"A million monkeys banging on a million typewriters for a million years will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare."

I've been studying hard the last few weeks to write the upcoming CIA exams. There are three in total, 3.5 hours each which I'm doing over two days in Toronto. I went this morning to write the first two. This is how it went:

Wake up 5:45 am.
Drive to train station.
Take train into Toronto.
Take subway to hotel.
Arrive at hotel, check page one of printed email confirmation for conference room location.
Bored. Read page two, examination dates and times.
Notice that page two says exams are Wed & Thurs, not Tues & Wed.
Smack forehead.
Curse a lot.
Take subway back to train station.
Take train back to Oakville.
Drive to work.
Arrive in office wearing jeans, sweats and sneakers.
Get laughed at by coworkers.

So yes, this is a compelling arguement to not get my blond highlights redone. I think the only positiive that could come of this is that I'll have to ace these exams as I've used up my entire stupidity quota for the month, if not the year.

So... now that the dress rehearsal is done, time for the real thing tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Lesson learned this week: 2AM on a Sunday night is not a good time to test out my new speakers.

Thanks Joe. Sorry mom.

So I've been finally offered the promotion at work I've been gunning for for a few months now. As of whenever the paperwork goes through Human Resources, I'll be officially an Internal Auditor.

I formally met with the group for the first time yesterday. It's a pretty small department (only five staff and the VP of Internal Audit), and they all seem to be way ahead of me when it comes to expertise. That's actually a good thing as my reason for wanting out of my last job is it had become rote and I was getting stale. I'm looking forward to a new challenge.

So, at least now I have a reason for suffering through the Certified Internal Auditor exams. I write three multiple choice tests, 3.5 hours each over two days next week. Some of it is overlap with the CMA but it's been two years since I wrote the entrance exam for that. Going through these problems I find I'm pretty rusty.

The only problem with changing jobs internally is I'll still end up doing two jobs for awhile, until they find someone to backfill me and he or she gets up to speed. I hope they find someone with at least half a brain... in order to compensate for the terrible training they're about to receive.

This Hallowe'en, as per usual I took my little cousins out trick-or-treating so their mom could stay home and hand out candy. One thing I'm baffled by every year in their area is the number of dark houses on the street. I was talking with another guy taking his kids out and he told me that the neighbourhood was full of empty-nesters, and many couldn't be bothered to hand out candy anymore as their kids had grown up.

To me these people are kind of like the Hallowe'en Scrooge. I mean, what do they do, sit home in the dark waiting for the kids to pass? Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt and suppose that they've "fallen and can't get up" or something.

The picture in the corner is of my neice Anisa in her princess outfit. Her birthday happens to fall on Oct 31st and she just turned four. I asked her where my princess outfit was, and her reply to me what that I'd get my own "when I grow smaller".

Priceless.