. I know that. I do have a problem believing that anyone was going to get a hold of the BT/SR licenses and not have some form of accurate bookkeeping (and probably at least a lawyer on retainer to make sure the transfer and such was done right).

IMR/CGL is not a publicly traded company.

Your belief is not required for the truth as that's more or less exactly what happened. I know it's hard to believe but some things in this world, especially in a low margin biz like gaming tend to get done on a handshake or short contract system. Topps likely gave them a license contract, a lawyer was likely hired to review it at some point, the rest as they say is history.

Bookkeepers cost money. Small company just starting up? They usually figure they can handle their own books for a while, only going to the accountant on a yearly basis (if they can't figure out their taxes on their own) until they get enough money to hire a bookkeeper.

But one thing leads to another and suddenly company peeps are too busy trying to keep up to remember they were supposed to hire bookkeepers, lawyers, and the french maid service...

I'm speaking generally, not specifically, BTW. And I've seen it happen.

But that does seem to be the case...

No worries though... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Keep the Faith

Bah.

Heheheh... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Keep the Faith

I have no idea a) what Pinnacle's "print-friendly" PDFs look like, as I don't play or buy any Pinnacle games (I have a single print copy of Explorer's Edition), and so b) I can't surmise how they created them and how much additional work went into them.