A Counting School

Reminder - new home!

2007-07-20T02:13:00.000-04:00

New postings go up at www.krupo.ca.

So that's why there's no "guard" command.

2006-08-11T12:34:00.000-04:00

I have a nice little archive of incomplete posts that are going to eventually move to A Counting School's new home. And some that won't, because they really have nothing to do with accounting, but harken to the more aimless early days of posting.

Since blogger.com's servers weren't crashing today, I thought I'd share one of the "orphaned" posts that I saved up but hadn't posted.

Now if only I had time to play the games I'm talking about here!

If you've wasted (invested? nah) hours of your life playing computer games, you may have touched Age of Wonders and Rome: Total War. In terms of gameplay, they're different in a lot of ways, but one common thread between both is that you have a large map with many units, and you have to cycle through them.

This post inadvertently reveals why the "guard" command in AoW is not present in RTW.

You need your generals to run around to be more efficient in the game. In AoW there is no such consideration. Interesting.

Remember to update your bookmarks to http://krupo.steeplemedia.com/, and as soon as I fix the forwarder settings, http://www.krupo.ca/ will also take you there.

The Ultimate Showdown

2006-06-28T15:26:00.000-04:00

Ever wanted to see a movie where Batman fights Godzilla. And dead American Presidents? And Transformers? And other pop culture heroes and villains?

Then check out the ultimate showdown movie.

The friend who sent this link is laughing so hard at the movie that's he's "starting to cough up blood."

Good for him.

Original Post Jan 28; Jun 28 Update: video now embedded.

Vulgar Counting School

2006-06-21T20:45:00.000-04:00

For the time being this site will site idle; but one of its primary uses will be to host embedded videos which I figure we'll keep away from the family friendly Steeple site at www.krupo.ca.

We'll inaugurate this new tradition with another video from videosift.com.

Ah, South Park. I suspect I may have to replace this when the video gets taken down by Comedy Central or whoever cares. Let's hope they support free promotion instead of negative community relations.

"Like a Phoenix from the Ashes"

2006-06-10T00:13:00.001-04:00

With this post I unceremoniously crush the little head of blogger.

Translation?

Big news: ACS is moving.

The new address is: http://krupo.steeplemedia.com/

I'm going to maintain this version of ACS indefinitely, or at least until I figure out how to successfully merge a half year (!!!) of posts from here to the new site.

Thanks to everyone who's been following along here, and I invite you to update your links to the new home of ACS.

Online intrigue: youthforvolpe.ca

2006-06-08T22:08:00.000-04:00

While wandering through the internet, I stumbled upon the news that someone is apparently very upset with youthforvolpe.ca.

I can't imagine way.

A sharply barbed & sarcastic on a contender for Liberal leadership?

I love it.

A gift from the heavens for people who surf on more than one computer

2006-06-07T22:36:00.000-04:00

The Google blog is a ridiculously useful place to visit on a regular basis. If you haven't noticed, I do that on a regular basis - and just noticed something absolutely killer for anyone who uses more than one computer - an announcement about their new Firefox extension, which lets you synch your bookmarks and other settings between Firefox on different computers.

Yes, Google's servers will end up processing more of your personal information ("you bookmarked WHAT?!?").

If, however, you don't care about the privacy implications of sharing more and more with the big GOOG, then get the extension.

Aside from the privacy implications, the other problem is that the initial release of this extension will slow down Firefox's start time. They say they're working on reducing the delay.

Another issue is that perhaps you don't want to have all your settings between the two systems identical. Perhaps you have some stored passwords on a desktop computer you'd rather not losing in case the laptop gets lost or stolen.

Those issues aren't stopping me from trying the program. Two other issues do, however. First, I don't feel like slowing down my systems any more with additional junk, whether it's useful or not.

Second, I'm also keeping my laptop "clean" for the School of Accountancy's exam lockdown program, this will wait until later in the year, when "software purity" is no longer important.

Now that I've shared this news with you and used my blog as a shameless method of bookmarking the SOA's website, it's time to do more practice problems. The SOA work, I should add, will ensure that posting to ACS will be even more erratic than usual this month. If you see anything, it better be accounting related or it'll be a sign that I'm wasting precious study time!

Pushing the spreadsheet's limits

2006-06-06T23:04:00.000-04:00

Since it's much more fun to discuss new things when you have actual experiences to back up what you're talking about, I registered with Google to try out their new online spreadsheet.

Running both Excel and Quattro, I hardly need the spreadsheet to do my work - but I do enjoy novelty. And pushing things to the limit.

Early observations?

Spreadsheets are currently seem to be limited to 100 by "T" (20) cells, or 2000.

Note the judicious use of the word "seem". If you hadn't noticed that, you would argue that even if a serious spreadsheet user, such as an accountant, wanted to fool around with the program to do their day job, they'd quickly grow frustrated by such a tiny limit.

Having said that, Excel's tens of thousands of cells sometimes aren't enough either, but that's another story.

All that is a moot point, though. Users will find that 'T by 100' is merely the default setting. You can add more rows and columns with the "insert" command. And, like a few other parts of this program, it's pretty clever and intuitive.

I'm sure someone will push the program until they find its limit - or perhaps it's documented somewhere. I'll leave that to someone who's more interested in the topic instead.

I love the auto-wrap feature (which can be disabled with the click of a box) and wish Excel had it (and if it does, please tell me!).

The other formatting boxes are nice and straightforward too. It's enough to make you wish that Google would get around to selling a "traditional" standalone spreadsheet to challenge the monstrosity that is MS Office.

I tried out some common shortcuts - F2 lets you edit cell contents, adding an apostrophe before a formula preserves it as pure text instead of an actual formula.

And the formula box is pretty extensive - it ranges from math formulas like CEILING to financial functions like YIELD, and date operations such as DAYS360 too.

Sort commands are also available.

The only thing lacking at the moment is a proper help system - there's as much devoted in the help section to answers about security and privacy as there is to basic spreadsheet operations.

If you want to learn how complex functions work, however, you're out of luck unless you already have the manual or online help function of an existing spreadsheet, or you know some good websites with spreadsheet tips.

Have fun with the spreadsheet while it's still available - Google has a predictable habit of filling up its limited-release offerings quickly, leaving latecomers out in the cold until later versions come out.

Privacy may be an issue, but it's not exactly the point

2006-06-06T13:01:00.000-04:00

Neil brought Google's new spreadsheet offering to my attention.

People will no doubt get concerned about putting sensitive data in an online spreadsheet. But that's not really the point of this new product, it seems. According to the official tour, it's meant to be a way to help people collaborate more efficiently over non-sensitive items.

Interesting little product - it's like they're attempting to do what Microsoft attempted with Excel (shared workbooks) - but to actualy make it work.

Mind-numbling misinformed & mendacious ramblings

2006-06-05T23:29:00.000-04:00

Kurt Nimmo wins the award for the most strikingly obvious "I don't have my facts straight but I'll claim they're out to get us" postings of the month.

Some of the things he's written are so ridicluous that I feel obliged to write in response to them.

In the process, I'm walking a fine line between going into a full-fledged breakdown on what's wrong with these two posts and ignoring them completely: one is a one cheapshot against CSIS, and the other is about the recent counter-terrorist operations in Toronto.

Some argue that any publicity is good publicity. And there's merit behind that argument - the whole "don't dignify it with a response" angle.

But there's also merit in arguing that it's worth speaking up when someone's obviously wrong - the Bonaparte quote "Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent", seems apt.

With that in mind, here's two quick points:

Our police forces have been careful to the point of absurdity to avoid even the appearance of inciting 'hysteria' against Muslims. Christie Blatchford went to town on this point. The article was a shining example of "her trademark sarcastic, conversational prose", which is my indirect way of saying perhaps she went overboard, but the point remains valid no matter how much hyperbole is used in making it.
The police and security forces are professionals - more than can be said for a lot of the amateurs commenting about the situation online. They wouldn't conduct such a massive operation without doing their homework first. And by homework I do mean extensive legitimate surveillance and research.

Enough said.

Now to cleanse ACS of all this craziness, here's a video which is comparatively sane.

Something fresh: super cop

2006-06-04T22:53:00.000-04:00

It's not particularly high-brow. But then, some people are very interested in low-brow things.

BASE jumping movie & blog lockdown

2006-06-04T22:43:00.000-04:00

Check out the BASE jumping movie on ifilm.

Incredible footage, and completely insane behaviour.

Edit: this post has been reposted to include the embed code from ifilm. I don't recall seeing it when I originally stumbled across it.

The best defense against plagues and spam is a 100% lockdown

ACS is currently locked-down to suppress an insistent little twerp who seems to be probing this site through this post to fire off spams. When he gets bored I'll re-open comment mode.

In the meantime, if you're one of the regular commenters and would like to leave messages, please let me know and I'll make you a member of this blog - you'll be immune from future lockdowns as well.

Rare Exports Inc

2006-06-03T02:21:00.000-04:00

Even casual readers know I try and alternate potentially mind-numbingly dull accounting stuff with completely unrelated videos.

In that spirit, enjoy this movie. Yes, it's 7 minutes long, but it's worth the build-up. You probably won't see anything more original on TV for the entire month, if not longer.

Thanks VideoSift

The author of blink has a blog now

2006-06-02T01:12:00.000-04:00

Gladwell's blog has been up for a while. I haven't mentioned it because I didn't have much else to add in the way of incisive analysis or observation or anything or other nice thing like that.

