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Before getting into some commentary that won't appeal to most readers, I'll start by doing a super Q&A right now for those of you starting on your summer internships: I invite you to send me more questions about either getting into the CA program, what it's like when you're already there, or any other random questions you have. There's a handy "e-mail me" link here or you can send mail to my gmail account. It's "acsblog". What should I expect to be paid during my internship? If you're doing an internship for a newspaper or other publications, quite possibly zero. But you probably knew that already. If you're working for a CA firm, on the other hand, your average paycheque will be close to if not very similar to that of newly hired "full-time" staff. I am not just writing that to rub salt in the wounds of my friends studying English. But I am aware that this is a side effect of stating those facts. What should I expect during...
It's been quiet on my end lately because I've been splitting my time between being busy with work, life, and studying for my exam next weekend. Unlike with UFE prep, I've been basically burrowing into a single book and then doing practice questions. This is just a multiple choice exam so sharing my brilliant insights seems like a less-than-effective way of learning at the moment. Doing old questions and figuring out the logic behind right and wrong answers is the way to go here. Once in a while there are interesting little tidbits I'd like to share, but the amount of time it would take to discuss them does not in any way correspond to the value associated with sitting down to write about them, so I'll do it for just one to prove my point, then I'll dive back into my book. I really wanted to say books, but there's really only just one book. When tracking security logs, the exam manual suggests using programs which search for patterns. A user who typically logs...
A week after they sent me the e-mail making it official, my certificate finally showed up at the office, proudly proclaiming to the world that I'm a CA. Whee! The other 1157 pieces of 'mail' where spams that hit me - roughly as much as last month . Although the ICAO should probably be ashamed of itself for actually INCLUDING some old fashioned junk mail with the certificate - an offer for insurance with TD Meloche Monex. How. Incredibly. Tacky. Whoever thought of that idea should be stripped of their CA, if they have one, for bringing disrepute upon the profession. We have a bylaw along those lines which mandates for an expulsion or a flogging of some sort. I say we enforce the rules, even if the offender does work for the Institute. Scratch that. Especially. I exaggerate a bit - they're quite nice and friendly people at the ICAO. Their procedures could use some efficiency improvements, though. You see, I noticed that although my e-mail arrived last Friday, but it was the...
This was a disappointing April Fools, I must say. No one used the window washer's cart to leave rude messages on the anyone's windows and we didn't really do much in the office either, owing to most of my friends in the office being on vacation or at client sites - and even I was busy finishing up a few last minute tasks before running off on vacation next week. So it'll be a slow month for posts around here too, as I'm not taking a computer on vacation either. While I'm still around, though, I'll share a few tidbits. Today, a link to Francine's own link to the FT April Fool's gag. What is the punchline? Change audit reports to just have the following line, to state "clean" audit opinions with a minimum of disclaimers: " These accounts are about right unless management have deliberately conspired to falsify them." Brilliant satire. Oh, and I had about 1200 pieces of spam hit my inbox last month, unless Google was hiding some from...
Wow, I'm rather impressed, shocked, and maybe even a little confused. Spam fell down to 965 in February. With a grand total of 29 days, that's almost a full month, but it's less than a third of the 3097 from last month . Zach noted a drastic fall back then too. Interesting. I'm obviously pleased that some kind of crack down has decreased the amount of spam clogging up my little corner of the internet. Let's hope this happy state of affairs persists. I just realized that every happy thought needs a dark cloud - it's time to reset all the non-leap-year compatible time pieces. I can live with that, but it'll be annoying when I mix up a date two weeks from now because I forgot to change a date on a fax machine somewhere.
Wow, the federal government is doing a budget "consultation" (which is "not a poll", they say). Interesting . Thanks to Nancy Z for the link. It's a 1-7 scale. I assume 1 means top priority. Interestingly the government insists on knowing your income level when you complete the survey. No, "I prefer not to say" option. I guess they think we can trust them - or else we'll lie and make up a fake answer?
3097 pieces of spam - it's a lot, and I think it's a new record. I'm on the road and don't have much spare time to discuss it though, so I'll just leave this statistic up and move on.
