Author: Steve

What do they know?

They stumble around making babbling baby noises, running into furniture, and falling down.  Next thing, they’re speaking a language.  They don’t know subjects and predicates or present tense and past tense.  They don’t study.  They don’t know how to spell or even how to write.  They just listen and repeat and start talking until it sounds right.  They don’t have any idea how hard it is, or how long it takes, to learn a new language.  Live in a multi-lingual house?  No problem, they just learn two languages at once!

Kids.

Orange Esperanza.  I’ve been trimming and shaping, so not much to see for flowers.

Texas Lantana.  Nothing I do slows this one down.

And Texas Firebush.  This is the one that looked stone dead all the way down to the ground.

Pretty soon they’re going to have to carry on for the rest of the summer without us because we’ll be gone.  They’ll be just fine though because they’re all natives, accustomed to this climate.

The plants can get large and messy.

But the flowers are precious.

Offshoring talent

Latest tech tools and technologies

Elevating the client experience

A fresh look at partner compensation models

31 hours of continuing education accomplished

The Engage 2024 Conference is over.  Engage 2025 is already in my schedule for next year.

Quote of the day: “Kindness without accountability is a recipe for entitlement.”

I struggle with this one.  I want to be able to be kind without demanding something in return.  Entitlement as a result would be a disappointing unintended consequence.  I’m still haunted by an episode of Anthony Bourdain.  He was in Haiti doing a food segment.  At the end of the event, there was food left over.  What to do with that?  Throw it out?  There were hungry kids standing right outside the door.  Give it to them.  The best of intentions.  Word spread at lightning speed.  Little kids got pushed out of the way by bigger kids.  Hungry adults pushed their way in.  The police showed up and started beating people to restore order.  Chaos.  The best of intentions.  Unintended consequences.  That sucked.

But I still need to come to a conclusion for how I feel about the quote, “Kindness without accountability is a recipe for entitlement” I’m going to disagree with the premise.  If I have to demand something in return for kindness, isn’t that more like a purchase?  There can be negative unintended consequences as a result but it’s not an absolute.  Sometimes kindness without accountability is just kindness.

The conference I’m attending is in Las Vegas, on Pacific Time.  That makes for relaxed morning coffees with Judy.  I start 7:00am classes at 9:00!  That leaves me working a little late in the evening though.  They think they’re ending at 5:30.  Today we talked about the Private Equity Boom; non-CPA aggregators buying up individual CPA firms.  Unlocking the power of non-accountants, review analytics, Bitcoin, accountability for remote workers, and the Modern Audit.  Grandson Tony got a job at Amazon in Seattle.  He’s already there, settled in and working.  Yay, Tony.  We don’t really know what he’s doing yet.  Software engineer maybe.  That description is pretty general though.  We’re looking forward to the next time we get together with him and hear all about it.  His mom and dad are driving his car out there to him later this week.  He’s not far from Christie and Andy who will be convenient for family support and a home-cooked meal.  The brand of Judy’s new hearing aids is ReSound, same as the last ones she had.  Before that they were Oticon.  Our van got built in Kansas City.  Now it’s in Houston, on its way to us eventually.  Quote of the day: “A dream without a plan is a wish.”

Bonus quote:  “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”  Wayne Gretzky.