Well actually reading something might help.

Having done that, I noticed that one of his readers in the disucssion surrounding CEO pay, or more importantly, top-tax-bracket taxation, directed me to the inflation calculator. It looks like a very handy tool.

The main weakness is that it doesn't feel like touching numbers over 10,000. Not a huge problem, since you can move decimal places on your own, but some automation would've been nice.

Another neat Gmail feature: reply by chat

2006-06-01T15:31:00.000-04:00

Forgive me if you've seen this already, but I just noticed that you can reply using Google Talk in Gmail.

All you need to do is open a message written by someone who is online on Google Talk, and the option appears, alongside the traditional "reply" and "forward" buttons.

Neat.

It's bigger news than the addition of more languages, although it's interesting to see that Arabic and Hebrew came out at the same time, eh?

Edit: a day after marvelling over this new feature, it was officially proclaimed on the google blog.

May Spam Total: 557, or is it?

2006-05-31T23:48:00.000-04:00

After noting 500 spams in April, it was May's turn to show off how much junk I'm getting.

And the total, betrayed already by the subject line, was 557.

Aside from learning that the volume of spam has grown by 10%, I've found that more e-mail addressed directly to me is landing in my box. And there's a bit of repetition going on - one pair of spams came up as a "conversation". As a result - and this is the answer to tthe "or is it?" - technically, this month's total was 558 messages - Google's count merged the two messages into one conversation, giving me that marginally smaller total.

If I had lots of time on my hands, I could perform some sort of analytics with respect to the spams, to see what sort of trends are at play. But I don't, so I instead gave them a quick glance while deleting them all - one thing gmail really needs is a "delete everything in here" button, to avoid forcing me to hit "select all" and delete 6 times to get rid of 500+ spams.

Of course, I could just ignore them and let the 30-day auto-delete function do the work for me, but this seems more worthwhile. For now, anyway, I'll continue this little lazy experiment to see if anything else of interest occurs.

Edit: after hitting "publish post" I realized May has 31 days. Damnit. If I get dinged by spam later today then this total will be updated...

Edit #2: 21 more messages straggled in on the 31st. That makes the total 588.

Tying off materiality

2006-05-29T22:19:00.000-04:00

ASX

When preparing to write cases - the style of exams CAs have to write - it's important to balance technical skills with case writing skills.

What materiality is, as covered in a previous post and then further discussed by Neil, is a technical issue. Knowing that materiality is something that's based on what users care about, rather than a factor based instead on the risk associated with the audit is one thing.

Integrating that into a bunch of grey areas and tying it all together with a bunch of other issues, on the other hand, is a case writing skill. ACS will cover both over this summer, as much as time and intelligence permits.

High Voltage Transformer Explodes

2006-05-29T00:14:00.000-04:00

In case all this accounting stuff is boring you, here's some awesome pyrotechnics.

Thanks VideoSift

The five accounting assertions

2006-05-28T23:59:00.000-04:00

ASX

In case anyone asks, there are five accounting assertions courtesy of the NY State CPAs. They are as follows:

1. existence
2. completeness
3. valuation
4. rights and obligations
5. presentation and disclosure.

Follow the above-mentioned link for details on what it all means.

Or go to this link to the new ACS site to learn a good mnemonic.

An introduction to Materiality, concerning both not-for-profit and "regular" companies

2006-05-23T16:11:00.000-04:00

ASX

The CICA allows 0.5% to 2% of revenues to be the materiality level for audits of non-for-profit organizations.

If you don't know what this means, you might think that's all you need to know. And if you think that, then you probably don't conduct audits. Auditors investigate various companies' and organizations' financial records, and there's a lot more to the job than just plugging a few numbers and formulas in.

When conducting the audit, you have to decide on what's important, or "material". If there's a $20 calculator missing do you care? What about a $20,000 piece of equipment? Where do you draw the line? At your materiality level.

ACS is in session. Please be seated.
Photo credit: Me.

Materiality, to flesh out the definition a little better, is the smallest misstatement of a company's finances that would cause a person to change their mind how they value the entity in question.

The reason you see a range in the first paragraph is because auditors aren't supposed to just plug some numbers into a formula and spit out an arbitrary number. Professional judgement - a rich combination of experience and common sense - is necessary to determine where you'll set your materiality level.

Why not settle for nothing less than 100% precision? If you've spent any time with any sort of business - if you've even gone to a store with a "take a penny leave a penny" tray, you'll figure that out. You'll always find rounding errors and small mistakes.

To track all of them and follow everything up just wouldn't be economically feasible. As a result, auditors have an obligation to explain this to the people they're dealing with so they understand what it is that the audit is going to say.

And this also answers the question you never asked: why audit reports say that financial statements present the entity's result "fairly" instead of "100% correctly."

And if you've made it all the way to the end and are still wondering why non-for-profits have the specific guideline included above - sorry for drawing out the suspense - it's because for-profit companies' general threshold is five percent of income from continuing operations. And if you're not trying to make a profit, income may not be present.

And of course, not all companies are making money. A company losing money or a company in an industry with a different set of standards may use a percentage of either gross revenues, some assets (all of them, or just current assets, for example), equity, or maybe even cash flows.

In the case of particular industries, here's two examples, mutual fund companies often have 0.5 to 1% of net asset value as their materiality level. Real estate companies that own income-producing properties, on the other hand, are set to one percent of revenue.

With a random fact like that, you may rightfully say, "how would I know that?" You'd look up that information in the CICA handbook.

As for the question "which category or exact level do I choose?", again, professional judgement is the answer. Audit firms will never make some kid make the decision - the kid will find that someone with years of experience will make the call. As the newcomer gains experience, their contribution to making that decision will increase, which makes life more interesting.

Gotta love the Google folk

2006-05-23T11:35:00.000-04:00

For a tidbit like their post about receiving a shipment of delete buttons.

As if it would take more than a few seconds to actually create the graphic for the button. The code wouldn't be much harder either.

I suppose they recognize the silliness and so they reacted with appropriate humour. I like that.

Another related piece of Google humour is the fact that blogger's spellchecker considers "Google" to be a typo. Nice.

Unnecessary anonymity

2006-05-22T13:11:00.000-04:00

An IHT article on democracy in the Middle East ran the following quote - "Democratic development isn't always linear," said a senior State Department official, insisting on anonymity in commenting for this article. "It's a process that takes time, is evolutionary and requires strong consistent support, which is what our policy is all about."

This is irritating - his quote offers us nothing of interest that you need to go to a secret/anonoymous source for, but this playground-rumour style of journalism is growing more and more popular these days. Of course, this all harkens back to the idea of people posting online under an alias - we don't talk about anything critical to national security but may not feel comfortable sharing info about who we are.

Does this mean, however, that professional journalism is descending to the level of blogs? Considering this isn't really new, does it even mean that they've been at this level for years?

Sad.

Delightful little features, and the graceful music of William Shatner's cover songs

2006-05-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

Before I tear into a national newspaper columnist for libelling my neighbourhood - he claims we're plagued by gang wars? Oh I'll show you a plague! - anyway, I must point out something extremely simple but delightful.

Google Reader is a nice way to keep track of a series of blogs, but it could definitely use a few more features. One of them was recently added - the ability to skip across a whole page of articles. it's a tiny little feature, but reading about how it came to be and then going out and testing it out and seeing it work was a delightful example of instant gratification from very simple things.

Speaking of being delighted by simple things, here's William Shatner - yeah, Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker and a bunch of other things like a lawyer on Boston Legal - sings his cover of Common People. Totally awesome.

Via: VideoSift

I've heard it played on the Edge, it's nice to have it here. Until NBC's goons take it down, I guess. I'll enjoy it until then, though.

Best Buy decoding and thoughts on negativity

2006-05-19T10:47:00.000-04:00

It's been another busy week, leaving little time for in depth analysis of anything. So how about the cheap and easy solution? A sequel to the entry concerning Best Buy.

A while back I stumbled across a description of Best Buy's secret numbers.

Not exactly very secret if you're posting them on a wall for all to see, but unnecessarily cryptic nonetheless.

The thought crossed my mind to share my thoughts about the difference between positive and negative writing, and how it seems that negative writing seems to be much more popular. By negative, I mean critical bitching and moaning about whatever's wrong with the world, work, or the weather. Whatever.

To prevent a further slide into cynicism - and to keep this rambling thought mercifully short - I concluded that it's just harder to write positive things well. Take that, negativity.

I knew it!

2006-05-12T23:44:00.000-04:00

If this blog post wasn't enough to tip me off, there's a red "New
Features" box in gmail now confirming what I thought I had noticed earlier: the Google Talk 'ding' has been added into gmail itself. Nice.

I would write more, but the blogger servers are seriously annoying me by being slow right now.

Storming Best Buy with your personal army of clone troopers

2006-05-10T21:57:00.000-04:00

There's a group of people who engage in what you might call performance art. Get together in public and do something with complete strangers - some call it a 'flash mob.'

Read this incredibly amusing and interesting account of their visit to a Best Buy in identical clothes, which just happen to be the same colour as that of Best Buy employees.

It includes, pictures, video, and personal accounts from various participants. Here's the main video:

Best Buy on Vimeo

I want to visit the CIA

2006-05-09T00:00:00.000-04:00

I wonder if it's possible to try out their creations? It must be.

