Well, it finally happened. I’ve kept this new schedule for two months – well, dang close to two months. I blogged through my vacation, I blogged through sickness, I blogged late in the evening (have I mentioned that deadlines are generally the only thing driving me to complete anything?), and I blogged when I really didn’t have anything worth mentioning. (Don’t say it! Don’t say it!). And now, one day short of two months, what was it that took me down? An internet connection.

It can happen to anyone. You’re working, minding your own business, when you see the flashing red lights of an audit stop. You might not even be doing anything wrong, but routine audit stops know no right or wrong – they just happen. 

I have a very bad habit. (Actually, I have an untold number of bad habits. But, for now, let’s just focus on one of them, shall we?) When flying, I am incredibly nosy about what people around me are working on. I try to not be too obvious about it, so I do my best Inspector Clouseau and surreptitiously glance at what they are doing. If they are reading a book I try and see what the book is; if they are making notes on a report I try to see what the report is about; if they are going through a presentation I want to know the topic.

Michael Lewis has created quite a niche for himself by writing about business and finance. You may know him from The Blind Side, but his real strength is shown in such books as The New New Thing about the emergence of the Internet revolution and its affect on how we do business, Next about the dot-com bust and the (then) future of the Internet, and The Money Culture about various foibles of the financial world told through a collection of his essays from such sources as The New York Times, The New Republic, and Wall Street Journal. 

Valentine’s Day is over and, I don’t know about you, but I received a number of nice thoughts from co-workers, bosses, and my number one fans – the auditees. Following are just a sample of the many cards, letters, and notes I received: 

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to provide you this opportunity.  In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a new blog in town.  And this time, you get to write it.  

Following are a set of truisms I have learned in my 28 years of auditing.  I may have mentioned a few in prior posts, but there's nothing wrong with repetition.  Rather than try explaining what these mean, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

A quote from P. J. O’Rourke (from a collection of his essays titled Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut  - a collection just good enough to make you want to read more of his essays, but with enough mediocre entries to realize why these were “previously uncollected”.)

In the spirit of full and complete disclosure, I need to let you know that I am on vacation this week.  In fact, as I type this, I am sitting at a timeshare in Hilton Head, South Carolina.  Yes, I know it’s off-season. Yes, I know it’s cold.  (Well, to me it’s cold. I’m from Phoenix.  Almost everywhere I travel is cold to me.) Yes, I know I shouldn’t even have a computer turned on. But, at the start of the year I started this experiment (a description of which can be found here) where I would try to follow the schedule - come hell, high water, or timeshare - listed at the top of this blog.