Steve and Judy's Travels!

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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.

…and compared our industry issues to Formula 1 racing.  That was a great presentation, but the analogy might have been a bit of a stretch.  Accounting talent, generative A.I., Inspector Gadget, Microsoft 365 Teams, and optimizing virtual offices.  Quote of the day:  A.I. is not coming to take your job.  The person who understands A.I. is.

That’s what this week is.  A conference in Las Vegas.  It’s not about debits and credits.  It’s more about firm management and tech possibilities than the nuts and bolts of accounting.  When I was fully engulfed in work, it was my escape for a week every year; a chance to stop doing what I was doing long enough to think about how I was doing what I was doing.  It remains a favorite thing.  We don’t go to Las Vegas for it anymore.  Now we can participate virtually from the comfort of our own home.  And it goes a long way toward the 40 hours of continuing education I need to get every year to remain a CPA.

Judy got her new hearing aids today.  They are a big improvement.

It’s still hot.  Hotter than average.  The thunderstorms are gone though.  No real hail damage for us while they were here, just some really loud rain.  Judy is getting new hearing aids tomorrow.  They’ve been a long time coming.  I’ve been raising my voice to her lately, but not in a bad way.  She rode the last pair of hearing aids out for five years.  That’s a long time in hearing aid years.  They were high tech then.  The new ones will be high tech now.  Counting down to the van delivery.  We don’t know how many days it will be, but each day passed is one less.  Learning things in the Ford Transit group online.  Buying a few goodies that will be helpful for our first trip.  Not buying much though.  We don’t want to start out on our first trip with the van overfull.  We can buy sunscreens/privacy shades for the inside of the windshield and the driver and passenger windows.  We know we’ll need them.  Instead of carrying an ice chest, we’ll carry a small 12 volt refrigerator.  It looks like an ice chest, but it plugs in.  It won’t have to be very big because we only need a few things cold and we don’t have to leave room for ice.  When my phone rings and Judy is right there in the room with me, I know it’s a bogus call.  I always check voicemail for messages, but for incoming calls my phone is mostly just a plaything for others.  I let them play by themselves.

Does the online wisdom below resonate with anybody out there?  (Or wives about their husbands?)