Stumbled upon the CIA through a directory of such schools.

Ali G interviews Noam Chomsky

2006-05-08T23:03:00.000-04:00

People at Videosift wonder if Noam knew what he was getting into. What do you think?

Cash flow concern when buying a new business

2006-05-06T13:17:00.000-04:00

ASX

If you’re borrowing money to buy or start up a business, remember that your cash flow is going to have to pay for interest and principal, in addition to giving you money to live off of.

Figure out whether you’ll have enough to live!

A tale of another pair of videos.

2006-05-05T00:16:00.000-04:00

Guess which one of these two was more wildly popular.

This Italian(?) version.

Or the, er, popular one.

When I want to backup my Firefox extensions

2006-05-03T22:00:00.000-04:00

I can use this Firefox backup extension. I held off on installing it for a couple of months until they improved it - looks like it's ready for prime time now.

In completely hilarious news, Kelly has a hilarious observation concerning a quote involving Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and baby eating, or the lack thereof.

The Atheists' Nightmare: Bananas!

2006-05-02T00:54:00.000-04:00

No, there's no Gwen Stefani to be found here. Only really disturbing creationism others have described as "found humour". That's right - someone originally meant for this to be a completely serious message.

The super-scary thing is that some people will find nothing wrong with this.

500 spams a month

2006-05-01T00:00:00.000-04:00

I used to regularly empty out my gmail account's spambox, to check and see if any 'real' messages got snagged in the filter. After noticing that few messages were ever accidentally tagged spam, I stopped regularly looking in there. I would see hundreds of messages, and perhaps 1 message that shouldn't have been in there.

Today I took a look - about 500 messages accumulated in one month. Impressive. As a result, it no longer seems too important to keep my gmail account 'clean' - the address is known by the scum of online humanity now.

I deleted it all - which took longer than it should because I don't see a "delete everything in here" button in gmail, but it's gone. And the count begins: how much spam will accumulate in May?

In case spam-related statistics don't interest you at all, perhaps an article that describes video games as the "most despised of art forms" will interest you.

C for Cookie

2006-04-30T23:03:00.000-04:00

Did you like V for Vendetta? Did you ever watch Sesame Street? Whether you answered yes or no, check out this movie and enjoy.

And yes, I know now he's the Celery Monster or whatever, but that doesn't matter.

GCHQ's puzzle site

2006-04-29T13:34:00.000-04:00

If you can't get enough code-breaking fun with all that Da Vinci stuff going on, check out what the nice British government codebreakers have to offer.

If you're smart enough to figure that out, I invite you to take a look at my copy of Lotus Notes and to figure out why trying to move an e-mail to a different folder locks down the entire program. This is beyond frustrating. I tried waiting a good 20 minutes to see if the program could figure out what it's doing. It can't.

The program has essentially crashed, which means that an e-mail I was working on will have to be re-typed from memory. Few things are more irritating than that.

The bitter ray of sunshine from all this is that google reports over 800,000 sites that refer to a "lotus notes crash".

Misery loves company.

Microsoft's David Lazar gives "Self-indulgent tripe" a bad name

2006-04-29T01:29:00.000-04:00

If you have control issues, and know technology, you disabled the "automatic update" function in Windows XP.

Left to its default settings, Windows will update itself with whatever Microsoft feels is appropriate.

Does this mean only patches that improve the security and performance of your computer will be downloaded? That's wishful thinking.

Microsoft behaved itself for a while, until now, when they decided to make their complete joke utility a "critical update".

The joke in question is the Windows Genuine Advantage tool. If it suspects your computer doesn't have a legit copy of Windows XP and it will bitch and moan at you in a vain attempt to get you to give Microsoft more money.

If you weren't careful - or a control freak - and let Windows install the WGA program, it should be no surprise to anyone that workarounds exist. This comes hot on the heels of announcements about WGA on various sites.

The two greatest ironies of all this are that I got motivation to finally configure Firefox to get my Windows Updates for me from this wonderful site and that I found a site that offers an academic analysis of how the activation system works.

Not surprisingly, my computer's already patched-up nicely, and I now have utilities which should help me recover what my installation codes are - since I misplaced them ages ago.

Perhaps I should also not be surprised to see the self-serving quotes from Microsoft's David Lazar in his interview with BetaNews. The most laughable thing he said concerned Microsoft's alleged interpretation of what download rates mean.

What we have seen in terms of participation has amazed us, and that is that our opt-in rate has been above 56% - at times as high 60%. And for certain downloads, specifically the Windows AntiSpyware, we have seen opt-in rates as high as 70%, which tells us that customers are really interested in knowing if they have genuine software and to see if they will get special benefits from having this genuine software relationship with Microsoft.

Yeah, assume all you want; ignore the fact that many people just let their computer do whatever it's set-up to do. When they hit "ok" to a Windows prompt that does not mean they are saying "I embrace Microsoft and bow down to it all its subsidiaries for now, and forever".

Okay, he doesn't say anyone's bowing down to them, but I find his assertion just as vulgar.

To compensate for that, one of the people commenting on that same site shares an amusing story:

For those of us who have seen the light and locked down IE so hard we couldn't run it if we wanted to, this is a slap in the face. I didn't pay for Windows to use IE, and I'm not going to because of this. There are plenty other ways to get those files, legally and safely.

Secondly, regarding the license sticker issue. Yeah, on top and to the right... unless you have a laptop... I laughed so hard I almost fell of my chair the first time my boss tried to get in using Genuine Disadvantage. He had to undock his laptop, look under, redock, at which time the laptop refused to reconnect, and he had to reboot... when we got back from getting coffee/tea, I asked him if he could get the file now, but he had forgotten what he was trying to access.

The only vaguely redeeming point is how he defines customers as a "final audit point". And the only redeeming aspect of that is the fact that I get to check off a mental box where I'm identifying companies' audit controls. No one outside my little circle of accounting gypsies will care, but that's okay.

ACS "Director's Commentary"

2006-04-29T00:25:00.000-04:00

So far the goal of avoiding posts devoted to commenting on technical events affecting this place has been met pretty consistently. Why such a goal? ACS has a sufficiently vague mission.

Since it's already vague enough ("A Counting School? Accounting School? What?"), adding redundant "meta-commentary" is blatantly unnecessary.

So what will it take for me to break my own rules? A cool find, of course.

The find in question happens to be Google Suggest. It's essentially "auto-complete" for your web searches. Potentially super-useful if you're trying to search for something, but it's late, you're tired, and you're forgetting what it was you were searching for in the first place.

Actually, if you stop reading now, the rule-breaking in this post is kept at a minimum. Skip away to whatever else is written here. Things like information about how to find good seats on planes and essentially random exams hints.

I'm multi-tasking by checking out websites and listening to a director's commentary, for Twelve Monkeys, in case you're wondering. After all, the director is Terry Gilliam is a Monty Python alum, and with all the disasters associated with some of his movie projects, it seems like a worthwhile thing to listen to.

And that's what makes me realize that this post is, essentially, the first ever ACS Director's Commentary - hence the title. Clever, eh?

This commentary will simply point out the train of thought associated with the assembly of this post. And the train of thought is, simply put, the trail I wandered through while finding out about Google Suggest.

I found out about Google Suggest, while puttering around the Google Blog, which pointed out Googlefact to me, which pointed out Warped from the Pipe, which both have a series of answers to the Da Vinci Code.

Googlefact was the first site I found with answers to the insane Google Da Vinci puzzle, and the dedication shown to helping out the lazy, tired, and intellectually slow makes the place worth a link in the "Commentary" list. Warped looks like it has similar dedication; I'm linking to just the first one for the simple fact that it was the first one I noticed.

Now, you may wonder why keep puttering around the Google Blog. My normal reason for visiting is to find out if they have any new, interesting news. And they did, as they normally do. But tonight I wanted to check out the "what links here" list. It did a great service to me by originally pointing out Googlefact. But tonight I couldn't see any links.

Which makes me wonder if Google disabled the "what links here" feature to defeat spammers - possible.

Or to foil puzzle-solution-providers from getting easy publicity? It's a cute conspiarcy theory, but I doubt it.

Or are the blogger servers just crashing tonight, as is their habit? I suspect that's the case.

So what have we learned? Google Suggest is cool, the Da Vinci sites are useful, and I could've easily shortened this post into a paragraph of this length, but sometimes it's fun to ramble on endlessly. It's a greedily unprofessional way to write that no one 'deserves' to indulge in, ever, but I did it anyway. And if you've read this far, hope you enjoyed the ride.

I'll tie a neat little bow on this messy package by admitting that I've gone backwards and forwards at the same time. Sort of like how the Twelve Monkeys storyline progresses. Sorry about the confusion. That observation into my mind at the moment is your only prize. We'll return to something resembling a more linear mode of thinking in short order.

Google is blowing my mind again - and so is the Pentagon. And then disappointment sets in. Sort of.

2006-04-25T00:40:00.000-04:00

Two completely different topics: Google publicly announced it's running live tests on its search system.

A few days ago I noticed that there was additional text joining my google searches - information about when I last visited pages I had searched. I tried it out again and it didn't work. That's when I realized that this additional text wasn't part of google's live tests, but rather a feature of running a search through the "personal search" function, which tracks when you visited a link.

