So how was 2009? I'm not a huge fan of these types of posts, although I am a sucker for a good year in review survey. Here's what I wrote a year ago...
"I'm not a big fan of New Years resolutions. It's always just seemed like a setup for not getting something done... Well, I'd like to actually make one this year: I'd like to stop waking up tired and hating my alarm."
David would probably be the best judge, but I think I've done alright. We rarely make it to bed later than 11:00 lately, and I'm usually falling asleep on the couch well before then.
I did manage to survive my first tax season and enjoy it (to a degree). It consumed my life, and it will here again shortly, but life can't bring you down when you're busy as fuck.
What else was in 2009? RYLA changed my perspective on life in ways I can't quantify, I suffered through a family reunion, David and I took our first road trip/vacation together, and I had to put my dog to sleep.
What goals have I completed? I'm 3/4 of my way to my CPA license, we live in Portland now, but I didn't manage to go skydiving. I haven't looked at my life goals list in too long.
My resolution for 2010? Excel. Do better. Get those three little letters at the end of my name. Keep sleeping better. Continue to make my office an enjoyable place to work.
At the end of RYLA I wrote myself a note. I'd forgotten about it... "Remember how you told yourself you'd change." That's what I'm going to stick to.
David's Lair
28 12 09 - 09:02. Category:
In the back corner of our basement, between a few boxes of storage and an extra bed, is David's Lair. You can check out his post and description over at his blog. Here's a video of what he's up to:
Derek's Typhographical Terrors
27 12 09 - 13:41. Category:
It is the third weekly Derek's Typographical Terrors update. Sorry I forgot to get this posted yesterday! Here's where we currently stand:
Only one error in the last week, I'm doing pretty good!
Das Meisterwerk
23 12 09 - 07:35. Category:
I have created a masterpiece! This is the weekly summary tab of my spreadsheet for tracking time on a daily, weekly, and (new!) annual basis.
On the left you will find the weekly totals by system code. Blue is billable, green is not. On the right you will find a multitude of graphs designed to beautifully illustrate how my work week went. As you can see from this week thus far I don't have a whole lot of billable time.
There is also an identical tab that will present the same information over the next year. The daily tabs convert my time into decimals for system input. There are also tabs to track my PTO, my CPA licensing hours, and one to do my weekly reconciliation between my schedule and what I actually did.
This is v2 of the spreadsheet. I have been using a much simpler one since about I started. Originally I was going to start using this one for 2010, but I just put the finishing touches on it and decided to give it a test run over the next two weeks.
Yes, this does make me excited. Yes, I did enjoy putting it together. Yes, it is awesome.
Hello? Hello?
22 12 09 - 08:27. Category:
Someone or something keeps calling my phone, but I have no idea who or what.
Yesterday I received calls at 9:22, 12:24, 1:38, and 4:38. I just missed one this morning at 8:12. All of them are from "Private Number." I actually answered the one yesterday morning and there was nothing on the opposite side. You'd think I'd get some robotic answering machine ad or heavy breathing on my voicemail at least.
If I have a stalker, you could at least say hi.
Cubicle Decorating!
21 12 09 - 10:55. Category:
So I finally got around to getting the pictures of the office cubicle decorating on the internet. Judging was on Friday, so really I'm not all that far behind. Check it out:
We won best group with this.
Very funny...
This group won most creative.
This won most traditional.
I was kinda wobbly taking all these pictures, normally I'm not that bad. Way to take crap pictures to share w/ all your coworkers Derek...
It was a ton of fun, and I was very happy to see everyone participate. NExt year is gonna be a challenge!
Derek's Typographical Terrors
19 12 09 - 13:16. Category:
It is the second weekly Derek's Typographical Terrors update (formerly known as the cookie competition). Mike won a bonus point by coming up with the new title. Here's where we are currently at:
Two errors (as of Thursday) in a week aren't too bad! Santa Claus looks funny no matter how you spell it.
It Might be Time When...
18 12 09 - 14:31. Category:
David is nice enough to drive me into work in the mornings if he needs the car. This morning I was half dozing, thinking of wedding bands (our friend just got his) and what I would like. In general I was just imagining the feel of it.
