Jaycee is preparing for the UFE, and ran into a wall on the comp. It's natural to get tired of a five hour exam case, especially when those little devils in your head start nagging with those evil thoughts, like "Two of your seniors who had passed claimed to have never done any cases at all. They just practiced outlining and read the evaluation guides."
I of course immediately called shenanigans on that. Being a smart young CA student, she herself quickly dispelled those notions, but I felt like adding more on top of that comment: here are the original thoughts plus at least one more idea while I'm at it.
Don't fail at studying
If you play musical instruments or any sports, you will be familiar with what it's like to "practice" and really practice.
You will only perform, play or write as well as you practice.
If you want to get to SOX City, you'll need to do a few things first.
If you go through the motions of trying to play a piece of music without correcting your little mistakes in timing, tempo, dynamics, your music won't sound very good when you perform.
If you do a half-hearted attempt to jog laps instead of actually trying to build up stamina, you won't last very long in an actual game of soccer or whatever.
If you don't practice for the UFE by treating the practice case like the real deal, you WILL, run the real and dangerous risk of doing the same thing on the final (Oh, I still have 3 hours, I can come back to that later.)
Procrastination is fun and all, but the UFE will murder you if that's your weakness. Promise yourself any mental gift you want (I promised myself a sweet gaming-computer upgrade after the exam) if that helps, but in exchange, practice your cases like you mean it.
And if you are hitting a wall on the comp, bring yourself some tasty energizing treats. As far as I know, you're allowed to bring in whatever foodstuffs you want into the exam hall. Bring whatever snacks you enjoy which aren't liable to make you suddenly experience a sugar crash or food coma and good luck.
A wiki devoted to Canadian tax is out there for your joy and learning..
If you're actually practising tax you may know much of these things.
But perhaps you forgot about rules regarding moving expenses. You'll
find them here.
The goal here is to make Canadian tax law more "flexible and accessible." Note this doesn't mean "easier to understand, but I suppose it's a start.
That was more dramatic than it needed to be.
The ICAO must've had some kind of technical glitch which prevented the results from the 2010 School of Accountancy exam from loading on time - it took roughly half an hour for the website to get updated.
The results are, however, now up - this page will let you see which of the writers passed - out of the population of writers who gave permission to have their names on the website. Official results will be mailed to individual writers in a few days.
Congratulations to those who passed!
Smartly, the ICAO recoded their main webpage to reduce the massive crushing load of traffic that's sure to hit them today. When you land on their page you'll just see this:
The Institute of
Chartered Accountants of Ontario
Homepage
SOA
Results | CA
Firms
That's a smart move though - let people get to the results faster, and keep your web server from melting down.
A shame about the delay, but what's another 20 minutes, especially if
your own company gets results on time and tells you on time anyway?
I suspect everyone will quickly forget about the delay.
My fingers are crossed for my friends waiting to hear their marks. Hang tight - the School of Accountancy results should be coming out soon.
If you're not feeling stressed enough, why not dive into the SOA 2010 discussion board?
For them, the waiting is done.
Judging from the commentary, it was a sufficiently ridiculous exam this year. Thinking way back to my attempt, I recall missing this or that seemingly obvious and very important issue - and still making it through in one piece. Perhaps the mistakes I made weren't that significant - more likely, everyone makes mistakes to some extent. Part of the success lies in making less mistakes than everyone else!
Short answer: yes. In fact, I'm working from home right now.
Above: not home. Would be nice though.
To be specific, I stopped working when I checked mail from my readers, and decided to write a little article. I can easily resume when I'm done.
In fact, I was going to resume, right now, as I had a nice long article written.
Then random computer things broke down - we forgot to add diesel to the engine running our server - which caused me to lose my entire post. That's ok, though: you get to enjoy the more succinct "take two" re-write I'll share with you, which loses most of the superfluous wit or "fluff" in the interest of trenchant analysis reducing the aggravation from my computer, once more, choosing to spite me when I least suspected it would.
It's also ok, because at least I have the luxury of working from home. This saves me the hassle of going downtown to the office. If you live nearby, that's probably an hour of round-trip travel. If you commute from the suburbs, that's two or more hours of your life recovered.
