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Accounting and Auditing

As you can see from several of my resumes, I started my accounting career through the family business shortly after I entered high school.  Initially, I had objective reasons for studying accounting in school; my dad (who had noted early my love of mathematics) wanted someone to take over the bookkeeping for the business, but mom (who had done bookkeeping at a bank in New York) was intent on staying home.  So I started taking accounting classes and eventually became the store's manager/bookkeeper.

Having begun an education in accounting, I continued it after graduating from high school and obtained a two-year degree in that field from Merced Junior College.   I also tutored accounting and business-related subjects at MJC's Tutorial Center, a practice that followed me to Fresno State.

When my father closed the bookstore in 1994, I went back to school and got a B.A. in Accountancy from Fresno State University.  Accounting is a demanding field, and the four-year program at FSU's business school is no less so.  Also, my association with the local chapter of Beta Alpha Psi (a national accounting fraternity) in my fourth year was equally educational and exposed me to instructors and practicing professionals who helped shape my outlook.

As I came to understand the broader scope of the accounting profession, I found that I favored the importance and relative complexity of the auditing aspect.   However, it was not until my senior year that I decided to pursue a career in auditing specifically with an emphasis in EDP (Electronic Data Processing) and cost accounting.  Having recently been a Volunteer Income Tax Assistant and taken all four parts of the Uniform CPA Examination, I still think I'd like to become a certified internal auditor, and I'm currently seeking employment to that end.

• My favorite links to accounting and auditing web sites.

Airplanes and Private Piloting

As a little boy, I loved to make plastic models of ships, planes and spacecraft, both real and imagined.  When I was a young teenager, I wanted to be an astronaut.  Then I found out just how difficult it was to become one.  Although my zeal for flying and astronomy has always been present, I have never been much for the physical rigors that come with years of training for high-G environments.  So, like most of us, I resort to appreciating films like "The Right Stuff" and "Apollo 13" vicariously rather than sympathetically.

My personal library has many books about ships and planes, especially the military variety, including numerous editions of Lou Drendel's "In Action" series from Squadron Signal Publications, various autobiographies of pilots, military strategy books about air combat maneuvering ("dogfighting"), naval warships and warfare, weapons, etc.  Every once in a while, I re-read a chapter here and there, usually for educational reasons as I use some of the information in my writings.

In the early '90's, my father and I attended a private piloting ground school at Castle Air Force Base (now Castle Airport) as a kind of father-and-son bonding experience.  He knew how much I love to fly, and he wanted to share his son's ambition.  Unfortunately, it was shortly before our final month of instruction that my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer, so he dropped the class to take care of her.   I, however, continued with the course and graduated in the spring of 1991.

The small town of Atwater, just north of MacReady Field in Merced, had a flight school at that time, and I hired one of their instructors to teach me to fly a Cessna 150, a very safe plane that is typically used for such purposes.  I soloed on February 2, 1992, and made my first cross-country flight to Bakersfield, Chowchilla and back to Merced a few weeks later.  I would have made a similar flight to East Palo Alto and Gustin, but things were getting worse at home, what with the continued demands of my mother's illness and the family business wearing down my dad.  It became too expensive to continue the flight training, so I relieved him of its financial burden.   In retrospect, it was the right decision to make at that time, but I deeply regret not finishing that chapter of my life as I wanted to.  I still hope to do so after I establish myself and have the time and money to spend on flight lessons.

• Links to flight and aircraft technology pages.

Amateur Astronomy

My love of the stars and stellar theory has had a profound impact in many areas of my life, certainly not the least of which is my choice of hobbies.  I already mentioned my childhood dream of becoming an astronaut and the necessity of vicariously living the life of one through documentaries and movies.  The fictional literary genre that relates best to this field has also prompted me to write about what I imagine or hope we may one day find between the stars.

Aside from these motivations, there are other, more practical applications for this field in my life.  I own a three-inch, 720mm reflector telescope that I sometimes unpack when the night is clear and my favorite constellations ride high and early in the sky.  The lights of the city are dimmer than what might be expected where I live, but, of course, I get the best results when I travel away from the city's ambience a bit and set up in the foothills nearby.  I love to look at the Moon when it's crescent, and lunar eclipses are a lot of fun to watch up close.  I've seen considerable detail on Jupiter's gassy surface and made out all of her largest moons, but Saturn's rings are often only barely discernable.  Venus and Mars are easy to observe, but I've never found Mercury through my lens.  The Sun, of course, is another favorite, but it is entertaining only when there is significant sunspot activity, which is extremely rare.  My brother-in-law's father has a six-inch refractor that's much more powerful than my scope, and I like to encourage him to use it whenever I'm in Merced for a few days.

