From the Executive Editor

Yoo hoo! I hope your busy season is going smoothly. Don’t forget to eat healthy, exercise and get your sleep – all of that adds up to managing the stress successfully. Free advice from Doctor Norm – but as I warn everyone when I give them medical advice, my entire medical training comes from watching eight seasons of the TV show, House. I should share that I would always irritate my wife and kids as we watched that show, because during every episode I’d blurt out, “It’s obviously Lyme disease!” Well, I was right twice.

 

I was forced to actually beg for technical content for this month’s e-news. Jim Holland graciously responded to my begging and provided a very interesting article on compensation and a recent Tax Court case, here. Thanks, Jim. But you know what they say: giving just enables beggars. So you can expect to hear from me again. And again.

 

I think you all know, or know of, Sal Tripodi. He is one of our industry icons, so I asked Sal if I could interview him for this month’s e-news. Sal’s interview is here.

 

We have another article on professionalism in this month’s edition — Jeff Shouldis’ article on the value of ASOP 1 is here. 

 

Judy Miller’s regular update on the Washington grind is here.

Our President Kurt Piper has provided his regular update from the LC here.

 

Mike Bain posted to the listserv some links to a couple of useful tools from the Academy website. First is the “Social Security Game,” which allows you to try to solve the problems the program faces. The second is a longevity calculator that was years in the making. You can just hit the “get started” button on this page. It allows you to get charts showing probabilities of living to certain ages for a single or joint life situation with various health options. Thanks for sharing these, Mike.

 

Back to exercise and sleep: A couple of weeks ago my wife bought me a wearable fitness and sleep tracker for my birthday. I’ve always exercised regularly and I do try to always get a good night’s sleep, but having the tracker has motivated me even more to make sure I hit my targets every day, because obviously I don’t want an inert device to ever know that I failed. If you like tracking things (and I know you all do) and you need extra motivation, I highly recommend these devices.

 

Cheers,

 

Norman