"Dilbert, I have never seen that type of Heliconia, as far as I knew they only had green leaves. Do you have a picture of the flower? Where could one find one of these?" I don't have a picture of the flower. The bracts are variegated similar to the leaves and not particularly showy. There are many heliconias with red and/or variegated leaves. Heliconia illustris 'rubricaulis' is a very old cultivar collected from the South Sea islands. It was probably a mutation cultivated by Polynesians. The nomenclature is confused, but here is its first appearance in Western civilization in 1883: About 10 years later, the name Heliconia illustris 'rubricaulis' appeared in catalogs as an extra intensely colored variety. It is not widely cultivated because it is very cold sensitive and needs high humidity. It is available from many Hawian nurseries, but you have to show them the picture because they do not know the proper name. Here is a picture of another South Sea heliconia, H. Spectabilis, which is much easier to grow: Again, show the people from the Hawian nurseries the picture and tell them it is a heliconia but DO NOT ASK FOR IT BY NAME or you will get something else!

Here's an good website. I heard a great presentation bu a rep from this office, and I learned a lot. Every case they bust started with a citizen report. Here is a link that might be useful: Medicare fraud

I don't have an account with Wells Fargo, but own some stock. The stock dipped a bit. I do understand how this could have happened. I haven't heard that any customers lost money - just that their deposits were used in a manner not disclosed to them. There could have been extra fees; I don't know. I fault management for setting up this situation. I saw something similar years ago in the company I worked for. We had a vice President who thought it productive (and fun to watch) to create competition and ill will among his working managers, the guys af the bottom of the management chain who are tasked with doing actual work and getting things done. It nearly wrecked the company. Instead of fostering an atmosphere of cooperation the company once had, it turned manager against manager. The production and maintenance engineers searched the system to find ways to shift costs to a different department. They found loop holes in the internal accounting system. One example: The factory ordered a batch of screws to assemble a particular product, however, due to an error in the orfering process, these parts were improperly heat treated and were useless, scrap in other words. Under normal circumstances, these parts would have been scrapped, new ones ordered, and the scrap loss would have been charged to the factory's budget. The factory was in one town and the development office was at another location 600 mile distant. The factory would enter a drawing change request for something very minor like a small change in the plating formula. This often happens when a vendor has a slightly different process, but one that is yet suitable. The home office approves the change and marks the box to scrap the older parts thinking there was not many and not knowing it was an entire lot for a week's production. Bingo! The scrap charges goes against the Development Dept.'s budget instead of the factory. In the accounting system, the cost of making the product has been artificially lowered. An accumulation of such shenanigans over the course of a year alters the true cost of manufacturing the product and its profit, which in turn, skews management's decisions about selling price and whether or not to continue to make the product, or to begin planning for a replacement or redesign. Upper Management was using certain pieces of data from the accounting system to calculate yearly bonuses to the line managers, and these managers were busily thwarting the accuracy of the system. It was a bad time to be working there. Thankfully, the executives caught on to what was happening and replaced this VP.

There are two kinds of chip cards - chip and pin and chip and signature. Chip and pin, like ATM cards here, require entering a PIN to authorize a charge. They are very safe, reduce fraudulent charges for in person use significantly, and are virtually un-counterfeit-able. They have been the standard for many years for credit cards issued almost everywhere in the world EXCEPT in the US. In Europe and Canada, when you are in a restaurant, for example, they bring a little machine to you. You insert the card and then need to enter your PIN, for the charge to go through. The newly issued chip cards in the US are chip and signature. What's the difference between that and what we used to have? Not much. The old style mag strip cards were easily to counterfeit. The chip takes the place of the mag strip to identify you. They can't be counterfeited but they can still be stolen and misused. It disables the ability of the bad guys to make phony cards but otherwise, offers little boost in security over the mag strip only cards. There is a small but growing number of US card issuers that offer chip and pin cards. I got one a few years ago after encountering situations abroad where my mag strip or even newer chip and signature cards couldn't be used.