• Links to my favorite astronomy stories, labs and observatories.

My Business Background

The vast majority of both my elective and vocational education has emphasized the business world.  I have already touched on some of that background in prior segments of this web site, but this portion will summarize the whole of it to date.

I began working as a retail sales clerk and an errand runner at my parents' religious bookstore in Merced when I was 12.  The business was in a small, run-down building on Main Street, and I enjoyed the convenience of walking there after school.   My mother was the store's bookkeeper, and I was studying accounting in high school so as to be able to assist and eventually replace her in that regard as she really just wanted to stay home.  My father, besides managing the store in the afternoon, was working as an electrician at the county hospital (he now runs the hospital's maintenance department).  Our only other employee was the former owner's sales clerk, who had been with the business since its inception several years before my father bought it.   She remains a good friend of our family; I still think of her as I would an aunt.

When I graduated from high school, my father made me an assistant manager in order to be able to spend more time with his family and because neither of my sisters was suitable to take over the business.  So I worked in the bookstore for my room and board at home for eight years.  The store moved several times in my tenure there, and I am very thankful for the opportunities it gave me to gain people skills and learn things that relate to my accounting career, business practices and even theological studies.   I also developed a love of reading there that has benefited me all my life.

After mother took ill with cancer in 1990, my father left the business largely in my hands as he struggled to take care of his wife and family.  Things became progressively more difficult as the disease advanced from colon to liver and eventually to her lungs, where it resided until it took her from us in July of 1994.   In the face of this loss, dad decided that he did not want to retain the bookstore anymore, so he attempted to sell it for several months after she died.  But the store had never been an exceptionally profitable venture, and so, while several prospects emerged, in the end, none were willing to invest in it.  So the business officially closed its doors late that year, and I stayed home, looking for a better situation.

When none readily materialized, I went back to Merced College while looking for work as a bookkeeper with the hope of advancing myself in my chosen field.  I found work as a tutor at MC's Tutorial Center for a few years, teaching everything from language and chemistry to business law, computers and, of course, accounting.  But while I very much enjoy teaching, I have never found suitably lucrative employment down those lines.

Shortly before I completed my two-year degree program, however, a local accountant hired me to run the computer maintenance department of her practice, and I happily took the job as I have always enjoyed working with computers as much as with people.  I also got my first exposure to income taxation accounting that winter, albeit in a support role only as I did not have the proper education at that time to do much more than tax data processing and research.  I liked my work there and still ocassionally visit when I'm in Merced, but it wasn't the sort of employment I needed to advance as an accountant.  I really wanted at least a four-year accounting degree to accredit my bookkeeping and managerial experience.  So I quit in July of 1995 and, with my former employer's best wishes, enrolled that fall as a junior in Fresno State University's accountancy program, a decision I have never regretted.

My education continued at a steady pace, and I graduated in the spring of 1998 with a B.A. in Accountancy.  It was a period of internal growth as I finally saw the big picture of what accounting involves in a public sense.  One of the most personally influential bodies during that time was the local chapter of Beta Alpha Psi, a national accounting fraternity.  It helped focus my goals through professional presentations, interviews with CPA firms and related organizations large and small, and continued opportunities to tutor accounting subjects through the school's Learning Resource Center.  I also got the chance to improve my skills as a webmaster through their organization, an aspect I hadn't counted on until it presented itself.  As a fraternal alumnus, I maintain ties with the Gamma Omicron chapter's current leaders and support its activities whenever and however I can.

Finally, the latest episode in my business career involved taking all four parts of the Uniform CPA Examination in the spring of 1998.  I had been a Volunteer Income Tax Assistant in the same semester, and my association with Beta Alpha Psi had exposed me to a number of excellent CPA review courses.  I chose Gearty Fox's because it was the most easily accessible and least expensive and because it made use of CSUF faculty with whom I was already familiar, having taken courses from several of them.   In addition to learning about the particulars of the exam, I got an opportunity to create yet another professional web site, this time for the CSUF/Gearty Fox CPA Review course.  Webmastering, as a hobby, is an equally enjoyable aside from accounting, although, to date, I've yet to find adequate employment down the lines of the latter.  If you believe you can employ me in either of my major skill areas (accounting/auditing and/or information technology/Internet marketing), please consult the appropriate entries on my Resumes Page.

