Blogging from south eastern West Virginia, on a 100 acre farm belonging to my friend's sister. I can hear the sounds of bull frogs croaking in the stagnant pond nearby built by the beavers who tried to flood her out. Alas, the beavers are gone; it's kill or be killed here in the Appalachian mountains.

The farm, called the Rockdale Farm, lies at the end of a road. If I lived here, I would have a big barking dog and a shotgun so I could shoot any strangers who come on my property. If you love the silence of the country, this the place to be, but for me the isolation is hard to bear.

To get to town takes about 45 minutes on windy country road where deer, bunny rabbits, racoons and other animals dart in your path. Sometimes the road is paved and sometimes it's not. If you don't know where you're going, it would be easy to get freaked out and think you were lost.

This is beautiful country, unspoiled by industry, only because the windy roads make it impossible or any industry to sprout. Not that the state isn't trying. Everywhere you go, you see four colour brochures that sell West Virginia as the last great wilderness left in America. Perhaps they are right. You'd have to really want to live here to bear the isolation and the monotony of the trees and forests.

The people here are very friendly, which I don't find that surprising. I grew up in the country and most country folk are friendly on a one on one basis. My friend tells me it's the second to last poorest state in the nation; Mississippi being the poorest. Tourism is the only industry that West Virginia has and the country people know that.

In a general store near Droop Mountain, I had a fun flirtation with a guy whose car had Alberta license plates. He had a mountain bike attached to his car. There's a 76 mile river trail here that you can bike called the Greenbriar Trail. The trail runs along a river that you can swim in. We biked six miles of it on July 4th and swam in its muddy waters and watched lightning spikes on the ridge right in front of us.

Droop Mountain is the site of some civil war battle. We still haven't visited the site but we pass it on the way to my friend's parents' 150 acre farm which lies on the other side of Droop mountain.

Her mom says the weather is better on the top of mountain, especially in the winter time because the cold winter snow air settles down to the bottom of the valley. But when there are lightning storms, they're the first ones to get a bolt since there is nothing else on the mountain to hit.

We went to a luncheon today with authentic west virginia food. Corn pone, sugar cured ham, sweetened ice tea, baked beans, macaroni salad with mayo but no eggs, and cut tomoatoes from the garden. The ham was salty and fried to death but so delicious. Corn pone is nothing but a moister corn bread but it's what they eat here so it's native cuisine.

I had grits for the first time a couple of days ago. It tasted like a grainer version of my mother's lumpy cream of wheat. But again like the corn pone, it's authentic native cuisine.

There's so much more to write but technology seems so strange here in the Appalachian mountains. It almost feels sinful to be typing away on little baby laptop with pocket explorer that can't read javascript. Somewhere a West Virginian is having a laugh at my predicament. It's so typical of the state.

I've been trying to modify my blog so I don't use javascript to show my archives, because my baby laptop which I totally love, has pocket explorer and pocket explorer can't read javascrit. Damn! Much as I love my baby laptop which is great for writing stories on Bart, Muni, etc, it's got way too many drawbacks when travelling.

You can log onto the Net but the connection is so slow. And there's no way to tell what your connection speed is either. I also can't load programs like Final Draft, the screenwriting software that everyone uses, so I can't write screenplays while I'm on the road. I can't even use the template I found for Word because pocket word doesn't accept template.

I'm going to have buy a laptop and I think I might just buy an old laptop. I mean, I don't travel that much and it's usually for vacation. I just need to be able to get on the Net at a reasonable speed and maybe work on a screenplay.

As you can tell, I'm getting ready for my vacation to West Virginia. My flight is at 7 am tomorrow, which means the shuttle freaks will pick me and my friend up at 4 am. I'm leaving my car at her house in Oakland so I can avoid those damned SF street cleaning tickets. Actually, it's probably cheaper to get the street cleaning tickets than to park, since street cleaning tickets are only $25 each.

My apartment is totally clean and everything is in its proper place. I just hate coming bck to a messy apartment. I'm looking forward to drinking moonshine and seeing the hillbillies in their natural environment. I just like that it will be different than San Francisco, which I am getting very tired of lately.

