Nov 20, 10:51 PM by Kimberly | Four Down ? to go...

Posted in Work | Comments [7]

I took the fourth section of the CPA exam today. This section was the hardest for me. It covered business law and individual income taxes. I was looking at the study material, and I saw ‘perfecting a security interest’. Huh? I knew my chances of passing were slim after that. After some studying over the last few days, it’s possible I knew just enough to pass. I’m not going to hold my breath though. But I’m also not going to study more until I get my scores next month. :p

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Nov 13, 06:05 PM by Kimberly | Three Down, One to Go

Posted in Work

I took the third of the four CPA test sections today – Financial Accounting and Reporting. I would not be terribly upset if I need to take this section again, as it includes governmental and non-profit accounting, two topics I have never studied. These and other topics on the test are included in the ‘Advanced Accounting’ class at UCSB Extension, which I didn’t take. I took seven of the nine classes in the series offered at UCSB Extension. I would have taken all nine, except that for Spring Quarter this year, neither of the two I hadn’t taken were offered, so I opted to take online classes at UCLA Extension to complete the 36 units requirement (Forensic Accounting & Financial Reporting & Analysis). If I had waited to take the series classes through UCSB, I wouldn’t have been able to take the CPA test until next April.

The other class I didn’t take was Individual Income Taxes. And the last test is… Taxes (Regulation). Unfortunately, we can’t use Turbo Tax for the test, so I’ll have to fit a whole class in over this weekend. Fun.

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Nov 6, 06:16 PM by Kimberly | Two Down, Two to Go

Posted in Work | Comments [1]

Another CPA Exam section completed. This one was significantly longer, at four and a half hours. I’m not nearly as confident in my success on this section, Auditing. I couldn’t do nearly as much studying as I would have liked. (How about just 5 hours total since my Auditing class 6 months ago!?) I’ve never done a financial statement audit, so I’m at a distinct disadvantage against those test takers that work at a CPA firm and have gone out on audits. I understand all the concepts, but it’s not the same thing as hands on experience. I wouldn’t be suprised if I need to take this section again, but I hope against hope that I passed. I really wish I had scheduled this test more than 2 days after my last one, but I put in a lot more overtime last week than I thought I would need to, and didn’t even start studying until after the half marathon on Saturday. I tried to reschedule to later this month, but they were booked solid. Oops. Next up, Financial Accounting and Reporting. I’ll have a whole week to study for this one, so I hope to do much better.

I can’t believe that some people spend hours each night studying for MONTHS! For just one of the four sections! I was sooo worried about how hard the test was going to be. But after taking two test, I have the feeling that if I put in maybe...

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Nov 5, 12:59 AM by Kimberly | One Down, Three to Go

Posted in Work

I took my first of the four sections of the CPA Exam on Tuesday, Business Environment & Concepts (managerial accounting & economics). I think it went well, but I have no idea what percentage I need to pass. On Thursday, I take the next section, Auditing. I expect that one to be harder. Next week it’s Financial Accounting & Reporting, harder still, and what I expect to be the toughest, Regulation (includes taxes, which I haven’t studied much).

I’m going insane with all the studying- I feel like I’m back in college. I would love to pass all four sections this month, but I’m not expecting that. (Low pass rate & all that.) But I hope I pass at least one! I hate having to wait until December to find out. But until then, I have the possibility of passing it all and not having to go through this again to keep the studying up. (And it would be quite a coup if I passed it all on the first try, given my previous level of dedication to my studies).

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Dec 17, 12:58 PM by Steve | Tecolote Holiday Party Pictures

Posted in Pictures & Work

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Dec 12, 11:34 PM by Steve | Release Notes

Posted in Work

We finally got the latest release of our project out the door today. The release was approved at noon yesterday and we got 65 CDs out of 300 burned, packed up, and shipped for distribution to customers. Today we finished burning the remaining CDs and I celebrated by taking the rest of the day off and climbing all afternoon. Tomorrow I’m taking the morning off and doing the Thursday morning ROCO ride. Thanks to the team for all their hard work.

