Former Tyco CEO, Dennis Kozlowski, and ex-CFO Mark Swartz were found guilty Friday of stealing about $600 million from the manufacturing conglomerate. This was the second trial for the duo, since the first ended in a hung jury.

In this trial, prosecutors left out sordid details about Kozlowski’s lavish spending during his tenure as Tyco’s top executive, including a $1 million birthday party he threw for his wife on the Italian island of Sardinia and a $6,000 shower curtain allegedly purchased with company funds. They still went down, and now face 15 to 30 years in prison.

Today, Adelphia founder, John Rigas, and his son, Timothy Rigas, were sentenced to 15 and 20 years in prison respectively for their part in embezzling $100 million from the company and hiding $2.3 billion in off-balance-sheet debt prior to the company collapsing into bankruptcy three years ago. They should consider themselves lucky, since they could have both been sentenced to life in prison.

The moral of these stories: it doesn’t pay to be greedy. How many homes and yachts do you really need? All of these guys were extremely wealthy before they decided to lie, cheat, and steal. The Rigas family will pay $1.5 billion back to investors–how much of their net worth is that!? Perhaps it was ego that made them do it, who knows? Now, a big guy named Bubba will make them “do it,” repeatedly.

Pronunciation: nō’mən-klā’chər
Function: noun
Etymology: 1610, “a name,” from Fr. nomenclature, from L. nomenclatura “calling of names,” from nomenclator “namer,” from nomen “name” + calator “caller, crier,” from calare “call out.” Nomenclator in Rome was the title of a steward whose job was to announce visitors, and also of a prompter who helped a stumping politician recall names and pet causes of his constituents. Meaning “list or catalogue of names” first attested 1635; that of “system of naming” is from 1664; sense of “terminology of a science” is from 1789.
Earliest Usage Date: 1610
Definition: 1) a system of names used in an art or science: the nomenclature of mineralogy; 2) the procedure of assigning names to the kinds and groups of organisms listed in a taxonomic classification: the rules of nomenclature in botany.

Alternates: rigamarole
Function: noun
Etymology: Alteration of obsolete ragman roll, catalog, from Middle English ragmane rolle, a long roll of verses descriptive of personal characters, used in a medieval game of chance called Rageman, perhaps from Anglo-Fr. Ragemon le bon “Ragemon the good,” which was the heading on one set of the verses, referring to a character by that name + Middle English rolle, list (from Old French, from Latin rotula, wheel). Sense transferred to “foolish activity or commotion.”
Date: 1523
Definition: 1) confused or meaningless talk; 2) a complex and ritualistic procedure.

I know, I know. Google has a mappy feature with satellite views and all that jazz, but I wanted a map of the USA I could print out. So I searched for ‘printable maps‘ and BAM! First link was National Geographic’s Xpeditions Atlas site. Exactly what I needed. Not only was a US map available, but a map for just about any place on Earth was there. Pretty sweet. Then I searched for ‘high paying jobs with little responsibility‘. Not as successful…

That’s right. You’re getting the news here even before Slashdot. Google’s Gmail has been down at least since 11:55 AM PST. As of this posting it’s still down. I’m tempted to drive over to Google headquarters right now to complain!

“Server Error: The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request. Please try again in 30 seconds. ”

Is 30 MINUTES a temporary error?

UPDATE (1:40PM): It’s back up now… *grumble* *grumble*

Yes, it’s sad that I can’t live without email for an hour or two.