I loved that Rob Morse column in Sunday's Chron about what it takes to live in SF. Things are easier when you have more money that everyone else. Not that money really matters, but you need alot of it to make your life very comfortable here.

Some people mistakenly think that money is not spiritual. My guru used to always say, you can't meditate well if you're wondering about debts, starving and where your next paycheck is coming from. Besides if you're working like a dog all the time, you won't have time to meditate, go on meditation retreats and all the other things you're supposed to do if you're spiritual. Not to mention you need money to buy the books you have to buy, the equipment, the outfits, etc.

My guru liked when his students were financially independent only because then you're not a burden on him, other students or society. He hated bums and freeloaders. He said being a bum and freeloader was bad karma. I think he was right. He said everyone had a god given talent, and being a bum, a freeloader and living off welfare and others is not a god given talent. If you're a bum and a freeloader, you're not using your gifts and that's definitely bad karma.

I hate that stupid 9th circuit court of appeals decision which says the pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional. Some guy on the news said the 9th circuit court of appeals gets overnturned more than any other circuit court. It's so embarrassing too, because it's some nut case from California, Sacramento to be exact who brought the suit. I'm sure this lawsuit has just solidified in people's mind outside of California, that our state is full of nuts and flakes.

Now, I don't mind care if people are aetheists, but in my experience, aetheists hate people who believe in god and try to attack them at every opportunity. Aetheists just aren't comfortable with the fact that anyone believes in god. Most people who believe in god are comfortable with aetheists, but not those oh so politically correct, smug, aetheists who think they're intellectually and morally superior to everyone else because they don't believe in god. Have you ever noticed that the people who advocate political correctness the most, are aetheists?

Anyway, you've got this aetheist nut case trying to impose his religious beliefs on the rest of the country. It's so typical it's not even funny. And you just know that the supreme court will take up the case and overturn the ruling. And that idiot from Sacramento who brought the suit, you just know that he'll come back a toad in his next life.

I'm so glad I don't work in Finance anymore, especially with all these accounting scandals going on. All finance and accounting departments for every publicly traded company will be heavily scrutinized from now on.

In the 12 years I worked in Finance, I worked for three publicly traded companies. They all has suspect accounting practices. Two of the companies were traded on Nasdaq and the other one traded on the New York Stock Exchange. All three companies used Deloitte and Touche as their accounting firms, so I was never exposed to the Arthur Anderson folks. I knew people who worked there though since people in Finance and Accounting go back and forth between public and private companies.

I even have a Worldcom story in my closet. Actually, it's about their subsidiary MCI. I worked in the MCI finance department for about a couple of years. I remember one quarter back in the 1989, or maybe even 1990, my boss told me that there was some kind of tax write off that they weren't going to report because it would materially affect the stock price. He said if anyone found out, he would lose his accounting license. He said they were going to report the tax write-off in the following quarter, just not this quarter. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, thinking everybody does weird stuff with their books. However in light of the Enron and now Worldcom scandals, I guess he should be glad no one found out.

At the next company I worked at, the one traded on the NYSE, we used to report earnings growth all the time in our press releases, even though technically, the company never really had enough revenue to cover expenses. All of that company's revenue growth came from investment income. Since the stock market was booming at the time I worked there, my company's investment returns were phenomenal. I asked my immediate boss about it and he laughed and said, "Sad, isn' it?"

I used to wonder why those brilliant Wall Street analysts never caught on and questioned us, but they let it slide. I have since come to believe that everybody does it and knows about it, and it's okay. My boss's boss told me once, he was glad I wasn't an investment analyst because if I was, he would be afraid of me. I wasn't sure if he was compilmenting me or not.

At the third publicly traded company, I worked in the IT department for the CIO. She basically hired me to do all the finance stuff since she had a worldwide budget of $30 Million. I think I used to do the same stuff that got Worldcom in trouble.