I do enjoy meeting up with my colleagues and friends in the office, particularly if we haven't met in ages, either because they themselves are working from home, or are visiting client sites, but there are times when it's great to realize "there's no point to coming downtown today - I have no meetings, most of my friends are on vacation, at their own clients sites or also planning on working from home - and all my work is sitting on my laptop in electronic form."
That's when you get to stay home. And no matter what, if you're a financial accountant with a CA or CPA, or an IT auditor with either those designations or the more IT-specific CISA, CISM or CISSP, modern work allows you to work from home - and that's pretty fantastic.
To achieve this, there's three factors that have to line up in your favour:
- A well designed home work environment with minimal distractions,
- Managers who are supportive and show it by trusting you to get your work done with minimal supervision and who work from home as well, and
- Clients to audit that don't need you to be on site all the time.
You can control your home environment, and if you hate your office culture, no one's stopping you from leaving and finding another place to work. You can also push to work on clients that offer you work that's easier to handle at home - so in a way, you can control everything.
There are all sorts of home offices with varying degrees of effectiveness as a place of work
The original long article led to a vague analysis of the breakdown of time spent working at home versus in a formal office environment - that of your company or the client. In case you're wondering, you can in theory work all week long at home, but you'll eventually need to "surface for air," so to speak, and either meet up with someone in person in your office, or trundle off to see your clients. The precise mix varies, and depends on how you arrange your schedule. If your clients need you present every day, forget about working from home. If you only have meetings 2 to 4 days a week, logically the remaining days can be spent working from home.
This a wonderful and mostly altruistic action: any CA from Ontario, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia or Bermuda can click on this link here, to go a page where you can tell your local provincial Institute of Chartered Accountants to donate $25 to a charity of your choice - from a list of five, including Kids Help Phone and Easter Seals.
I say "mostly" because this is all nestled in a webpage hosted by Manulife who sell insurance to CAs and would no doubt love to translate this little bit of charity into some sort of boost to their business too, but given the fact that they're simply giving cash away, I won't hold the fact that there's still marketing involved in this against them.
According to the ICAO's little e-newsletter, about 850 people have already clicked, which suggests that this campaign is only halfway through. If you haven't forced them to give away money to charity, feel free to push $25 of someone else's money towards a worthy cause.
If this train were the charity campaign, it would only be half full. It was one of the cooler attractions during Doors Open Toronto, 2010 edition.
Big Four firms are very hierarchical, to the point where a colleague jokes with me that you gain certain magic powers when you get promoted to higher ranks. Mind-reading, the ability to move through walls, halt traffic with your mind. And other sorts of Jedi tricks.
I experienced a surreal moment Monday after work, as I discovered what may be as simple as a perk that comes from wearing a dress shirt and nice pants: you have the keys ot the city, so to speak.
Perhaps I should talk this up at future recruiting events.
The adventure started when my phone buzzed with news that the
506 streetcar had to detour around the stretch of track in front of the Police HQ.
Thank you TTC: coupled with the weekend's protests and violence, you could infer this meant protesters had gathered in front of Toronto Police Headquarters to lambast police tactics and chant for the release of those detained during the weekend's G20 shenanigans.
And so I walked up from my office, big fancy camera in hand. I passed by the smashed up Adidas store at Yonge and Dundas.
CTV news showed video of security shooing away the vandals who broke the window. They didn't succeed in defending the entire perimeter, but to be fair it was two guys versus a very large expanse of real estate!
As I passed the store, I also noticed another rowdy group: Brazil fans celebrating the victory over Chile.
They were passing by another victim of the violence: the men's club.... featuring dancing men.
I first noticed a significant police presence at Gerrard and Yonge. One cop sounded like he was whinging about the extended patrol in the rain last night. Or perhaps he was mocking people who were trapped at Queen and Spadina. You could almost feel a slight buzz in the air.
I checked out the line of vehicles parked at the northern edge of Ryerson University campus - including a full size bus and several vans.
Here's a lesson to aspiring photographers: if you want to photograph
an individual cop, try asking for his permission first. If he shrugs
his shoulders with a delightful, "sure, why not?" response, snap away.
Otherwise, look for more cooperative subjects or at the very least move
away to a respectful distance where it doesn't feel like you're being a
nasty and annoying member of the paparazzi.