• Links to my school's business department and related areas.

Computers and Webmastering

I can't remember a time when I did not have access to a computer.  As children of the Baby Boomer generation, I suppose most of us grew up learning how to use a "mouse" before we knew how to spell it.  My first programming experience was on a venerable Commodore Pet, where I learned the novel intricacies of binary language and BASIC.  After I learned how to make sprites (remember those, folks?) on my Commodore 64 and later 128, I wrote my own games, moved to a PC and learned MS-DOS.   That was as much programming as I cared for when I was growing up in the lab at Merced High School's East Campus, although I did take courses in programming theory and ForTran at Merced College to fulfill a breadth requirement.  In that regard, the only aspects I truly regret not learning more about at that time were COBOL and software networking.

Aside from hardware/software maintenance, my computer skills did not reach fruition until 1995 when I jumped on the Internet bandwagon and signed up with America Online and its Genealogy Forum as the leader of the resident Hispanic Genealogy Special Interest Group (SIG).  As a volunteer host, I have made numerous contacts all over the planet in the furtherance of our goals.  Insofar as my computer expertise goes, I foresaw the need to bring the group's resources to non-AOL users, taught myself HTML and created what was initially an inept attempt at a SIG web site.  I say "inept" because as its administrator, I have the perspective from which to do so.  Those of you who were with us at that time will know what I'm talking about.  But it improved with my practice and with volunteer efforts by more experienced webmasters, steadily employing more applets and graphics until it now represents a highly recognized repository for Hispanic genealogical Internet resources.   In my humble opinion, I think it's one of my best efforts, although I am by no means the only contributor to its content.  In any event, it continues to be a work in progress and my favorite pet project.

I have since created a number of other web sites, mostly on a volunteer basis, for people, businesses and organizations.  I am presently teaching myself both Java and Structured Query Language (SQL) so as to be able to integrate database technology into my existing and future web sites.  As webmastering is, to me, just a hobby, I do not approach it as I would a source of employment, but if you would like to have a web site or if you think you can otherwise employ me as an HTML programmer/webmaster, please see the corresponding entries on my Resumes Page, wherein you will find links to the other sites that I administrate.

• Links to the web sites I administrate or have administrated.

Genealogy

My uncle Jorge was a foreign diplomat for many years, and while he was stationed in Puerto Rico, he took it upon himself to discover what he could about my maternal family history.  He compiled data on some 60 individuals going back five generations before him.  That information stayed in his possession until I took a similar interest in 1992 when it became clear that my mother's cancerous condition would not likely go into remission.  My maternal relatives have always been a closely knit group, helping each other and sharing what we could to better ourselves.  So when the likelihood of losing my mother in the near future became probable, I began recording what she knew of her history, she being one of the eldest of her siblings and a treasure trove of family stories.  Between her input, my uncle's research and the continued participation of members on both sides of my family tree, I've been able to increase my database to over 300 individuals (mostly extant ones) and seven generations, including my own.  If you wish to see an abbreviated list of what we've compiled, please visit our family's web site and look at the genealogy area.

As I said elsewhere, I've been an America Online volunteer chat host since 1995, and I administrate the activities and web site of its Hispanic Genealogy Group, this in an effort to stimulate Internet-based research of the same genealogical nature.  If you have similar interests, I invite you to stop by and see what offers.  If you can contribute any relevant information that you think may be useful to others, please send me an e-mail.

I also administrate the web site of the Fresno County Genealogical Society, of which I am a current member.  Again, if you have any genealogical and/or historical interests in the Fresno, California, area, please visit the web site and let the society help forward your research.

• Links to Hispanic genealogy sites.

Language Studies

Everyone should be multilingual, I've always felt.  I speak English and Spanish, the latter as not fluently, but I can hold a conversation.  I also taught myself a bit of New Testament Greek, but as it's been a dead language since the fall of the Roman Empire, there is no need to become fluent in it.  With whom would I use it in conversation, right?

