It does snow on the west coast, and when it does you get this. If I recall, this was the winter of 1993, ten years earlier. Notice the privacy and seclusion you can have, even in the center of a west coast city. The snow is wet and heavy. Almost dead center is my Cadillac windshield. This kind of weather happens in late December or January, but often happens at night and is gone by morning. I was the only vehicle to make it up the hill that day. Front-wheel drive, see.
There is the problem of the snow getting heavy enough to break trees, which block the roadway. The road plow system has never been adequate to handle peak snowfalls like this one and often can only plow a single lane down country roads like this one. Now back to 2003.There is a note complaining about the poor performance of one of my investments, Eaton Vance. They deal in municipal bonds but seem better at recording one’s private affairs “for security reasons” than they are at finding top quality bond issues. I cannot print the actual accusations and opinions. I was eventually to conclude the company was some bozo who bought bond software and their "analysis" went no deeper than whatever the screen told them to buy or sell. What I dislike most is the difficulty of getting a straight answer out of Eaton Vance.
√ When they talk, they always flip back and forth between the big picture and the small picture, depending on which one you asked about. I drew the conclusion that “they are staffed by morons barely in control of anything”.
√ “They are evasive, don’t know their own industry and those with any qualifications went to schools I never heard of.”
√ “They can’t make decisions or give a straight answer.”
√ “Eaton Vance people just do not instill me with confidence and are far below the standards I would ever recommend to anyone.”
√ “… a company of unstable drop-outs with obscure policies.”
[Author's note: In the end, instead of canceling my account, I capped it at a few thousand dollars, which still sits there as of this transcription in November, 2007. They had really weird policies, for example, of paying commission to your original broker, even if you closed that broker’s account after she died. They act as if they automatically have reasons to distrust you and everything you say, but won’t say what those reasons are. When all put together, they rather closely approximate my definition of bad people.]
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