Switched Keys

I made my semi-annual visit to the book fair in Tyler and came home with a limited and variegated collection of finds. Part of my goal for this year's visit was to find textbooks to prepare for the BEC (Business Environment and Concepts) part of the CPA exam, but I only came away with two that might be useful. I did acquire a few others that could be useful or that are just being added to my collection.

One of the two study books included Management, a textbook written in 2000 and covering the basic planning, organizing, leading and controlling. I'm not looking for advice on management, but textbooks are known for providing standardized descriptions, theories and systems that they use to test student's knowledge. Some college students will remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs, although that student may not comply with Maslow's need for food over the need for love. The other BEC text, Economics, covers microeconomics and macroeconomics, and is chock-full of questions and answers that will help me prepare for related questions on the BEC. One other study book that may come in handy is the GMAT review. I know I'll be going to graduate school some day and it may be useful.

Investment, Retirement, and Estate Planning is a slick book that I don't really need for the BEC, but it will be a good introduction to the subject. Ironically, financial planning has been tipped on its head due to the impending fiscal cliff. Normally, deferral of taxation is a key goal in planning, but because the beneficial tax laws are set to expire at the end of the year many are being advised to accelerate taxation at the currently lower rates.

For home use I now have a book on Sprinklers and Watering Systems. At some point I suspect I will install a sprinkler system in our yard. I've already done some related work on sprinkling. Several years ago I buried a water hose and attached a sprinkler head to it to water our vegetable garden. We used it every day or two during the spring this year. Very handy.

I am still doing programming, including web programming, so when I see a good reference resource on some language, I will usually pick it up. This year I picked up the PHP 4 Bible. Php is one of the letters in the LAMP web platform that is so common on the Internet: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Php. Without Php I wouldn't be able to post this entry to the website.

Finally, I will be adding five books to my Statistics collection. I already have twenty to thirty books on Statistics in my library. The new additions include Statistics for Behavioral Sciences, Using and Understanding Medical Statistics (I'm looking forward to studying this one), Probability and Statistics, Analysis of Variance, and Finite Graphs and Networks. Okay, that last one isn't statistics, but it is a kissing cousin in the field of mathematics.

If you would like to see what I already have in my library you can visit my librarything page. The listing isn't strictly accurate, however. I discarded a number of books last year and I have about 50 others that I haven't added to my collection. I'll update the list when it becomes more important than everything else I have to do.

You may be wondering why I would be adding to a physical book collection in these days of Internet web searches and digital books. Indeed, I much prefer digital sources, but there are many times when I can find what I need in a good, paper format, reference faster than spending hours filtering through the millions of commercial websites on the web, and with less chance of my computer catching some kind of virus. A library can also be comforting, and I can waste hours browsing through my book collection just as easily as I can waste hours browsing the web.

The Book Fair is presented by the Smith County Medicare Society Alliance twice a year to raise money for nursing scholarships. The next event is April 4, 5, & 6, 2013 at 2004 Broussard, in Tyler, Texas.