Thursday

Throwing up a few lines here in the last hour or two of the continuing education conference in C-town. I plan to get out of here a little early to get in line for the rush hour traffic around O'Hare. These programs continue to test my sanity.

CPE programs like this have embraced the technology revolution. They did snail-mail me my attendance badge, but everything after that is electronic. You scan your badge to register your presence...but only once a day...why not for each session? Your session attendance gets formally credited when you go online to give your session evaluation.

The presenter outlines are all electronic. Really, the amount of paper used on-site for these seminars has become a single-digit fraction of what was handed out say, 10 or more years ago. Save the trees.

I'm surprised that the price of the conference includes no lunch or break munchibles. No free coffee. Usually, program sponsors make an effort to provide these types of things to encourage return visits to the next year's seminar. I'm guessing that it's a budget thing for this one, but I'd rather pay a little more and have some options. Whatever.

My hotel accommodations a couple miles from the conference center closely approach the "it's a dump" category. Old. Located about 10 feet from the busy 294 Tri-state Tollway. Loud. Half the channels on the tube. My employer needs to upgrade the travel budget.

State CPA societies have become societal leaders in pulling the equal rights bandwagon. Both the Iowa and Illinois groups' monthly journals go to considerable lengths to emphasize and recount current examples of their commitment to inclusiveness. The two first keynote speakers here were preaching from the PC bible.

The thing that occurred to me as I was listening to the PC news was that all around me were mostly OWG's. I'd say that the attendees here are 85% male, 15% female. There might be a total of 10% non-whites in the group. Professionally speaking, there's gotta be opportunity in them thar hills; I mean, these OWG's are going to be retiring sooner rather than later.

***************
Now later...home on Maplecrest. Another relatively painless, but sufficiently traffic-y, drive home to remind me that Chicago's expressways are not for the faint of heart. And that is disregarding the miles of construction in central Illinois.

Hats off (not mine 😀) to 3 who is chasing bid'ness in the City of Angels. You are DAUGHTER OF THE DAY !



I did get most of the Wednesday and Thursday puzzles done, including the patternless ones, during the sessions. Wednesday's were too easy. But today's NYT trick puzzle was a bit of a challenge. Getting "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" into a normal puzzle's format was a bit creative by Will (or whomever chose to claim authorship).

Now bed for me. Hope it is a Good Friday in your neighborhood.
BCOT