I joked with the above officer visiting Toronto from Durham Region about all the cannisters on his vest. Were they CS? No, not all tear gas, he explained, but a variety of types.
"Oh, like a party pack," I mused?
Sort of like that, yes.
Right across the street you could see the unfortunate jewellery store hit by the Black Bloc thugs - pictured is either someone connected to the shop or the glass repair crew that was fixing up that side of the building. He didn't seem too bemused by my antics, so I quickly scuttled off.
But first I had to get a shot of the debris. I then finally scurried forward.
Ahead of me: the protest zone just west of Yonge on College.
A scruffy young guy got his bag searched - he's the one on the right. And I?
No questions asked - no challenges made. I might as well be the mayor or something, ignoring the fact that I'm lugging about an incredibly heavy and perhaps suspicious-looking backup, loaded with my audit kit.
And yet friendly or at least pleasant nods come up all around from the cops.
This is peculiar, but awesome. I'm floating through the lines.
Even the undercover police are rather chill - even though their cover is suddenly blown by their squaking radios. Oops, might want to turn those down. Another officer I later chat with says that the team was probably no doubt "made" a while ago. Might as well put on formal uniforms at that point I suppose. Also, note to the agent provocateur conspiracy theorists: these cops had a variety of footwear on, so give up on your "OMG black boots on thugs mean they're cops." The logic is as faulty as the quality of your photos, so please move on.
Moving back to that last photo though, I must highlight that in Canada the police do not have the right to force you to let them examine your bag in a normal public place. You can be super-obedient like the scruffy young man, but you only expose yourself to legal risk.
It's safer, legally speaking, to politely decline the request. But once you grant consent, you're essentially giving up your right to privacy.
Far too many people don't understand this point.
There's a particular reason I would refuse to open the bag, in addition to wanting to exercise my civil rights: I carry audit files with me. I will not consent to a search as this may expose the files to risk. They can call my firm's legal department if they want, but I'm not going to dare open my bag to the police.
You need to know your rights, whether or not you're a CA.
As for how I managed to float through those police lines without a challenge to show off my gear, did my camera on my neck help? Doubtful - many journalists got arrested on the weekend!
I don't know if "looking the part" keeps you safe, even with a suspiciously over-packed bag, or if you can actually project an aura of "I don't care if you have a gun, you're not allowed to use it to threaten me so leave me alone" by knowing your rights.
I'll write another post about my time "behind the lines" to reiterate peoples' rights shortly, because this can't be stressed enough.
This post is an example of where the mindset of the Hardcore CA will take you.
In AuditLand and other corporate environments, when something goes Horribly Wrong, rather than point blame and string people up, you have a "Lessons Learned" moment, which can either be a casual debrief, or an exhaustive exercise in identifying what mistakes were made, and how they can be avoided in the future.
There will no doubt be some very professional investigations conducted into what happened this weekend at the Toronto G20 riots.
One of the most shocking images online and on TV came from the fires that consumed Toronto police cars, which initially engendered some extremely sceptical treatment. After all, they just bought a water cannon - couldn't they handle a fire quickly and safely?
This presumed that the security teams knew they may need to use it as a firefighting vehicle; given the delays it's probably safe to assume wasn't planned for. This makes sense, considering its stated purpose is for crowd control, and when any large lumbering organization doesn't plan for something to be used for a novel purpose, expect a delay at least long enough for something to burn for 10 or 20 minutes!
Of course, Naomi Klein assumed the opposite - so she will not agree with the analysis which follows - but do check her out at the rally in front of Toronto Police HQ on Monday June 28 to get her succinct point of view. After writing about the madness around the world, I'm sure she felt like this was a perverse "moment to shine" on home turf.
I'm challenging her point of view after watching the video you see embedded below, or available through this link, lasts about nine minutes shows how the fire that consumed a Toronto Police cruiser at Bay and King unfolded
Considering the fact that you have a full-on riot taking place, don't be surprise to hear a fair bit of profanity and anti-capitalist rhetoric - that's of course par for the course.
What's fascinating about the video is that you can see that a "light mobile" police force was in fact present towards the East, on King Street, along with some heavier riot cops in front of the TD bank on the southwest corner.
