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Just when you thought Air Canada couldn't get any cheaper, or callous: sweet merciful crap. That link takes you to a CNN story this site picked up, explaining that Air Canada's regional operator, Jazz, has decided to save 25 kilograms of weight from each flight by getting rid of the life vests. The rules state that as long as your plane is flying within 50 miles of land, it's okay to do this - you can use the seat cushion as a flotation device instead. So as long as I can swim 50 miles I'll be okay? Oh sweet mother - I think I have to sign up for some advanced swimming lessons before going to my next client, which happens to be on the coast. Let's pray and hope - and assume for argument's sake - that in the unlikely event a plane needs to make an emergency landing it doesn't crash and crumple and otherwise disintegrate catastrophically. If you were to look for a place to land and there were no roads in the area, what would be a better touch-down pad? A bunch...
I try to help people, they turn me down. That's about par for the course, I should say - auditors are used to not getting much respect. With the exception that other auditors usually listen to what we have to say. If I offer help to someone, they're usually happy to get it. My UFE mentees are a prime example. They listen carefully to my suggestions, and pass their exams. It's a strong symbiotic relationship - I'm happy to share knowledge. With that in mind, imagine my surprise when, while stationed a day's drive north of the city, I checked my mail in the morning to find an unusual e-mail from another writer. What I received was a polite e-mail from PriceWaterhouseCoopers explaining why my commentary isn't welcome at Nisha's PwC blog , part of the new "PwC Connect" recruiting site that's gradually rolling out. That they don't want to permit my voice to be heard at their site doesn't concern me too greatly as I have - oh, my own little soapbox...
Every time I see someone write about how they have "so much paid time off" to take, and no time to take it , I can't help but shake my head. Shortly after coming back from vacation last April I already started plotting my next bit of time off. It'll be in December, when I use up the remainder of this year's vacation time. Thanks to some careful planning I still have over a week off, and the Christmas holidays mean I get to enjoy almost a full two weeks off, which is simply awesome. Plotting time off, as well as fancy dinners. This all of course reminds me of a friend who scoffed in response to all this gleeful talk of vacation planning - "your entire life is a vacation." Hey, if you can pull that off, more power to you, I say. Even a child can realize that the world we live in asks that people work far too much considering the abundance of resources on the planet and the number of able bodied people able to help harvest the fruits of our collective labour...
I'm not really in the mood to argue. I mean, I've had some excellent food lately, which should really put anyone in a good mood. But I'm still shocked and appalled. And I really should've replied to the news that photography is banned from the station with a chilly, "what for?" You see, according to the best guess of the Montreal train station's security, I apparently must look like a terrorist. Wow, they should've seen me when I was all scruffy and bearded in university. One of my friends from back then thought I was a History, rather than a Commerce student, for that simple fact. This is the second time in two months that I've been witness to an instruction from security to stop taking photos in a government-owned facility. And it's so stupid I wish I got drop the hammer on someone the way America's Henry Waxman does two and a half minutes into this video . Waxman is understandably annoyed with the stonewalling he gets from the EPA about...
This is funny if you know a few basics about quantum physics, simply because of the instant joke that stems from it: Quantum Cryptography Broken, and Fixed . The joke is in the comments to the article - " It was actually broken AND fixed at the SAME TIME! " It's an easy one - an earlier series of comments is even better: > Quantum stuff is so illogical to us mortals that you'd expect attempting to break it would just make it stronger. Which is precisely what happened. It continues along these lines, becoming progressively more incomprehensible to people who aren't interested in this sort of thing. Which of course is a sign that I should probably get back to studying for my exam. Ironically, however, reading articles like these at /. (slogan: New for nerds, stuff that matters) is technically a form of studying if you focus on security issues and ignore the non-essential nerd stuff, like HP's deal to buy EDS which is important for many reasons - perhaps you own...
Unfortunately you won't learn how to pass most exams with this knowledge, but applying the rules or tips in Dave Pollard's "When not to use e-mail" posting will make you a much better communicator. This list applies to all people, but there are specific insights for auditors. Especially when you're starting out, and you find yourself thinking, "this is great, I can just e-mail everything and wait for answers to come back." Although it can, funnily enough, often work in spite of Pollard's list, it's important to know how this can and will fail. Above: there are media other than e-mail which you can use for communication, more successfully too Remember, that time is precious, and e-mail can unfortunately waste it. Consider these two 'rules'. 3. When you are seeking information that is not simple and straight-forward 4. When you're sending a few people complicated instructions The rules are tightly linked - the more confusing something gets...
And what is that wonderful creation courtesy of Dell, you ask? A laptop you desperately need for the winter. One that generates massive amounts of heat. Well, it's nothing that's especially unique to Dell, but you will never appreciate a scorching hot laptop more than when you've boarded a streetcar after spending any time being buffetted by December winds in downtown Toronto. It's a sweet relief to feel the Dual Core processors churn so hard that the computers fans are forced to work overtime shunting the warmth onto your legs. Especially true when some bloated walrus of a TTC patron decides to leave a window open. Gah.
One of the new things about tracking blogs through Google Reader is that you notice when people have made a posting that they subsequently delete. For example, there are two entries on Greg Mankiw's blog. And they have both since been deleted. The first link is to an article entitled "Mission Accomplished." The second link is to an article entitled "Making Milton Proud." Google Reader preserved not only the headlines, but the content of those articles too. First article: Mission Accomplished from Greg Mankiw's Blog by Greg Mankiw A reader emails me: After nearly two years as your reader, you've pretty much singlehandedly made me a fiscal libertarian out of a former democratic socialist. Second article: Making Milton Proud from Greg Mankiw's Blog by Greg Mankiw From an email this morning: After nearly two years as your reader, you've pretty much singlehandedly made me a fiscal libertarian out of a former democratic socialist. Wow, I did not just see...
When you get your first digital SLR camera , two things happen: You end up taking more photos, because the camera is so much faster. Each individual photos is generally also larger, because a typical dSLR will be higher rez (more megapixels) than a plain compact digital camera. I've been busy lately, which has cut back on the amount of time I have to delete the "b-class" photos or to just burn extra photos onto DVDs, 'just in case' I decide I want to keep more of them. If I shoot my entire memory card full, that's another 2 GB tossed into the hard drive. At this rate, I'm going to run out of room before the end of 2008, assuming I don't increase the frequency of my photo sprees. The nice thing, at least, is that I've been given my own personal photo storage folder on the network at work for the pictures I take that are work-related. I should really do some quick math to compare the number of photos I take just 'for myself' versus the amount...
I saw a stream of fresh-faced kids wandering through the office today. They were too young to be summer interns - to highlight that fact, one of my intern friends was actually leading the group along with a manager - I knew what it was, because I was one of them not too long ago. It was a bunch of university students taking summer tours of accounting firms. I only went on two tours in university. Ironically, my firm was one of those two. I never thought I would end up working here at the time - in fact, I didn't even know that my department existed back then. You learn a lot in university. And even more after graduating, really. Anyway, I was bemused to see that group wandering through our offices. They were even younger than I would have been, since I'm a product of Ontario's 5-year high school system, which ended shortly after I graduated. All these kids had 4-year high school programs, so they looked even younger than hardened 20-something veterans like myself. Oh, and don't...