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May 8, 11:13 PM by Kimberly | Day 2

Posted in Work

Well, it’s day 2 of my business trip.

I was going to go ride after work, but Dan, who is training me, invited me to go along to his yoga class. So I tried Birkram yoga today. I never thought I would be glad to be outside in the desert! I think the studio is kept at about 98 degrees. It keeps your muscles warm and allows you to be more flexible, but I was sweating buckets! I liked the yoga class, but I don’t want to go to a special yoga studio when I have yoga free at my gym.

I plan on going on a long ride tomorrow. I’ll have at least 2 hours of daylight after work, so that should be enough to do a 30 mile loop the bike rental shop suggested. I didn’t think of bringing my GUs or Nuun, so I bought some electrolyte powder from a store called ‘Sprouts’, which is kind of like Lassen’s or Lazy Acres. I’ll see how that works.

I’ll try to take pictures tomorrow. It is hard to remember to do, because usually Steve takes enough pictures for the both of us!

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May 7, 11:19 PM by Kimberly | Day 1

Posted in Work

I took the 9:30 flight to Phoenix this morning. The flight attendant was rather entertaining. ‘Your handbags, man-purses and laptops must be stored under the seat in front of you, or the overhead compartments.’ ‘Put your seats in their most uncomfortable upright position.’

After that, it was a pretty typical day at work.

I rented a bike from a local tour company. I picked up the Trek 5000 TCT after work. I got some good advice for rides in the area. I then cruised over to Trader Joe’s and bought food for a few days. I carried back two bags full of groceries, one on each side of the handelbars back 2.5 miles.

I managed to lock myself out of my room on my first day. I brought my room key down to the hottup with me, and attempted to use it to get back in. But for some reason it didn’t work. I went to the front desk wrapped in my towel, and they fixed it. I wonder how many times I can lock myself out this week.

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May 3, 11:06 PM by Kimberly | Business Trip

Posted in Work | Comments [1]

Tuesday, the company I have a temp assignment at asked me to be a temp-to-hire instead, and wanted to send me out to Arizona for training. In two days! I accepted, and ended up on a 6:00 flight to Phoenix this morning.

I got to the hotel after work, and soon settled in. I went down to the jacuzzi, then it hit me. I’m all alone, far away, in an isolated place. Without Steve. I don’t want to spend all of next week like this. (I am coming home tomorrow, and am scheduled to fly out again Monday morning.)

I am going to rent a bike next week, so hopefully I won’t feel so isolated. But I can’t wait to get back to SB, and fall into my hubby’s arms.

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Feb 15, 09:38 PM by Steve | Binary Incompatibilty

Posted in Work & Programming

I spent the last two days at work chasing my tail trying to figure out why a DLL, when recompiled with a trivial change, suddenly (and dramatically) stopped working. It still didn’t work when we recompiled it without the change. Things were complicated by the fact that the client of the DLL was in FoxPro^ick^, the DLL was VB6, and it called some .NET assemblies through COM interop. I’ve been around COM so long I know it very well, but FoxPro I know nothing about and .NET versioning and interop is still very mysterious.

Anyway, to make a long and boring story short, it turns out that the problem was caused by the .NET assemblies having been recompiled on the build machine at some point, without incrementing the version or build number. The interfaces in the type libraries for the COM interop had jumbled around and when the DLL was compiled against these, it was no longer compatibile with the original .NET assemblies.

You see, with “early binding”, the memory offsets for the function entry points (the vtable) are compiled into the DLL. However, since the new type library had jumbled things up, the entry points didn’t match the original type library and we were esentially calling the wrong functions. I extracted the type libraries from the released assembies, placed them on the build machine, and everything was happy.

I should have figured it out faster; I’ve seen this kind of...

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