Pause the video at the 16 through 19 second marks. You'll see that
members of the Toronto Anti-Violence squad (TAV) are getting out of
their cars. I don't know if they had just arrived moments earlier, or
had been idling in the vehicles, but this makes a great deal of sense:
several hundred protesters racing down the street unopposed
would no doubt cause any person with half a brain to retreat!
Interestingly shortly afterwards, around 1:07, you can also hear what I presume are cops
calling for backup, "let's get some help here," before backing up and waiting for the phalanx to
form.
Now a hot-head say, "well then, the cops are heavily armed, who cares if they're outnumbered? They can take those punks!"
Sure, they could.
And yes - the car could have been saved. But then people would have died.
After all, they could run up to their car in the face of a march easily 20 to 40 times larger than their initial numbers. But how do you even odds like that?
Allow me a moment of hyperbole: by turning it into a slaughter.
The police, from what I've learned reading accounts of shooting incidents, are trained to shoot to kill. Sure, the special forces snipers may disable you or shoot the weapon out of your hand. But there's no time for that with line officers: they are trained to take people down.
Even if they shot warning shots over people's heads as if this was some crazy Western, there would nevertheless be a risk of grievous injury, and no promise that it wold work!
If the police started shooting, things would not end well. Or, to be more specific, would end much more poorly.
Enraged, the peaceful protesters could have joined the violent minority and charged police lines. Word would spread like wildfire, the city would then truly see what a massive riot looks like, instead of a few isolated instances of vandalism and mayhem we instead faced.
Is my hypothetical scenario too extreme? Very much so perhaps - our police are brave, and many were itching to take the fight to the crowds. Would it have ended well?
This is where I admit the limits of my own knowledge of counter-insurrection tactics. Perhaps a group of two or three dozen cops wielding billy clubs, not a full riot phalanx, could have turned back that tide. I didn't see these cops armed with tear gas or other crowd control tools, but those aren't a panacea either - rubber bullets can kill too.
So, admitting that a stand at King Street could have worked, it would have been awfully risky. Large institutions discourage legendary charges of their light brigade, in favour of calm responses where control can triumph over raw melee.
We'll revisit the instiutional response below, but first, consider how one woman uses her megaphone/speaker late in the video to challenge the police for setting bait by leaving those police cars there for the protesters.
Well you know what? They sacrificed a $75,000 cruiser - so I'm told is the price - to save the TD Centre seen on the "far lower left"/south western side of of the intersection from being overrun, which incidentally serves to hold back the marchers.
If you agree with my extreme scenario, they in fact sacrificed that one vehicle to save not only the lives of the officers, but also those of the protesters.
Fair trade.
Consider the scenario where the police jumped back in their cars and drove south. Either the security fence would have been attacked, or the surrounding buildings - including the TD bank branch near the corner. It's that black pavillion, with floor-to-second-floor glass. If someone was stupid enough to try and break that glass they'd risk killing themselves in the process. Perhaps the giant nature of the glass saved anyone foolish enough to attack it, but I digress.
Tactically, the violent protesters "screwed up royal" by halting at the alluring cars. They took their eyes "off the true prize", which was forcing a battle at the security fence itself, something a mob of that size could have easily managed, had they reached it in advance of the police phalanx. You know it was the true goal: the G20 "People's Summit" posters in fact
This video then, I believe, is one piece of footage showing the closest that protesters got to the fence - they were a half-block away from its northeastern edge.
No doubt many citizens suffered repercussions the following day, as the police overreacted after their initial embarrassments on Saturday.
Or did they?
Let's talk about the "institutional" factor - these cops aren't autonomous. They respond to orders: to learn more, consider this very interesting CBC news video interview with the RCMP Chief Superintendent who coordinated the G20 security operations from an operations base in a warehouse 100km north of Toronto - roughly halfway between the G8 and G20 sites.
Aside from presenting the security forces' side of the story - declaring a few broken windows and destroyed cars a success - he also mentions - wait for it - that it's too soon for "lessons learned" to take place.
Although I cheerfully rushed into my little analysis - the major media are still arguing over what took place - I will grant that the police didn't fail in their "defence of the fence." Determining whether their success in defending the perimeter and much of the other property in the vicinity of the fence was a matter of good planning, a smart response by the forces on the ground, or simply a serendipitously big stroke of luck is probably what will take more time and analysis to uncover. You would, of course, need to know what was being said in that command centre. They were no doubt keeping an eye on that situation. If they were using one of their 70+ security cameras to note the local team's precarious situation and ordered a retreat, then that was a clever move.