Then... panic.
I wasn't completely asleep, but for a second I was FREAKED because I didn't have my wedding ring on. I reflexively touched my left thumb to my rink ring finger to check for it. It was going to throw off my whole day.
My actual ring that I wear now, on my right ring finger, was there the whole time.
Santa Claus Calls
16 12 09 - 16:31. Category:
One of my favorite Portland afternoon shows on the radio is Daria and Mich (with Producer Ted). 105.1 The Buzz isn't a terrible radio station in itself, it pretty much plays top 40 so it can get a little repetitive. Thankfully it leaves out the rap, country, and hip-hop though. However I can't stand their morning show.
Anyway, the point is that every holiday season they do phone calls to kids from Santa Clause Claus. Parents call in to the radio station and explain how their kids were naughty. Mitch then later calls their home when the kids are there, pretending to be Santa, and asks the kids to be nice for the holiday season cause he'd really like to bring them presents.
It's super cute the way the kids sound and react. If you are in the Portland area give it a listen, if not you could stream it online. They're on from 3:00 to 7:00 in the afternoon/evening.
Cookie Competition
12 12 09 - 07:19. Category:
It has been decided that each Saturday I will post an update on the cookie competition standings. Here's where we are currently at:
But wait, there's more! You currently have a chance to earn a bonus point if you can come up with a better title than "Cookie Competition" for the cookie competition!
Liability Employees
11 12 09 - 08:20. Category:
You can manage people or you can lead people. Even worse than managing people however, is considering your employees a liability. A coworker just keyed me into this today in light of recent events.
My company used to have casual days. We still get casual Saturday during tax season, but we also used to get casual Friday before my time. Unfortunately a few people took it too far and wore something too casual and then the company got a blanket "no casual days" policy. I'm battling to get some form of it back, but they don't trust us to even where "appropriate" jeans.
We used to have a policy that if you had to work more than 10 hours in a day, you could get your dinner paid for. The idea being it would be late, you'd had a long day, so pick something up on the company on the way home. Unfortunately a few people took it too far and abused the policy by working 10 hour incriments and then getting their dinner regularly paid for.
Company events used to be open bar. My profession tends to drink a lot, judge that how you will. Unfortunately a few people took it too far and drank too much top shelf and cost the company too much money. As a result, a year ago the company Christmas party was open bar, well drinks only. That's fine.
Just a few months ago we got informed that they were further limiting this Christmas part to two drinks per attendee: "this policy is simply in keeping with our position as a responsible firm in the community. As your safety and the safety of others is our utmost concern." The staff called bullshit, it's about liability and money.
Now, we learned as of yesterday that this two drink policy is not just a limit on the number of drinks the firm is providing but rather a restriction on the number of drinks period. Per someone else's discussion with a partner, it's to protect partner liability should anything bad happen.
Here's how this all comes to a head... As public accountants we are expected to operate in certain ways. We are expected to execute reasonable judgment, we are expected to give everything due diligence, we are expected to be professional, we are expected to use discression. On every single job we work on, particularly audits, the firm is entrusting its staff to act as professionals. They are supposed to trust and rely on our judgment and be confident that we are acting to uphold the standards of ethics and professionalism codified within the public accounting guidelines and regulations.
But then they establish these blanket policies to control things on an office-wide level rather than dealing with people as necessary on the individual bases. If you can't trust one, apparently you can't trust any.
The worst part though is not that they are changing their policies to save themselves money. That stings, but it's pretty much expected. The worst part by far is that they have made it glaringly apparent that in their eyes the staff are liabilities. We're a risk, a potential lawsuit, a perpetual loss of their money. To the partner group we are a necessary liability that the firm has to pay for.
The economy sucks right now but that is no reason what-so-ever to treat your employees as liabilities. Employees are assets with value. They wonder why the firm turnover has been so high in past years and moral is so low. They wonder why the office is so quiet and dead around them. Hell, if you simply tell us the actual reason behind the decisions we'd still accept it a lot better than this lipstick on a pig.
