Friday

A little bit of history...

This used to be the time of year when nerd-ish gluttons-for-punishment would gather at select locations throughout the USA for two and a half days of rigor called the Uniform CPA Examination.  The exam was given just twice a year; early May and early November.  The "pass" rate was not real high, and most people required a systematically presented (months-long too!) review course to adequately prepare for the test.

I took my test in the expansive lower-level of McCormick Place in Chicago in November of 1977, along with several hundred of my closest friends (and my pet rock, Knute.).  I had spent the prior five months attending one of the leading review courses, Becker CPA Review.  The review was structured as a classroom event, three times a week June - September, and a fourth day in October.  Living in C-town at the time, I had the advantage(?) of attending at a location in The Loop or a suburban site in Des Plaines.  I didn't miss many (if any) of the classes as I was very concerned about my ability to successfully pass the examination.

The one benefit of the dreaded train-ride for that period of time in 1977 was that I used my commute to study for the test.  I know that by late Summer I was using old tests and doing practice exams for the multiple-guess elements in 10-20 question segments.  I was always gauging my progress on a minimum 80% correct-answer-rate, as passing the actual exam was at the 70% level.

In the end, I did pass on the first try with a combined score in the low 70's.  (I can't remember the exact percentage.)  Gallows humor at the time was that any score above 70% simply meant that you over-studied.  I've always said that if I could pass the CPA exam, any reasonably intelligent accounting student who applied himself/herself should be able to get through the test.  Since I was not an accounting major in under-grad school, and my MBA accounting electives were not all-inclusive, there was enough on the actual test that my exposure to was only through the review course.  The Becker course and my basic test-taking skills got'er done.

In the new world, times have change in qualifying for and taking the exam.  (It is a national administered test, but the certificate-to-practice is issued by the state(s) where you operate.)  Most state governing bodies for CPA certification have changed the minimum education requirements to 150 hours of college credit (which loosely translates to a fifth year in most cases).  And the exam is now done on a computerized basis at one of the many commercial testing locations throughout the country.  Further, they have gone away from having just the two testing dates in the year and a person can select from a series of time frames.  From what I can gather, the testing topics have been updated slightly, and perhaps the biggest change, a candidate can now take just one of the four (or five?) sections at each sitting.  (Does having to prep for a single topic make it easier?  I would hope so.  But I place that difference right up there with the five miles of snow-covered roads that I had to walk through as a lad just to get to civilization!)

The Old School testing required lots of memorization, not only of formulae, but also of facts, tax rules and a variety of chart-ish protocols in accounting and business law.  Today, all of these things are immediately available with an Internet search, so why make the contemporary student memorize trivia?  There was a time when I could cite Book, Bible and Verse of obscure tax code.  Not only is much of what I once knew off the top of my head no longer applicable under current statute, my iPad can get me a verifiable answer almost as quickly as I can run it through my internal data-processor.  Its a New World, baby!

Did that little thing go on too long?  Sorry.

The new Bond movie apparently opens today, amid generally favorable reviews.  If we were to have a fam movie on December 24th this year, this would be my choice.  Daniel Craig is at least third in line in my preferences among the actors who have played the title role.  Like many of my age, Sean Connery will always be the "real" James Bond...but I liked Pierce Brosnan as well (although not as well as Connery).

Bond movies always created (or embellished) the fame of the actress(es) who played the femme fatale(s) of each flick.  One of my fav's was from one of the original films that kind of set the stage for future renditions, From Russia, with Love.  Daniela Bianchi.  I don't know if this gal ever did any other significant movies, but she was a hit in my book.  (The Bad Guy (the field operative, not the boss) in this movie spent a ton of time on screen, and almost never spoke.  Kinda Terminator-esque.)

Some math now.  From Russia, with Love was released in 1963 when Ms. Bianchi would have been 21 years old.  Sean Connery was then 33 years old.  Fast-forward 36 years to 1999 when a still-active Connery starred in the fluff-but-entertaining movie Entrapment with the very attractive Catherine Zeta-Jones (who was born in 1969).  How many guys without a sheikdom have that record? 

Thanks for reading.  Have a good weekend.

BCOT