They'll know the answers - perhaps a full inquiry will allow some of the truth to be shared with the public as well.
In the run-up to the G20, some police stood guard on Spadina, under the Gardiner Expressway.
A sad day for Toronto, and a sad day for Canada.
The crowd sings O Canada, and as best as you can casually tell, gets viciously attacked for possibly ignoring a challenge to move back, instead sitting down in the face of what soon turned into a full-on assault charge by the riot line.
Video of the peaceful G20 protest at Queen & Spadina is by Meghann Millard on Vimeo.
Seriously, what is up with this?
Very good eye-witness commentary here - just go read it here.
One of my favourite quotes, which drags the blog barely back "on topic":
Nobody near the police line was chanting. There was only one sign I
saw, and I couldn't make sense of it. I honestly think it might have
been offering accounting services. Periodically someone would yell,
"This is a peaceful protest." Often someone would answer back, "Who's
protesting?" Everybody was just staring, as though wondering if there
was anything more to the G20.
Absolutely nothing was
happening. What we were seeing was riot tourists. People had just come
by to gawk, an excercise in people-watching typical of a Sunday
afternoon on Queen Street West. A strange Kevlar twist on the typical
weekend fashion parade.
I would like to know more about those accounting services.
There's a rather hefty list of violations of Canadian human rights which got trampled on this weekend.
Go and read this entire article by the staff of the Torontoist. It's an excellent summary of The Friday June 25 G20 protest shenanigans, along with a well thought-out commentary on the nature of protesting global summits. Well worth a read.
Photo below is from their site - check out the entire article, including this moving paragraph about friends of a deaf man detained earlier in the day, as depicted below:
"When we left at about 11:30 Friday night the protesters were still
there, still chanting (although they'd switched to ASL to save their
voices) and occasionally chatting good-naturedly with the cops, who
couldn't help but be impressed. It spoke well of them all. If you were
imprisoned, wouldn't you want your friends to fight to the utmost limit
on your behalf? That's what these protesters did. As of right now,
that's what they're still doing. They're not going to give up any time
soon."
The most hardcore protesters of the day, June 22: courtesy Toronto Police Service's "LGBT protest on Queen St. W. without incident" album. Photo credit: Kevin Masterman Writer/Photographer for Toronto Police
Security guards have a cushy job guarding the lobbies of the big fancy downtown office towers during G20 week.
They of course have a solemn duty to make sure anyone getting in the building has a proper security card. I do believe the two gentleman guarding our lobby almost glanced at the card clipped to my belt as I wandered in out of the rain yesterday.
If they asked, I would have of course good-naturedly held up my pass for closer inspection.
"Yes, it is in fact I, Super Auditor."
Or whatever.
This is of course unnecessary: since I am able to dress the part of Super Auditor, Defender of Capitalism, or whatever you want to call the productive inhabitants of the downtown core, the hard plastic card I carry with me is almost entirely superfluous - except for the fact I need it to open locked doors, but that's another story.
The "dirty hippie" protestors and their anarcho-syndicalist revolutionaries are nary a threat. Yes, they lack my snazzy plastic access cards. Forget about stealing police uniforms - they lack the buttoned up shirts and dress shoes needed to truly pose a threat. That, and they whine like petulant children when they neglect to safeguard their flagpoles, which are then promptly "yoinked" by Toronto Police (see the fantastic video below).
I suppose it doesn't help that it's raining outside - quite the disincentive to join a large march. Unless you are smart and prepared, like the group above, that equipped itself with some dazzling pink ponchos.
On a more practical level, these groups don't show any interest in overrunning AuditLand - step one would be to dress the part. I won't reveal anything beyond "step one", of course - that's what consultants charge the big bucks for, isn't it?
They don't even make it as far as step one, which is why anyone in business casual attire is immediately not held up as a suspect. The security team, as a result, is significantly less edgy than they otherwise would be. Which I suppose makes for a much more pleasant work environment. Thanks for that.