The firm has literally spent thousands of dollars in billing write-offs and CPA exams training me and every-other staffer over the years. And yet, rather than considering their accountants invested assets worth retention they think of us as a risky liability that needs to be regulated, controlled, and can't be trusted. They hire us as professionals in all sense of the word under CPA guidelines, but then they treat us like children. What do we need to do, sign a liability waver?
Do they think any firm event will take more than the hour needed for dinner? I expect a much lower attendance of future company events and probably a higher rate of turnover in the year to come.
"Good" Morning
09 12 09 - 07:09. Category:
4:00am and I are quickly becoming frenemies. All this week I've been waking up each morning right around then, wondering what time it is.
Waking up before your alarm is one of those great, but terrible, feelings. You're up before you have to which on some level absolutely sucks. However you also get to rollover while thinking "HA! Not yet I don't!" and fall back to sleep burritoed in warmth.
For the moment I am enjoying your game 4:00am, but you better back off soon or I’m going to start getting grumpy.
Cubicle decoration pictures will be forthcoming just as soon as we’re done. Someone had the audacity to assign my decorating team work before we quite finished putting things together.
Find Errors, Win Cookies!
03 12 09 - 17:01. Category:
I'm a pretty horrible proofreader. Every post gets proofed at least once before it appears on the site, but they still tend to make it out with misspellings or incorrect words. I like to blame the dissidence between my fingers and my brain. It's the result of years of typing lessons and competitions (yes, I placed nationally in a word processing competition in high school I was that awesome).
I'm not just talking about transposed letters like "teh" or "takling" which I just typed a moment ago. I'm almost incapable of typing "laser" due to the S-ER pattern from "answer", it's bound to get a W whether it likes it or not.
THE CHALLENGE:
Each misspelling, typo, or wrong word a person politely points out to me in the comments will earn them one point. After ten points, I will send you a cookie, a decent sized one, your choice of flavor. Whether or not the cookie is still good when it arrives will be up to the gods.
This is not retroactive, you can't go through my archive and earn like 50 cookies. Points have to be earned by placing a blog comment. Notifications by text, email, voice, or pigeon will not be counted. I will update the typos as they are corrected.
Grammar corrections are NOT allowed. My grammar sucks and I'm not going to work to change it. Most of the grammar Nazis I encounter are particular about archaic grammar corrections that really don't effect the understandability or clarity of a sentence.
I will keep a tally and post it at irregular intervals when I feel it warrants posting. My goal is to try to send as few cookies as possible (as much a as I like you all). This is of course an entirely subjective competition.
It's Time to Exercise
01 12 09 - 15:13. Category:
Now that studying for my CPA exam is over (for now) it's time to step up and hold myself to a promise. No more studying means that now I am committing time in my life to exercise.
If the "flight" condition of my "flight or fight" response is to be effective I need to be in condition enough to run more than two blocks or a single flight of stairs. Hence, my new two-fold program:
Part I: C25K Couch-to-5K is a three day a week program designed to work your body up from unfit to running 5 kilometers (3-ish miles) in nine weeks. I used to run about this much, and I really liked it. The ultimate goal is to do the 5k Shamrock Run in March with some coworkers.
The annoyance here is going to be timing the intervals without a treadmill. Apparently "running watches" are pretty cheap though. I may just scrap this and take up a 3-day a week running schedule.
Part II: 100 Pushups David and I tried this program a while back and gave up. We couldn't find a good consensual time to actually do it so our system of encouragement fell apart. In six weeks, the goal is to do 100 pushups straight through. It's also on a three day cycle. I'm going to do it this time.
The Schedule I plan on alternating days when I run and days when I do pushups, and it should work out with my raiding Here's my plan:
My days start out too early in the morning to have an extra hour to exercise, so it is going to have to be after I get home. This is going to make it harder to hold to, but I think I can do it.
David is also undertaking a weight-loss challenge with a few of his friends. I can't say I'm thrilled at my calorie intake being at all regulated, but I'll live. Between David and my coworkers there's a good system holding me and others accountable. Plus I live in Portland now! We're shopping at a more health-concious store! It's a good time to change!