It's a new record, 2690 pieces of junk mail beat the previous record of 2541 set in August . Interestingly, before then, December 2005 was the record holder. Interpreting spam as a desperate attempt to make money in time for the Christmas holidays. That's an idea. Then what explains the increased activity in August? More kids trying out scams while bored in the summer before going back to school? Perhaps.
The 2481 that landed in my gmailbox this month are just slightly lower than the 2492 in October . Had November been a 31 day month, the total could've been equal or higher. So nothing exciting to report today.
Wow. Last month I had the lowest post-count since May , and I was on vacation during most of that entire month - three of the five posts were actually written when I came home. The reason for the huge drop in activity here was because I’m in the midst of my busiest ‘busy season’ to date. I liken busy season to “harvest season” to people unfamiliar with accounting firms. It’s an especially apt analogy for my purposes since it coincides with the Western/Northern world’s harvest season. Moving back to another item that is only loosely connected to food, spam, I thought that I hit a new record number of spams, only to realize that there were about two hundred left over from September. The 2492 fall short of August’s unbeaten record, of 2541 , but it’s still back up from last month’s dip down to 2166 . One of the new scams is the fake job offer, using real companies in an attempt to pull in suckers. It’ll be interesting to see how much identity theft occurs because of that lame new trick, a...
September was all about quantity, not quantity in terms of my writings. Just a few articles, but most illustrated with photos - some of which were even loosely related to the topic being discussed. These few posts definitely took more time to write, but the real factor behind the decline in posting frequency is directly related to the fact that I've been busy as heck. I did some math and found that in the fiscal year to date I've racked up more than 10% of the overtime in my group. Yes, we also deal with detailed statistics at work - are you surprised? It's a CA firm! Accountants love statistics. My group is comprised of a dozen and a half people, so I'm definitely 'above target.' I'm not complaining though, because my first years I got lucky, and was working on jobs with relatively easy hours, so I can take a few hits in the short term. Besides, my overtime for the past three months is equal to the amount of overtime one of my banker friends pull in 3 or 4...
It's a new record - beating previous record holder December and June easily, last month saw the arrival of 2541 pieces of junk. July was 400 pieces of trash lower, making me wonder what phenomenon led to the spike in spam traffic? I noticed that there was a big influx in phishing attacks, as well as new types of spam messages that evaded Google's vaunted spam filters almost 4 or 5 times. This is about 1000 times better than how Yahoo handles spam, but disconcerting nonetheless. Could it be that spammers found new techniques which encouraged them to attack more? Seems like it. I wonder what kind of person thinks that this will be a Good Idea? A Homer Simpson-esque character, no doubt - or perhaps someone like Larry from Perfect Strangers .
There were 2177 spams landing in my e-mailbox last month . 15 more than last month. And recently a half dozen trickled past the spam filters. How disconcerting. A bit interesting to see the increasing creativity of the spammers. As interesting as a new insect invading your house, though.
2177 pieces of junk hit my spam filter this month. Well, two or three got through, but they're included in the final total count. December 2006 maintains its record of 2436 pieces of junk, but this is the highest total since then - which you can clearly see from a quick glance at the Statistics tag page . Briefly reviewing the spam, there's a trend to see more attachments last month. Given the relatively high number of spam messages I see, it's probably statistically valid to infer that this probably applies to a rather broad swath of the internet. One thing I haven't been tracking since I stopped using Eudora on a daily basis in favour of Gmail, is the number of non-spam e-mails I've been getting. It would be a bit time consuming, but I could dig up the number, and then compare the "signal to noise" ratio. It would be interesting to see what percentage of my mail is legit. So interesting, in fact, that I went ahead and checked. My first number, unfortunately...
They, meaning the board of evaluators, assign a range of 10 to 20% for four topics you're tested on in the UFE. And the range is 20- to 30% for the two big ones (assurance and performance management - hardcore auditing and accounting basically). Well, in 2006 the "heavies" only got 21% weighting each, while IT was up to 16%, as was Finance. Two areas I seemed to do rather well in last year for some odd reason - what an excellent coincidence. Of course, I must've still done okay across the board - the exam is structured so that if you don't essentially 'pass' each of the six topics, you fail the entire exam and have to do it all over. I don't think the stats are generally available, but I'm guessing it's probably more common to see people dropping due to several unsuccessful topics. I can only imagine how troubling it has to be for someone who almost made it, but tripped up on one of the smallest areas.
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