I have to salute those who did make the grey, rainy & otherwise dreary Tuesday a bit more colourful, though: good show on Queen Street!
No negative incidents at all as Toronto Police indicate - at least on the part of the protesters. There was, that aforementioned "yoink" to the flagpoles, as well as the story of the crazy lady who apparently tried to ram her way through a protest with her car. The second picture is courtesy of Now Magazine. The driver then apparently complained to the police about, whatever zany complaint you can come up with after trying to do something absolutely mad
I'll assume she blamed society - seems like the thing to do.
Bonus: video from the most hardcore protest of Monday, courtesy of Now Magazine's Paul Terefenko:
Edit: the Toronto Star has a tongue-in-cheek/serious article on the same topic that just came out.
"G20 fashions for the militant and fabulous
Wear the wrong thing, get tear gassed
Dressing for G20 protests is tricky. Look too corporate and you
might be paintbombed. Dress like a militant protester, you run the risk
of being tear gassed.
But have a stylist help you, you look fabulous.
“If
you’re leading (these protests) and you know pictures are being taken
of you, why not look good?” said Kathryn McEwen, the general manager of
Queen St. W. boutique Fashion Crimes"
It's scary when a serious newspaper's article can easily be mixed up with something from the Onion.
I could probably come up with an extensive series of articles on how, although multi-tasking is awesome, there are so many glorious ways to fail at it.
Or one long article with many examples. I'll settle for shooting off one quick example instead.
Consider a busy day, where your computer is chugging because of some new security patch getting automatically downloaded. You go to open one window in your database program. It takes some time. So you're sitting there, waiting for it to finish loading. Getting impatient and thinking, "I'll just work on this other file in the meantime."
Half an hour later that other file might be done. And maybe you've taken some phone calls. Perhaps gotten a fresh coffee. Checked out the silly headlines.
Oh look, not enough Obama in town. What will Chicago ever do? And the Flavia sourced coffee is rancid as ever.
You're back at your computer, the window has loaded in the database program.
You have no idea why it's open, so you close it.
Then it hits you, there was a query you had to run.
It took 5 minutes for the window to open, but half an hour has passed.
And it's closed now.
So you re-open it. Again, a delay. The cycle begins anew.
Failure of multitasking.
Remember last year's garbage strike? It's a distant, smelly memory. Here's a great little round-up discussing the stink, or lack thereof, at the collective public dumping grounds.
There's always an alternative to the city union's approach, though it's not always necessarily better for the environment.
I think the city union is kicking itself.
They could've gone to work for a year without a contract, and then dropped the hammer right before the G20.
Instead, they went on strike during one of the mildest summers in recent memory, and had to make a few minor concessions.
Actually they made out rather well - one can only imagine how much more of a killing they could've made if they threatened to strike before a global summit though.
Perhaps they were smart though - and realized that the RCMP would come and tazer them all back to work, so it's for the best.
Besides, with a billion dollars sloshing about, I'm sure that anyone remotely involved with the event is getting handsomely remunerated.
BBM station domination campaign at the TTC's Yonge-Bloor subway station
Having alluded to Eurocents, I managed to trip over an interesting little article that came out two years ago and yet is still oddly relevant: a scientists decided to poke the cell phone industry with a sharp pointy stick and calculate the price per megabyte for transmitting a text message.
He then compared that to the cost of transmitting data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Verdict?
“The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140
bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging
system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There
are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that's 1 million/140 = 7490 text
messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that's £374.49 per MB -
or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate
for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.”
Transmission from space only costs about £8.85 - the scientist used a worst-case scenario to estimate that perhaps it costs 10 times as much to move the data from the space-to-ground station to a research lab. In reality those costs are probably lower. So we have math showing that the cell phone industry in Canada prices messages outside "unlimited" plans at frankly ridiculous rates.
No only is it good to see new entrants trumpeting their "all inclusive" plans, but it makes perfect sense for RIM to be embarking on a rather clever campaign to promote their BBM service as a selling feature for the Blackberry.
If you don't have unlimited text messaging, BBM is a fantastic substitute - plus you can send files through BBM as well, something a regular text message can't exactly handle.
Not to mention that all the cool Audit Kids are using it: that was no doubt the runner-up idea as a killer marketing campaign.
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