After another moment of thought, "F5" refreshed the page, and it showed that I had indeed visited a link without trudging through the "personal search" interface to do the same thing as hitting F5.

While to the casual observer this is no big deal, to anyone who does intensive web searches, this is pure gold: knowing where you've been and where you haven't can be an immense help when you're digging through 20 or any number of links in search of information. If you know where you've been, it helps to keep track of where you have yet to visit, what to avoid, and what to come back to.

To the casual observer, the story about the Pentagon getting sued over keeping a database listing potential recruits may also seem like no big deal. More observant folk like those at Is America Burning, on the other hand, will no doubt find this rightly disturbing: can the US government do anything that looks more freakish to the even most casually conspiracy-minded among us? A database of the young for conscripting into cannon fodder? What a bombshell.

If you're going to be blindingly literal about this blog's name

2006-04-23T04:14:00.000-04:00

Then consider this to be the blog's official theme song/video. Enjoy - and if you've seen the Family Guy homage to this video, even better.

Die Hard: The Ballad of John McClane

2006-04-22T18:14:00.000-04:00

This is incredibly well done.

'Twas Christmas Eve and nary a creature was stirring except 4 malcontents sneaking in standard cover 2 formation

Student Politican Goes Insane

2006-04-22T17:30:00.000-04:00

Enjoy his reaction to getting his office filled with balloons.

What a psycho.

VideoSift: it's like chocolate sauce and sprinkles for the ice cream that is Google Video

2006-04-21T01:01:00.000-04:00

Interesting concept - take the mass of youtube.com and google videos,
and use the Digg concept to organize according to popularity. And you get Video Sift.

I like the seal video which I saw a little while earlier at another place online.

The driving in India clip was cool.

Both the seal and Indian driving videos benefit from a sorely lacking feature at Google Video: commentary! It's nice to be able to say something about the video, or learn a little more from other viewers.

I'll leave you with this devastating attack on terrorists - with words, of course.

Using the big G to find answers quickly

2006-04-20T00:00:00.000-04:00

It's a delight to see someone generously sharing answers to the Da Vinci Code contest Google just announced. Not that the puzzles are impossible, but if Google has taught us anything, it's that with sufficiently clever manipulation of its own search engine, you can find answers. Sweet.

Thanks Googlefact!

Some of these puzzles are pretty straightforward; I wonder what their 'target' difficulty level is? The latter puzzles will no doubt get progressively more ridiculous. Thank goodness for alternate resources, something any modern sleuth worth their salt should be able to refer to if they can't be bothered to waste time digging through Sony's website for clues.

Airline seating tips

2006-04-19T23:06:00.000-04:00

Next time you fly somewhere, you should check out the seat plans for your plane on seat guru.

It lists the seating plans of various airplanes, pointing out where you can find the good seats - exit rows, bulkheads, power outlets. It's awesome.

Just hover your mouse over the seat to get details - that's in response to the question you're about to ask - how come some seats are marked in two colours? Hover your mouse. Then you'll know.

Update: just flew in on Continental. Very enjoyable; although not as warm as WestJet, the leather-ish seats were a great reminder of how comfortable flying can be.

The only downside was sitting in row 19 on a Brazilian Embraer 145 jet. The jet itself was pretty cool, except for the low ceiling. And the fact that row 19 is the last one, so forget about reclining much. And 19A, it was quickly discovered, gets fumes from the rear lavatory. Not nice.

Seatguru didn't mention these additional facts, but I was generous enough to offer them. I wonder if it'll get updated.

Retail horror stories

2006-04-19T22:41:00.000-04:00

Straigtht from London Ontario, a funny because it's true list of things that drive people working in retail completely mad, in the form of a "how to be a good customer" list.

A sample from the list of 23 points:

No, I cannot give you a discount because this is the last item in the store, or because your a regular shopper, or because your face was so full of makeup when you tried on that white shirt that you got lipstick and foundation all over it, or for any other cockamamie reason you can think up.
Don't try on clothes that are too small for you and rip them and then not say anything.

Some of the points get pretty mean and unfair, especially to people who enjoy generous return policies, but it's still amusing on some level.

Cowtrix

2006-04-18T17:00:00.000-04:00

While watching, I wasn't sure if I wanted to root for the cow or the guy.

Weirdest USB drives ever

2006-04-17T21:08:00.000-04:00

Here's a list of the top 10 weirdest USB drives ever

The list is as advertised, full of weird and bizarre USB drives.

How weird?

Think shrimp.

Think dim sum.

Think sushi.

Think ducks.

Think thumbs

Yeah.

Leafs season over

2006-04-16T22:53:00.000-04:00

The pundits are discussing the end of the Leafs season, which officially ended a few days ago, except I'm not really on the ball with up-to-the-minute reporting.

In the process of randomly googling Darcy Tucker, I found this fanpage is the #1 hit on Google.

What I find disturbing/amusing is that every post has a picture of Darcy in the title pane. It's pretty disconcerting.

Saints fighting Bears

2006-04-16T00:00:00.000-04:00

There's a bear on Pope Benedict's Coat of Arms. The story behind it is amusing, if you're into hearing stories of fights with bears. And who isn't?

According to “Inside the Vatican”, the bear with a pack on his back “is connected with a legend about Munich’s first bishop, St. Korbinian. Traveling to Rome, Korbinian encountered a bear which attacked the horse which was carrying the saint’s luggage. As punishment Korbinian made the bear carry his pack to Rome before releasing him.

Nobody mentions how the bishop managed to subdue a freakin' bear, but I imagine that since this happened in the olden days, he must've had some armed guard or something. Someone must've tackled the bear. That would've been cool to watch. And maybe a little disconcerting.

"Agh, the bishop's horse is being attacked by a bear! Should we do something?"

The article goes on into more detail about the theological reasoning behind why this is relevant. Here's a representative excerpt:

The bear reminds Ratzinger of Augustine’s meditation on Psalm 72 (73). …
“Ratzinger writes about it as follows:
The psalm speaks about the testing of faith, which seems to bring no earthly reward. The person who is faithful to God does not necessarily enjoy success. Often the cynic seems to prosper most. Why? The psalmist finds his answer as he stands before God and sees how insignificant material prosperity and success are, and what really counts and saves: ‘I was stupid and did not understand, no better than a beast in your sight.’

After I finished writing this up, I realized the title for this post may make people think of Chicago and New Orleans instead of some sort of lazy Easter message - but only if they're freaks about the NFL. And I'm willing to live with that risk that they'll stumble upon this instead..

And, as usual, it's possible to string together a link, no matter how tenuous, between a theological discussion of something, and anything else. In this case, consider an article about the futility of material possessions, and contrast it with the hyper-commercialism associated with pro sports. I could string together more words to find some deeper meanings or reflections with respect to all this but you're smart enough to do that on your own.

Happy Easter.

Cheerful Easter message from the Panzer Pope

2006-04-15T22:01:00.000-04:00

The Easter message out of the Vatican was full of positive reflections, such as, "In his death, Jesus filled death itself with love; he filled it with the presence of God."

But of course, what really catches people's attention is when modern culture is given a good hard slap in the face by the ultimate authority figures down in Rome:

Our affluence is making us less human, our entertainment has become a drug, a source of alienation, and our society's incessant, tedious message is an invitation to die of selfishness.

Oh snap.

Feels good to hear it said; also makes me think of TV - 'reality shows' in particular.

Google prepares to destroy Lotus and Outlook

2006-04-14T01:58:00.000-04:00

People who use their e-mail programs as digital organizers have been able to say, "sure, Gmail is nice, but there's no calendar feature."

Place emphasis on have been able to.

Google Calendar is here. The introduction page is pretty informative.

Share your calendar with others, keep it all private, send out invitations. I like it. You can share the calendar with others too. Wow, they put quite a bit of effort into this feature. I predict it'll grow into another ubiquitous thing many will wonder they survived without.

Ownage at the pump

2006-04-13T00:00:00.000-04:00

Be patient and watch this video until the moment of humour takes place. And then enjoy.

Grammar and writing homework online

2006-04-12T23:49:00.000-04:00

Wow, suddenly I'm so glad I'm not enrolled in primary education in the 21st century. The work done by "Sentence Guy" is no doubt positive, but can you imagine having to post your homework online?

Shudder.

Portman video

2006-04-11T15:24:00.000-04:00

Finally, a big corporation gets it, sort of: the Portman rap video is popular, so NBC actually lets you view it on their own site - how downight generous of them. Egotastic's clip must have been hosted an a trashy youtube.com server or something - it seemed like it was never going to load.

Some people commenting on the video were upset that NBC sent cease-and-desist orders to other websites for hosting the content. Yes, it's heavy-handed, but I reserve my sympathy only for people who host content with sufficient free bandwidth.

German engineering in the house. Ya.

2006-04-09T18:23:00.000-04:00

These German VW ads have been running through the winter already, but people still haven't seen them. And you should. They're hilarious, unless you've never watched "Pimp my Ride" or are otherwise not up for satirizing faux-pimp culture.

The Trebuchet video is now what I instantly think of in association with the meme "oh, snap!"

How to get out of doing A/R confirms

2006-04-08T16:36:00.000-04:00

ASX

Accounts receivables confirms sometimes have to be done, but it consists of a lot of tedious paper work, including mailing and faxing letters to a whole bunch of other recipients.

