CLICK HERE to see a sofa with removable covers and integrated/patented mechanism which transforms the sofa into a bunk bed.

Click on image to find out which wins……HIS beer or HER make-up

Kenny Floyd is a local musician performing in the Charlotte region and parts of both Carolina’s. Click on the image below to see a slide-show from one of our nights out to see him and featuring a song called “Flat Bed Truck” from his latest album, “Water”.

His web page has a lot of great material about who he is and what he does, but in my humble opinion, seeing him wherever he is playing will be time well spent. The closest venue he plays near us is the City Tavern at Stonecrest in south Charlotte. We try our best to be there whenever he is and thoroughly enjoy every occasion. If you like *LIVE* music, love a blend of classic cover songs, improved lyrics and original material that you will catch yourself singing afterwards, watch out for him playing near you and make the trip! Here is a link to Kenny’s MySpace

OK - it may not be the best title to this hilarious entry but CHECK THIS OUT. Kelly got an especially huge laugh at these since she works in verbal branding and reviews product and branding names to make sure they don’t end up becoming the fiascoes presented. The link is to a list of very funny website names that are REAL (try them). I think you’ll see why it’s so funny - but to get you started, try this one- www.penisland.net - Classic!! CLICK HERE for the rest……..

Below are two Excel spreadsheets which will calculate the amortization of a loan after manual entry of Purchase Price, Down Payment (nets with Purchase Price to obtain Loan amount), Interest Rate, Loan Period and Loan Start Date.

The resulting table details the amortization of the entire loan for each month of the loan’s life. Also provided, is a summary table highlighting the total cost of the loan and the cost of the purchased item (including the down payment). When you open the document using the link below, make sure you save a copy first, as the file will be “Read Only”.

The first file uses named ranges and named formulas to calculate the resulting table. Its quite interesting to review the Conditional Formating that produces the borders and cells.

Download the Loan Amortization Schedule Here

The second spreadsheet is essentially the same with the exception that no named ranges were used to create it. One added feature is a summary table that presents, by year, the loan’s activity.

Download the Loan Amortization Schedule with Summary Here

Try them both out if you are unsure what you want. Enjoy!

Max left me a comment about the “Snakes on a Plane” philosophy. The post is about a year old, but with the upcoming movie release staring Samuel L. Jackson, it’s still fresh! The basic gist of the philosophy is that the term “Snakes on a Plane“= Sh*t Happens”. If you’re looking for a new philosophy for the upcoming Fall season check it out!

About a week ago I registered the URL www.whatcouldgowrong.net and www.wcgw.net (the acronym for the primary URL). If you entered either of these URL’s you ended up on this page since I have yet to populate them with a website and have redirected them to this explanatory page.

These sites are an idea I’ve had for quite sometime and revolve around my intention to publish an online resource based on an Access database I developed for my Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) engagements.

Documentation management has always been a challenge when performing control analysis on SOX engagements. Managing the process flows of the organization’s control activities and how they relate to the various risks and objectives would typically involve a set of workpapers utilizing Excel and Word Documents. My goal in developing the Access dBase was to create a tool to manage all of these interdependent activities and link them within the database so various reports and views could be generated. The table hierarchy for the dBase is as follows:

• Control Environment (”Environment “) - typically Company Name, or Location Name if many for a single company
• Business Cycle (”Cycle”)
• Process - also called Transaction in some engagements
• Business Objective (”Objective”)
• Control Risk (”Risk”) - also called the “What Could Go Wrong” elements
• Control Activity (”Activity”)

Each level has a “One to Many” relationship with the level below; e.g. each Control Environment will have MANY Business Cycles which will have MANY Processes, etc. Additionally within the dBase is a “Bridge” between the Risk and Activity records to manage their unique relationship since there are many occasions where an Activity will have MANY Risks associated with it. This feature overcomes a big challenge embedded in the use of Excel and Word documents since we can now easily link the testing and documentation of a single Activity in satisfying many risks that it may apply to.

While developing the dBase I began to notice interesting similarities in an objective’s resulting risks when the various assertions are applied (“CAVR” or Completeness, Accuracy, Validity, Restricted Access, etc).

When stating an objective such as “Accountant enters payroll hours onto the Hours Log in Oracle”, the risk assertions would come out something like this for the completion and validity assertions;

- The Hours Log in Oracle does not include all of the Payroll hours entered by the Accountant.

- The payroll hours entered into Oracle by the Accountant do not meet validity standards.

When stating another objective such as “Receiving Manager inspects received goods on the loading dock.”, the risk assertions would come out something like this for the completion and validity assertions;

- The loading dock does not capture all of the Received goods to be inspected by the Receiving Manager.

- The goods inspected on the loading dock by the Receiving Manager do not meet quality (validity) standards.

Notice that the risk “Statements” are essentially the same in both examples, with the primary difference being the elements as noted in the table. The resulting risks matrix contains the same similarities. By creating a database of possible scenarios, it is my premise that it could support many (if not most) of the Objective/Risk scenarios faced. Once created, one would only have to identify the Actor, Action, Source, Destination and System elements of their Objectives and end up with a fully analyzed process.
It is my goal to develop such a dBase and place it online for ease of use and ease of distribution. I’ll update this post as I work through the kinks…..wish me luck!

On the lighter side (Click image to enlarge)