Friday

(Home Page pic changed just for today.  Tomah will be back up tomorrow with a continuation of the story about EJ McKay and Maddie O'Rourke.)

Putting up a little entry this morning to recognize the start of the weekend.  We could be 40 degrees or more today, with some welcome sunshine.  When I took 2 and her friend Jessi to the airport around 0545 this AM, there was actually daylight.  With Spring officially only two weeks away, I guess we should be expecting a general improvement in our weather conditions.  Glad to see it.

Looks like the securities markets are going to get a bump today.  The employment report was better than expected.  Still lots of doubts among the prognosticators on just how solid the economy is for the average consumer.  But its hard to fight a rising tide.

I have The Winniferous for the weekend.  With @srh4 also on the road doing Grandma Rescue work on Harvest Path, I don't even have the luxury of a pinch-hitter for the mid-morning "let her out" break.  At least it won't be so cold that we can't get outside for some walks.

The governing organization for one of my professional designations that I have held for over 25 years (Certified Employee Benefit Specialist) has finally decided to implement a continuing education policy.  This is probably overdue, but it creates another small administrative requirement to to keep straight in our office files.  There are so many designations out there, and they all compete with one another to sign up professionals who work the retirement plan/employee benefits/securities/insurance/financial planning markets.

The CEBS designation required 10 proctored, two-hour examinations over the course of a couple of years when I completed the program in the mid-80's.  It was really a pretty difficult path to get through the courses and prepare for the tests.  I wanted a designation that I could use to promote my new business, and I was the only guy with that designation in the Quad City area for many years.  Ultimately, I don't think it did much for business-development, but I have continued to use the designation as one of my professional credentials.  Now I have to make sure I have 30 hours of CPE every two years to keep it current.  And shockingly, there will be new fees associated with the CPE program.  I love this country.

We have had a small (I think) anomaly in our accounting firm's electronic tax filing system.  We received notice earlier this week that there's been some kind of compromise in the use of our firm's unique registration number.  Which means that we have to purge the system for a couple of days to get all of our existing transmissions out of the pipe-line, and then be assigned a new electronic-filing-firm number.  We've been doing these returns for 7-8 years, and they have a ripple in the system now?  More Nigerian hackers?

I think that it has to be racist to call the schools behind the new Big East basketball conference "The Catholic 7".  Where's the outrage in the main stream press?  Oh, I forgot.  They're Catholic schools.  You can call them anything and get away with it.  I mean they follow that Dark Ages outfit in Rome that doesn't support the right (Left?) causes, right?

How disingenuous is the White House to cancel the routine tours of the place under the sequestration premise when it takes a mental midget to find millions of dollars still being spent by official Washington on their normal bureaucratic largesse?  I remain in favor of sending the whole lot of those now in the House, Senate and White House to retirement in the private sector.  (I was going to say retirement from public service, but that would suggest a distinction that is extremely debatable.)

So make it a Good Friday.  Good luck to all those on the road.  Safe and successful travels.

BCOT