To get out of doing accounts receivables confirms, get a good paper cut and bleed all over the letters you’re supposed to mail out.

You probably won’t be asked to do it anymore.

And it won't make you look as bad as the less bloody option, which is to stuff the letters in backwards, so the recipient's address is not visible in the little plastic window. Although it's much more painful, of course.

Pain versus incompetence - great choice.

April Strategy Session - Why highlighters are your best friends

2006-04-08T15:32:00.000-04:00

ASX

Continuing from the series from last day, it's time for more exam prep.

When dealing with a so-called major issue, remember to go through the following steps:

Explain what the issue is.
Apply knowledge and facts
Describe acceptable alternatives, if they exist - this mainly applies to financial accounting issues, but not necessarily only those.
Conclude on the basis of the handbook. The conclusion should describe the significant effect, such as tying to a ‘link’, or the tie to reliable financial statements. The conclusion will also be tied to client objectives.

Fraud is another fun topic. All you need to do is come up with one valid investigative procedure, which is a Very Good Thing, since putting a complete audit program together can take a very long time.

Fraud is fun and easy to deal with, when you remember all you've learned in the past - it's too easy to forget simple checks, like looking at cheques to see who endorsed them, for example.

Going back to reading, avoid the temptation to start answering questions the moment you read the first page. Make notes but read through the entire case before writing your answers, to avoid doom. This is why highlighters are your best friends - they're the best way to point out interesting items you should come back to, and tie to other important points you notice in the case you're answering.

Star Wars Kid points out another reason why Wikipedia rocks

2006-04-08T00:30:00.000-04:00

It exists to document strange events that would otherwise quickly be forgotten. Perhaps there's no huge value to the activity, but the debate on the vote for deletion concerning the Star Wars Kid article suggests otherwise.

David Gerard's comment is both pithy and hilarious: "this got a metric shitload of press at the time".

For some reason I just found the idea of metric vs. imperial fertilizer loads extremely funny tonight.

And it counters the snobby "Eugh, this isn't IMPORTANT enough for MY encyclopedia" school of thought quite nicely.

Writing about Star Wars kid, the lawsuit, the variations - the Cosby parodies?

2006-04-08T00:14:00.000-04:00

On one of my frequent trips to the floor, I paused to see what's new at QS, and found an article about Star Wars Kid.

Intrigued, I wondered if I had seen this before?

While trawling around to find out I stumbled upon House of Cosbys - funny how the web works.

Click here to see an index of the google video copies, or just watch the first of five episodes, which is conveniently embedded here:

Apparently Cosby's lawyers are pretty upset by this, but people associated with it are arguing that it's kosher according to parody/satire rights.

It's pretty idiotic until "Cosby 10" appears. Then it shows something resembling promise.

Going back to Star Wars kid (what a tangent!), a SW site reports that users raised enough money to buy this kid an iPod and more.

Having managed to easily find the video, I don't find it that bad - the only time I felt like laughing was when he almost lost his balance and hit the wall. It's just sorta weird, but by no means the most embarassing thing I've ever seen on the net. And if that kid leaves wherever he is in Quebec and goes anywhere else in the world, all it would take is a haircut to be pretty much unrecognizable, so I don't see some sort of life-long shame penalty associated with having his 15 minutes of fame on the net.

Of the three versions I saw (the first comments belonging to the original long cut), the 2nd was no doubt the meanest - I think they may have slowed down that part where he stumbles to exaggerate it.

Then there's "Star Wars Kid Reloaded", and it makes him look like a bad-ass in the best kind of way. It's actually pretty damn flattering.

Ah, but as usual, Wikipedia shows us the way, the truth and the light. Well, it sheds some light on this anyway.

While Ghyslain did achieve pop culture recognition (which some people have stooped to crazy levels for), having his video played on jumbotrons at baseball games is pretty nutty.

In the end, it's tragic that it affected him negatively; some would embrace this, others would be annoyed, while he got sick - mentally.

No doubt he'd been subject to lots of other torment which brought him to the point he found himself at; and that's why he deserves the settlement - the video was just the trigger for something that had, I'll boldly assume, had been eating away at him for a long time.

Interestingly enough, Wiki mentions that there was consultation between the parties in the lawsuit with respect to what kind of liability insurance coverage the defendants had. Is it possible that the insurance companies sorted all this out? If so, we're all paying for the settlement with higher premiums. Perhaps nothing more than a penny, but every lawsuit like this adds up. Oh well.

The Apple mentality

2006-04-07T21:30:00.000-04:00

Macworld once again points out why I'm not going to get a Mac anytime soon in their article about Bootcamp

In addition to Windows XP SP2 (Home or Professional editions), Boot Camp requires Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later, the latest firmware update (available from Apple via Software Update), and a blank recordable CD.

First off, who does not have some blank CD's lying around? Honestly! Secondly, their article already mentioned the fact that you burn the information onto a CD. Are they assuming Mac users are so daft as to not know that?

Is that it? They're daft?

Oh.

New Mac revolution

2006-04-07T21:27:00.000-04:00

Isn't it great when a feature works the way it's supposed to? The "blog of note" feature pointed out Donan's site, which is devoted to Macs and iPods.

Say what you will about Macs, but one of their ultimate failings has always been the lack of games. Disturbingly enough, this strike against them is about to be erased, thanks to the fact that Intel processors are now being used in Macs, and because of a utility called Boot Camp.

A free download from Apple, Boot Camp allows Macheads to run just about anything on a their computers, assuming they have Intel processors, of course. Not only Windows, but Linux too. Wow.

So Macworld reports that gaming on a Mac system is suddenly a viable option.

This is quite a shift.

It's not a complete revolution of course - Macs are still relatively overpriced - compared to what I spend by getting custom-made systems from Sonnam - but at least the "but it's so user-friendly" excuse is reinforced by the "it'll also play PC games" argument.

The Macworld article cited above is, to its credit, written in a humble style - the author admits that performance is by no means high-end. He does get a bit carried away by suggesting that this will spur game development to work natively on Macs. I'd argue the opposite is the case: if Mac owners have an easy way to run a PC game, few developers will have an incentive to spend time and money on porting their games to Macs.

And since I'm not intimidated by cracking open my case and fiddling with things, it's obviously not worth seriously considering as an option for myself. After all, why the heck would I pay $1500 for an Intel-based iMac with a 1.83 Core Duo processor, when I can spend half the money to upgrade my system to the point where I can play Oblivion at max detail?

In unrelated news, the 'review' of Oblivion I linked to above from somethingawful.com is worth a read for the comedy value. Also funny is what I expect to come out in short order: a follow-up posting where they make fun of all the fanboys who got hurt by the 'unfair and offensive' article.

More sites about Toronto

2006-04-06T19:36:00.000-04:00

There's a site devoted to documenting dead and dying malls. Interesting.

There's also an interesting post concerning the Tim Horton's suicide. It reveals why I try to minimize the amount of time I spend reading stuff online - people are often completely insane.

It does lead to some pretty good inadvertent comedy, though.

Digging up or discussing the hidden meanings in songs

2006-04-06T18:02:00.000-04:00

As nice as it is to be able to call in sick, when you actually feel sick there's not much of an upside to feeling tired and weak. Opinionistas captured the feeling nicely.

It's tiring to sit at the screen, or even read a book - at least my head doesn't hurt from listening to music. Like the new Jakalope single, Upside Down.

Found Song Meanings which is nice place to kill time or learn more about the songs you never really understood but which sounded good anyway. The obvious downside is that the site relies on anonymous uninformed commentary. To see who ridiculous the comments can get, read about Push It. I was shaking my head near the end of that.

Online hammer time

2006-04-04T00:31:00.000-04:00

Disturbing is probably a good word for it. "It" being the blog.

It's no longer fresh news, but whatever. It makes me think of the "Behind the Laughter" where Homer buys MC Hammer's old mansion, and then loses it.

Early WPX3 impression

2006-04-03T19:23:00.000-04:00

Corel did a bunch of things to improve WordPerfect X3, but the first thing you'll notice and what will continue to please your eyes on a regular basis, is the extremely straightforward but very well done update to the graphics. Things as simple as icons have been refreshed and as a result the program looks simply gorgeous. It's like night and day - I love it.

Outline your thoughts

2006-04-03T19:05:00.000-04:00

ASX

Part of case prep involves doing outlines.

Although you’re not marked on your outline, it’s may be a good idea to keep it in the opening to your answer to show the marker that you know what you’re doing and they’re about to read some well-organized thoughts rather than some random drivel. It's never good to waste time on something you won't get scored on, so move along quickly.