On the news, they said that Worldcom had improperly accounted for $3.8 billion in capital expenditures. The neat little accounting trick that got Worldcom in trouble is you can amortize capital expenditures over time. I don't remember how it goes exactly, but it's something like 3 years for software and 5 years for hardware and furniture. Anyway, simply what this means is, if you bought say $1 million worth of computer hardware in 2002. Instead of having to report or incur the expense in the year bought, 2002, you can report the expense over five years or the useful life of the product.

I used to jokingly refer to is as the "corporate credit card plan" because amortization of capital expenditures works like a credit card, especially if you're one of those people who never pay your bills in full every month. Corporations, especially publicly traded ones love it, because they can use the amortization to offset higher than normal expenses and still report an increase in revenue which translates into earnings growth and then stock growth.

All companies would have loved to amortize Y2K expenses, but the SEC put at a stop to that. They said that money spent to upgrade to Y2K could not be amortized and had to be incurred in the year done. Since Y2K was an upgrade, it could not be considered new software or hardware. If the SEC hadn't put their foot down on this issue, I think we woudl have probably seen more companies charged with improper accounitng methods.
I spent two weeks going over FASB, the Federal Accounting Standard Boards, and looking up accounting cases to see what expenses you could be legally capitalized and still pass a public audit. Because of new accounting laws for intellectual property which came about in I think, the early 1990's as a result of computers and technology, companies started capitalizing like crazy and not just physical equipment, but employees, consulting fees, conferences, etc.

Since you needed people to build software or build hardware, all of their time, even the food they ate sometimes or even their plane fares, could all be capitalized and amortized over 3 to 5 years.

God, the stuff I used to put in my amortization column was just amazing. But I did my research and I was definitely following FASB rules and accounting cases. And when D&T came to audit me, I had my paper trail ready and so I passed my audit with flying colors.

Those accounting/finance people at Worldcom probably got a little too carried away when they capitalized $3.8 billion. I'm sure they started amortizing acquisition costs, because you could technically say that cost to acquire a company is directly related to the cost of bring a piece of software or hardware to the company. There are no hard and fast rules for amortization, since computers and technology really added a new dimension to the amortization issue.

The problem is if you start capitalizing stuff and saying that it's for hardware or software, you need to make sure that the hardware or software project is viable, actually works, actually goes to market. If the project doesn't finish, you have to eat the expense in the year you abandon the project, sometimes even in the year you actually incurred the expense. I wonder if this is what happened at Worldcom. They over amortized on hardware/software projects that failed.

I mean, Worldcom couldn't help it I guess. The went on a huge acquisition binge, bought out all these companies and just at the time, they finished the buyouts, the bottom fell out of Wall Street and they couldn't sell their hardware/software. All those hardware/software projects had to be abandoned because there was no one around to buy them. In the meantime, Worldcom had started capitalizing all the expenses and spreading the expense out over 3 to 5 years. And when it came time to report their earnings, they pretended like the hardware/software projects were stll going, when in reality they were actually abandoned.

Poor Worldcom. I'm just glad I don't have to deal with Finance and money anymore. It's such a dirty business. And it's like that I think at all companies, especially at the public traded ones.

My favorite finance story is from the NYSE company I worked at for five years. Our beloved CFO, who was on the wagon/off the wagon alcoholic, would go to a bar with the CEo and over senior VPs in the afternoon, drink like fish, when he was off the wagon, decide some time while drinking what our earnings should be. Then they would come back, drunker than hell and hand my boss a paper bar napkin. The bar napkin has the numbers we were going to report that quarter. It was our job in Finance to get to the numbers on the napkin and make it all look legitimate and be able to pass a public audit. And we could do it too. Sad isn't it?

Most companies are having such a hard time, especially with a substantially lowered stock market. If you think people made money during the dot com stock craze, think about corporations. All corporations have money invested in the stock market. But when the dot come bubble burst, regular people lost money and so did most companies.

I think that's why most publicly traded companies can't report any earnings growth anymore. They don't have their investment income returns to help wih their earnings growth. There are very few companies whose revenue pays for their expenses. Corporations are like normal people; they totally spend more than they make.

Where these financial scandas will lead is anybody's guess. I'm just glad at hell i'm not in finance anymore.