Here's some more ideas:

Quantify the dollar value of the issues you're recognizing
On your short exams, pick your top three accounting issues worth spending time on if there's only a few. On large cases with lots of small issues you of course this advice changes. The guidance on how many topics to cover seems to be "it depends." Your rankings are easier to manage, of course, if you go back to the previous point and mention the dollar values that are involved.
If you do mention how much each issue is worth, make sure that you add up the total effect of all those dollar amounts at the end to get a mark, which often exists, just for adding those numbers up. Writing out the numbers separately and not offering a grand total, sadly, will be worth nothing.
Mention that an opportunity for fraud exists, but don't go crazy and say it's happening or suggest you go and accuse the client for doing Very Bad Things. Just mentioning the opportunity can and usually does suffice quite nicely. It all, of course, depends on the facts you've had a chance to read.
When evaluating a decision whether or not to do something, don't forget to add a list of pro's and con's in addition to talking about the numbers involved.
Question the numbers that you're offered in the case - challenge why certain numbers are used.
Use your computer to write the exam. It's more efficient to be able to make quick adjustments in Excel rather than re-writing math on paper. On the other hand, if you do make some calculations
When adding exhibits, include a purpose and conclusion to explain why you did it, what you found out, and, of course, so you can get your marks!
"Weaknesses," "Implications," "Recommendation". Use those three headings for each point you discuss. The marking key asks "did the candidate address (these 3 points)", so be smart and use those headings when formulating your answer outline.
Use the "split screen" feature in Word. Even in a locked-down exam-version of Word, the system the feature still works.
In Excel, make sure your calculations are visible because your work isn't visible when your Excel files are printed out for the markers to review. Copying out your calculations and putting an apostrophe in the cell in question will do the trick nicely.
Learn how to use Folio Views' search mode. You may never end up using it, but if you do need it, it's good to be fast at it.

Visit the April strategy session page for the next phase in this series.

Case prep time

2006-04-03T18:33:00.000-04:00

ASX

Fulled with caffeinated Mountain Dew and Pizza Pizza, it's time to analyze a case and prepare to answer it. This list of tips and tricks to use in answering cases continues the series from last month.

During your first read-through, mark single-letter codes like “R1", “R2", etc., to make sure you hit all the “required” points that you’ve identified when you get down to writing your answer.
Circle key words like “or” or “not” to avoid making huge misjudgements from simply missing tiny but important terms.
Use one-word questions and comments next to the case facts to flag issues you have identified for further analysis.
Mark trends and other changes on the balance sheet. Always look at cash to see if it’s declining rapidly - to see if it’s close to zero or not. Don’t spend too much time calculating every ratio imaginable, but take a quick look to see if there’s anything worth noting. Just don’t get bogged down, because the text will usually provide you with a second ‘trigger’ to reinforce whatever you may have noticed on the balance sheet. That trigger will usually make it clear that you’ve found something worth writing about.
Also remember to mark off the dates you’re going to be writing about, to make sure you write about “now” or “then” based on what the situation is. Making a time line to track the myriad dates you’re bombarded with is also a very good idea.
If you see three things relating to a single fact spread across an entire case, it's usually a good idea to assemble those facts together to make an intelligent point. This shows you actually read the case and are smart enough to pick up on the issue.

Read more thoughts in this series as outlines are discussed.

Good news everyone

2006-04-03T01:27:00.000-04:00

No damage was spotted. Either the tombstones that were knocked over were far from the major roads, or they were fixed up quickly by the groundskeepers.

And yes, it is kind of eerie to drive around there at night, but it's not especially weird.

Jerks!

2006-04-03T00:37:00.000-04:00

Someone's been knocking over lots of tombstones at the local cemetery - gonna go check out the damage now.

Bashing the children's art

2006-04-02T19:33:00.000-04:00

The upbeat music goes well with this criticism of children's art.

April Fool's from Google

2006-04-01T13:36:00.000-05:00

There's a strong contingent that gets upset whenever people profess admiration or devotion to Google. While it's good to be critical of the powerful to keep them in check, it's a good idea to focus your energy where it can have the greatest effect.

What does this have to do with April Fool's? Nothing, aside from acting as an awkward introduction to a "yay, they did another April Fool's joke!" posting. Or it can function as an eerie parallel to this year's gag, actually.

For 2006, Google Romance is the gag. It's pretty funny. Here's the text from the main page:

Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google

When you think about it, love is just another search problem. And we’ve thought about it. A lot. Google Romance™ is our solution.

Google Romance is a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using our Soulmate Search™, get back search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life. Then we'll send you both on a Contextual DateTM, which we'll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you're looking for.

With Google Romance, you can:

* Upload your profile – tell the world who you are, or, more to the point, who you’d like to think you are, or, even more to the point, who you want others to think you are.
* Search for love in all (or at least a statistically significant majority of) the right places with Soulmate Search, our eerily effective psychographic matchmaking software.
* Endure, via our Contextual Dating option, thematically appropriate multimedia advertising throughout the entirety of your free date.

How far did the joke go? Try a search - that's when the joke is revealed to people who were fooled. For the record, I searched for the term "test" to find out what would happen.

I love how they can make fun of their core operations so nicely.

What've they done in the past? In 2005 it was Google Gulp, a new series of 'smart drinks.' In 2004 it was the Google Moon Base. Pigeons were the theme of 2002. And in 2000, Google Mentalplex was the joke.

Enjoy.

A WordPerfect blog, and a handy summary of the Windows Key shortcuts

2006-03-30T00:40:00.000-05:00

While stumbling onto a site devoted to Wordperfect, I also found a list I was looking for - "Windows Logo Key" shortcuts.

WinKey+TAB: Cycle through taskbar buttons

WinKey+Break: System Properties dialog box

WinKey+R: Run dialog box

WinKey+U: Open Utility Manager

WinKey+M: Minimize all

Shift+WinKey+M: Undo minimize all

WinKey+F1: Help

WinKey+E: Windows Explorer

WinKey+F: Find files or folders

WinKey+D: Minimizes all open windows and displays the desktop (almost identical to WinKey+M, except without an undo equivalent)

CTRL+WinKey+F: Find computer

CTRL+WinKey+TAB: Moves focus from Start, to the Quick Launch toolbar, to the system tray (use RIGHT ARROW or LEFT ARROW to move focus to items on the Quick Launch toolbar and the system tray)

There's more of them out there - CA students online and cyclists in general

2006-03-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

Other CA students are out there. Neil apparently works in Mississauga at a mid-sized firm, or so I gathered from commentary about Deloitte and Nortel. I can think of at least two firms that fit the bill.

In related Mississauga news, there's a story about a man who lost control of his bike and fell of a bridge. The story is also evidence for the argument that riding on the sidewalk isn't as safe as you think. If the road's too narrow for cars to pass, take up the entire lane, they can pass you at the end of the bridge. It may be intimidating at first - when I was a kid I was understandably terrified of traffic at first - but as you get older and more experienced it becomes a piece of cake.

Just keep an eye out for what everyone else is doing and equip your bike with a powerful horn. The larger the city, the more powerful the horn. I have an Air Zound and I swear by it. I have personally used the 120dB blast to make trucks to come to a complete halt. Good times.

Of course people get hit by cars more often than they fall off bridges, but the bridge that man fell off of likely wasn't designed to protect a cyclist from falling off. I feel bad for his family nonetheless, but hopefully this will serve as a wakeup call for others.

And while my back was turned, I thought the government had decided to meddle in our lives some more, by introducing a private members' bill that will force cyclists above the age of 18 as well as skaters and bladers to wear helmets.

Then I noticed that CTV is nice enough to keep articles from 2004 online. I really do appreciate their doing that - makes you believe that maybe the link you make to their site won't die in a week or two.

But going back to the general idea of forcing peopel to wear helmets: I have mixed feelings about it. While it is in theory a good idea to goad people to wear helmets, forcing people to do it makes me feel uneasy.

Is there any research backing up the idea that helmets will save lives? That may sound daft, but consider this: the more safety devices you have, the less carefully you behave. I've heard of research concerning that paradox and automobiles ("safer" wider lanes? faster driving!). The more safe the driving scenario gets, the more reckless people become.

Ironically enough, I rode to work on my bike for the first time in 2006 today. Incidentally, this time I wore an old ballcap instead of my helmet, so I took it nice and easy and I had my finger ready to honk at anyone about to do something stupid - like try and kill me with their car.

The weather was gorgeous and I was interviewed by the Globe and Mail while locking up my bike. I gathered that the reporter is doing a story on commuting to work by bike.

Now I have to start reading the Globe on a daily basis to see if I'm in it - you can't trust the online version to carry the story now, can you?

How to lose a helicopter and look like an idiot

2006-03-29T12:00:00.000-05:00

Tow a boat. Or try to.

Always check first

2006-03-28T23:06:00.000-05:00

ASX

You're setting yourself up for disaster if you're an entry level auditor, lowest of the low, and you zealously start accusing people at the company you're auditing of fraud. Even if you've hit one of those rare instances where you're actually right, and you have found fraud, you are not the person to bring up the very grave accusation.

Check with your senior colleagues first. Tell them about what you've learned and they'll process the accusation through the proper channels.

Failure to do this leads to small disasters and big tragedies. It could even lead to a CLM.

Toy sheep

2006-03-27T14:57:00.000-05:00

There are people on the other side of this partition wall I'm next to playing with a toy sheep. It makes a "baaaah" sound.

The people who don't know my co-workers (two departments share the floor) are looking confused and maybe just a little concerned.

A tale of two videos

2006-03-27T12:59:00.000-05:00

Following other ACS video commentaries, here's another.

Two videos. One with original thought and amateur acting. The other has amateur camerawork and unoriginal music.
1.

2.

Dancing Isuzus in Paris

2006-03-26T22:44:00.000-05:00

How? How did they pull this off? They claim it was all done naturally - with no computer graphics. The jumps I understand, but the two-wheeled driving is nuts.

Stunt drivers? I'm impressed.

Mysteries of exam scores

2006-03-25T13:41:00.000-05:00

ASX

In university, getting a B- may be cause for concern if you’re a keener obsessed with achieving perfection.

On an accounting exam, marks aren't awarded the same way.

That means that getting 100% on a question, perversely, is cause for concern - it means you spent too much time on that question and didn’t have enough time to do a decent job on the rest.

What an odd world we study and write exams in.

Does the "S" in S-Bahn stand for success?

2006-03-25T11:53:00.000-05:00

ASX

For maximum chance of success on exams, give yourself 10 minutes to write up each important issue when writing an exam with case-based questions.

Photo Credit: Me.

You also may have been told to always look for alternative answers to cases. Don’t. If there’s something valid, it’s okay, but don’t force it. If you mention an alternative which turns out to be wrong, you’ll be penalized.

Continuing the trail of random hints tossed up with little if any guiding principles - aside from the fact that this should all be in some way useful - there's a point to remember concerning using abbreviations. It's okay to use some, as long as they’re common and understandable. "GAAP", "b/c", and other related easily understood terms are okay. Terms like "o/s" are bad, though, because it could mean various things, such as overstated or outstanding. Arrows are also very bad, since it can be hard to see which way the arrow is pointing, and its meaning may be ambiguous.

When entering a negative term, be careful to underline the word "not". The person marking your exam isn't allowed to assume you meant to write the word.

CLM

2006-03-25T10:17:00.000-05:00

Know your acronyms: "Career Limiting Move" refers to huge screw-ups. Use your imagination with respect to the scale of the 'hugeness'. Cute.

Walking towards drudgery

2006-03-25T09:56:00.000-05:00

ASX

Here we see people trudging along Bay Street. The title of this post is misleading, though, since it's evening, not morning. Unless, of course, you believe there's more drudgery associated with going home than going to work.

Photo Credit: Me.

Sadly enough, perhaps that isn't as rare as I think it is.

If you see a poorly designed IT system in a company, that's another cause for sadness; note the awesome segue and keep reading.

If the system is so bad that people need to find ways to override or they operate completely outside the system, you're in big trouble. The reliability of data is called into question and just try and track someone's personal notes instead of the computer reports you'd normally expect to deal with.

One of the other many things you don't want to see is the Accounts Receivable department performing bank reconciliations. If you're going to say why that's a bad thing, you should mention why it's a bad thing. You know, the lack of segregation of duties between someone processing receipts of cash and managing bank balances leaves open the possibility of fraud, or something like that. It's bad.

Also bad is having the boss come down and change the amount of product being loaded into shipments. If it's done at the last minute, shipping documents may not be updated. As a result, your shipping data is wrong and your billing data is likely to be out of whack.

When you've encountered all these problems, don't just skip back into what you're used to doing - keep reminding yourself what role you're playing in the question. Especially if your role is that of an internal accounting person, be careful not to sink into external auditor mode. It's a quick and easy way to fail an exam.

And near the last page, be very careful. You're almost done, which produces a tendency in many people to speed through the last dribs of facts being offered in the question papers. Common things you'll see, often tucked into the last part of the case, are cut-off or matching problems, as well as information about how information is moved into accounting records.

Sailing towards freedom

2006-03-25T09:32:00.000-05:00

ASX

The trend of including completely irrelevant photos continues today. The weather is completely ugly and miserable - but at least it's a little warm - so some rare sunny weather from Seattle seems appropriate.

Be careful with bias. Don't jump into the trap of using the term in a negative sense. You can't assume people are manipulating their accounting system to their own advantage - that's where looking up facts in the case you're studying comes into play.

Photo Credit: Me.

The exam people are interested, morbidly so, in trapping people who think certain ways. A popular trap occurs in questions where a company has to comply with a debt covenant. Many students will assume that they have to do everything they can to figure out a way that company is going to breach its convenant. That way they get to talk about going concern issues and other juicy stuff.

In real life, companies aren't completely insane. Usually, anyway.

On exams, you'll often find important dates or events repeated. So if you see something emphasized two or three times, it's there for a purpose. Make sure you know what it is - traps are not placed with respect to the same topic repeatedly. How oddly reassuring.

Critical issue indicators

2006-03-24T18:56:00.000-05:00

ASX

While answering exam questions, you have to hit certain 'indicators' to get points. In the case of a company president who overproduced products and shipped them to customers against their wishes, the exam markers stated on an old exam that to be competent, you have to recognize and discuss the management override associated with the president's actions.

Photo Credit: Me.

The product we discussed wasn't cream puffs, but anytime's a good time to show off cream puffs. Delicious.

Couple the possibility of someone not covering the override with the possibility of getting hung up on irrelevant inventory issues, and you have a recipe for exam-related disaster.

The good news is that there will only be two or three major accounting issues to discuss in modern exams - with a bunch of irrelevant topics to skim through.

If you have a few pages to read through, and one of the early pages suggests that IT implementation is weak, make a note of it and keep going. Don't look for facts that aren't there, but keep reading and find out what details you can find later on, then look for more information to see if there are facts that can justify arguing that accounting errors may be introduced.

As comic relief, the class was also told not to foot the numbers in the documents given to us. Some overzealous audit students have apparently done that in the past.

How to read

2006-03-24T18:28:00.000-05:00

ASX

This accounting stuff is getting dry. We need pictures.

Photo Credit: Me.

I never said anything, however, about the pictures being even remotely related to the topic being discussed. If you think you're clever, tie downtown Chatham into a write-up about how to prepare for exams. I'm not feeling that creative today. But as written earlier, it's sometimes better not to be creative.

Moving right along to something less connected to a stream of consciousness rant and more related to the ASX topic, note how much time you spend reading. If you read quickly and miss things, slow down. If you take too long, figure out how to speed up the process. It's a painful obvious fact, but that's true of most facts.

When presented with a story about a guy and his long and painful search for funds to start his company, you can skip across most of the story until facts you can work with appear.

But be careful. If a man tested a new invention but didn't have the money to bring it to market, then he can't capitalize the expenses that are being incurred at the time. But once the money to finance the project becomes available, the remaining necessary R&D may then qualify for a deferral. It's not certain right away, though, because you need to identify more facts to find out if all the criteria have been met.

As you continue reading through the question paper, identify incentives and what effect they may have on user groups. If someone has a contract that promises a big bonus if a certain conditions are met, you concern yourself with regards to how well you can measure the criteria to win the bonus. Tracking the price or volume of sales can be done, but you have to figure out whether or not you will be doing the tracking accurately.

One tip to help keep track of what you're supposed to be doing is to see where you have lots of information. If you have a small line of information for one topic and pages upon pages of data about other topics, the pages with tons of informaiton are, logically, where you should focus your energy.

If another paragraph makes you say "maybe this would happen", move on - the "maybe" is a tip-off that there's nothing to focus on.

And while reading about hard facts, be careful about possible issues. If your main topic is figuring out when a company shifts from R&D mode to commercial production mode and you see a small mention of defective products, you can say that there may be an inventory valuation problem, and that's all - it's not worth any points on high-level accounting exams if the main issue is much bigger and more important.

Remembering what is important and keeping track of what you should ignore qualifies as "Fun stuff", that can promptly drive you mad. And that's why studying is so great. It's like purging yourself of the feelings of insanity that are brought upon by encountering seeming inconsistencies and other misleading facts that can cloud your logic.

Don't waste time on big exams

2006-03-24T17:33:00.000-05:00

ASX

Made more interesting notes from today's exam prep session.

Don't over-analyse during the reading phase. Don't look for hidden issues in the question paper. As bad it sounds, "do not be creative". Be a boring accountant during those days. Don't read into things.

Extensive outlines chew up a lot of time. A barebone outline is sufficient.

We learned about the top 10 list of the most ridiculous answers seen by the people marking exams - an anonymous list, of course.

Two of the favourites shared with the class: most creative, which won the marker free drinks for his misery, related to a food processing company.

It was going through restructuring due to a downturn in its industry.

The idea was to shift production of food from humans to cats. The writer wrote about 5 or 6 pages of the cost-benefit associated with catfood.

"Let's change the whole mission. Forget people - cats!"

In another story, there was a discussion of how to detect fraud.

Their answer started off with, "Communicate with the individual's priest, and inquire of the priest if the individual confessed to theft in confession." Not to mention how unethical that would be, priests are forbidden to share that kind of information on pain of excommunication.

The moral of the story is, don't make assumptions. That's when you get into trouble. If they want you to analyze things, they'll share the facts with you.

"Screw you, receipt-checking girl!"

2006-03-24T17:00:00.000-05:00

Interesting to read about stores and their policy of checking your receipt while you leave.

A common sensical look at the law makes you realize that once you've paid for a purchase, you do indeed own it. As a result, you can do whatever you want with it. Run around with it, hide it in your coat, whatever.

The article above describes one misadventure with overzealous Best Buy staff. He wasn't alone, as this other story reveals.

Professional opinions on this loss-prevention tactic exist. The verdict? You can't be coerced - bag checks must be voluntary. You can end up having great fun with this information - if tormenting store staff and security is your idea of great fun, of course.

Two interesting facts arise from the story: stores should use their friendliest, least-imposing staff for the job, because it requires significant finesse. An ox-like bouncer can get you sued.

Secondly, there is a potential for benefit: in some cases you may be overcharged or may forget part of your purchase. The door checker is supposed to catch those mistakes in addition to deterring shoplifters.

But what the impatient among us will love the most, of course, is the fact that if there's a huge line-up to have receipts checked, you can skip it with impunity, assuming that you've paid for your purchases, of course.

Other Accounting Exam Hints

2006-03-24T16:47:00.000-05:00

ASX

It's training season all over again - in preparation for this year's huge exams, we have training session in progress. We're examining a sample question and getting pointers on how to read questions. As simple a skill as that is, it seems important to keep emphasizing the importance of reading carefully.

Every fact needs to be noted carefully, especially so you don't forget what you're doing - the trick with these questions is that role-playing is involved. Sometimes you're a public accountant, other times an internal auditor and yet again perhaps the company's controller. And you're no doubt wondering what a controller is - it's a one of a company's top accountants.

So you make a series of headings to help yourself keep track of what you're going to write as your answer. And what should those headings be structured as? You base them on what the question asks you to do.

Now that we can use our computers to write our replies, it gets progressively easier, since you can insert your headings into the document you're typing, and then you can subsequently insert your answers into the headings you pre-populated as you were organizing your thoughts.

Writing exams on computers is the way of the future and I'm glad that I get to type out my next answers rather than labouriously scrawling them across paper. And whoever ends up marking my answers should be exceedingly pleased too, since they'll actually be able to decipher what I'm writing with relative ease!

Google yourself for fun and profit

2006-03-20T18:56:00.000-05:00

QS made some interesting points about online presence, linking to /. - 'slashdot'.

The /. people have lots of interesting comments including the argument that if they don't like who I am, I don't want to work for them anyway.

The concept of passive anonymity also appeals to me - and should be evident from my lackadaisical blogging alias, which is more of an abbreviation than an alias. :)

It's funny to see the "hi, i'm colleen kluttz and i just smoked the. best. weed. everrrrrrr..." post, though. She's the person who complained about her online presence making her look bad.

You would think she would delete the picture off of myspace and not just the video from youtube.com. Silly lady.

Of course, sometimes having yourself googled is a good thing. After all, various professionals offer good advice online, revealing how useful they can be in a particular field.

From personal experience, though, I screened a couple hundred resumes this month because our HR group is short-staffed. If you have anything 'real' to do at work, going through tons of job applications quickly becomes a big waste of time that you can hardly get done with fast enough.

Ironically enough, after two months of being tied up with 'real' work, I finally had a chance to relax, so I was able to actually devote time to reviewing the resumes, instead of rapidly skimming through them. Despite that, even if I give each resume a minute, that means three hours to do 180 of them.

And that's only if you skip through the letters and resumes quickly. If you're going to start googling them, well, that's just a complete waste of time.

I can only imagine that a company that devotes excessive time to doing that kind of paranoia-inducing background checks is either 1. over-staffed or 2. not getting a lot of applicants. There is a third-possibility, of course, being the idea that only short-listed candidates get the extreme background check. Perhaps it happens; but the original "this is who I am and I'm proud of it" comment would be my response to that.

The pride, and the passive anonymity scheme, to be more exact, though, covers my position on the issue.

Continuing a comment about MS choking and dying

2006-03-20T18:23:00.000-05:00

I can't believe people actually still use hotmail when there's so many better options.

Ironically enough, the thoughts I'm expressing at ACS are being independently repeated, or if you will, generated at Quantum Land

As for MS itself choking and dying, well, it'd be nice if they could reform themselves.

I don't know if that's possible; if anyone can change things, though, maybe it's an old friend who got hired to work there. Hopefully he can give them their second chance since I don't want him to lose his job because of the inevitable implosion of MS brought about all the negative goodwill. As if that was enough to destroy a corporation.

Having said all that, I'm nevertheless not particularly keen on working there myself.

But, thanks to the employment detail noted above, I have at least one reason to not hope for them to choke and die completely, even if I don't support everything they do.

Note, of course, that I don't say that I don't support anything they do, since I run Windows and play a couple of MS games, including AoE3. But I use MS Word only grudgingly, and evolve back to WordPerfect whenever I have the option. It helps keep me sane whenever I'm writing anything of consequence.

I realize that last sentence implies that this entry is something that is not of consequence. Either that, or it drives me mad to write in this clunky interface - no doubt the latter is true.

It's not butter beer

2006-03-20T17:59:00.000-05:00

Emma Watson drinks Corona. Follow-ups include more photos from the same place.

I was going to embed a picture but you'll just have to click on one of those links instead - blogger is being slow as heck again, and tempting me to stop writing altogether, or just move to another service.

Simpsons live action

2006-03-17T17:29:00.000-05:00

I’m quite pleased that several people have pointed this out to me, so in the spirit of saying “okay, I know about it already”, here’s an embedded video copy of the live action Simpsons opening.

They thought of everything

2006-03-15T22:40:00.000-05:00

By now it's old news, but I must repeat the fact that having e-mail and chat integrated is a lovely idea.

There needs to be some sort of "off" button... wow, they thought of everything. "Sign out of chat." Brilliant.

Interestingly one complaint is that people may stupidly think IM conversations are "off the record" by default. While that's true for the weaker IMs, the original IM to take the online world by storm, ICQ, let you save your chats from the very start.

It's a shame that ICQ thought of "too much" of everything - bloatware kicked in, and to make matters worse, AOL bought them out. MSN Messenger delivered the killing blow to a system that had lots of problems leading to its downfall - akin to the fall of the Roman Empire, I guess.

Speed limit bandits

2006-03-14T01:41:00.000-05:00

This movie is great. It's about an experiment where a bunch of US college students obey the speed limit. Chaos ensues.

Enjoy.

Preserve the GIF

2006-03-13T01:20:00.000-05:00

Is there any way to get a picture to remain an animated GIF?

Yes, but you have to link directly to the page hosting it.

A picture at last

2006-03-13T01:17:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's not me, but it's amusing. Now let's see if I can get the system to accept it as a "picture of myself" too.

Update - the plan almost worked except for the part where animated GIF files get destroyed by an automatic conversion to JPG format. Nuts.

Thoughts associated with the discovery of the Catechism Blog and other sites

2006-03-13T01:05:00.000-05:00

Just in time for Lent, a Catechism blog for a small church. Doesn't seem like there's a lot of activity going on, but it's a much more positive use of blogging technology than destroying your literary rivals and other silly wastes of time.

Fighting zombies (or being one) is fun, though. Too bad it's not as fun as Shaun of the Dead.

It's amusing to note - and to find a way to tie two very disparate paragraphs together - that the April Fools edition of my old newspaper had a good story along the same lines as the movie, but from the perspective of Catholic College students fighting off the zombies, rather than Shaun and company.

Supersoakers filled with Holy Water helped, according to my theory anyway. While digging up the Wikipedia link for Supersoakers, I was bemused to learn that there is apparently such a thing as "online soaker communities". A cultlike devotion to high-pressure water guns? Okay, the fact that I started to look at one such site is a good a sign as any that it's time for sleep.

Magic Accounting Words

2006-03-12T15:01:00.000-05:00

ASX
"Difference" is a word you should use with care. While you may think it just means something is 'not the same', auditors think it means there's something wrong. And not just "wrong", but horribly, disturbingly amiss. A potential financial reporting disaster.

I could probably spend hours coming up with the unique vocabulary of auditors and the special taboo words that you should avoid using unless they're actually called for.

And one day maybe I will.

But today it's sunny and warm outside - and high time I dragged my bike out to enjoy the early Spring.

Slick supermodel camp

2006-03-11T12:08:00.000-05:00

Compare two videos, Elefant's "Misfit",

and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".

A cynical person could consider both campy for various reasons. Elefant's video is much slicker, of course, since it's made more recently with more modern editing and up-to-date hairstyles. And the presence of supermodels vamping around (which is essentially Google video's entire description of the video) can make it inifintely more appealing.

But which one do people know and love and sing more?

Although it does of course help, image isn't always everything. And yet, are either of these candidates for the title of 'art'? Or just a couple more tidbits of pop culture, one just older and - not necessarily paradoxically - more popular?

Professional Commentary

2006-03-11T01:05:00.000-05:00

After reading some comments at Kelly's blog about mean old Dr. Pipes, it was time to leave a comment about how it was ironic that I recently stumbled upon an old copy of the Varsity recently while throwing out and recycling old university-related materials.

The issue contained letters in response to an article about U of T professors being up in arms about Pipes coming to speak on campus. You see, I don't really care about the guy one way or the other, so I was bemused to see an impassioned response to someone who was an unknown entity at the time. Kelly doesn't like Pipes, citing his comments about the effects of an Iraqi Civil War.

But to be fair, Pipes does say that while he wouldn't call a civil war a "strategic tragedy", he does say it would be "humanitarian tragedy".

It reminds me of the old joke about two Russians in the Soviet Union discussing the difference between a disaster and a tragedy: one explains that if a farmer flips his tractor into a ditch it's a tragedy, but certainly not a disaster. If a plane carrying the entire Soviet Politburo crashed into a mountain, however, it would be a disaster, but certainly no tragedy.

Is Pipes' view of the world that nuanced? I don't know. I still think the old Soviet joke is funny, though.

I learned that Pipes' father worked as scholar with a focus on the Soviet Union. So even if the nuance isn't there - but perhaps it is? - the humour may not be far off the mark.