Anyway, I love language in general, not so much vocabulary but rather the technical areas such as grammar, semantics and linguistics.  Growing up in a bilingual home certainly contributed to that.  Working for years in a Christian bookstore was another influential boon.  I spent hours reviewing the language aids section, looking for anything I could find that would shed light on the Bible's original documents and their various translations.  There is an art to it, you see, and I wanted to get behind the words themselves to the author's original intent, insofar as it was determinable.  Not that I doubt it or the translator's skill.  Quite the contrary, but there are treasures behind the words that often get inadvertently lost in the act of translation, and while most are inconsequential to the context, many are at least thought provoking.  Sometimes a point of translation can turn on just such an issue.  Much of this form of study centers on vocabulary, but my preferred emphasis is on the grammar, syntax, accidence and context of a given passage, and so my personal library is replete with study aids that focus similarly.  If you want to understand more about that area of my life, read the part of this page about theology and comparative religion.

With several years of high school and college Spanish under my belt, I also teach that language and have ocassionally written handouts designed to help students learn the way in which the language operates, not just its vocabulary.  Among my pending works is an abbreviated Spanish grammar that I have been compiling over the years.  I admit it is not a high priority for me right now, but like so many other projects, I work on it and them a little bit at a time whenever I find the inspiration.

• Links to Spanish language aids and lingual education.

Music

I come from a very musical immediate family.  My father plays the coronet, used to sing tenor in our church choir (before he had throat surgery) and loves to listen to classical and Latin American music in the evenings.  He still leads the song services in church, something he has enjoyed for many years.  I get most of my passion for this subject from him.  My late mother (God rest her soul) played the clarinet and the piano and sang alto/mezzo-soprano.  My two sisters likewise have alto ranges.  The elder plays the guitar, and the younger plays both the flute and the piccolo and was a standout flutist in Merced's famous Marching 100 band during each of her high school years.  I fondly remember travelling to many parades and band meets with her to watch our alma mater take home trophy after first-place sweepstakes trophy.  The band's former leader and I are still very good friends, as are our families.  There are numerous others in my extended family with similarly varied expertises.  My first cousin (once removed) Hiram plays the flute, piccolo, clarinet and saxophone, and my much younger cousin Isaac is turning into a precocious drummer!  Both my uncle Sammy and my cousin Peter are guitar experts who supply most of the instrumental background in our family reunions.

And what's my contribution to this plethora of familial talent?  Well, if you've read the autobiography on my Background Page, you already know that I play the violin, an instrument I used during junior high school in orchestras and joint school symphonies.  After about seven years, however, I lost interest in that instrument (although I still retain some skill) and, at my family's behest, tried the classical, six-stringed guitar instead.  I love the sound of it, and I still ocassionally practice strumming and picking techniques.  Although both Sammy and Peter are far more expert than I am, I can hold my own when the cry goes up for "coritos."  I have a baritone voice and have sung both baritone and bass in church choirs, numerous religious musical productions and one country quartet with which I toured for nearly a year.

My musical tastes vary considerably, ranging from classical (what my father calls "long hair") to jazz, country and pop music.  However, I don't care for rap, reggae or hard rock 'n roll for the most part; they're often too harsh and discordant for me.  The lyrics don't usually bother me because music as an art form is a vehicle for true self-expression, for which I am not normally accountable.  That is, if I didn't write it, I don't care what is says.

• Speaking of things I've written, here's a synopsis of the life and career of one of my favorite musicians, Sir Victor Borge.
• Links to other musicians and their works.

Theology and Comparative Religion

As I mentioned in the Language Studies section, I have an extensive library of religious study aids, many of which deal with the art of translating the Bible's original documents.  As a point of study, the related areas of Christian theology, comparative religion, logic and apologetics seem dry to some, but I have found them to be eminently fruitful for me.  When I worked at my father's bookstore, I often found time to read many books about these subjects, and I still do, retaining many of them in my library for future reference.  A apologetic treatise is inappropriate at this point as it would occupy too much space on a page that has already become too long; that's what links are for.  However, at least a brief summary of my religious background is called for at this juncture.

You might want to know that my theology is dominantly trinitarian and my soteriology Augustinian with a touch of Calvinism.  I choose to describe my predispositions in theoretical terms because I come from a non-denominational background, so I prefer not to do so in denominational ones.  In any event, I think this way is necessarily more comprehensive even if it is less precise.

Christian apologetics is a long-standing pastime with me.  I have written many outlines and logical treatises about my understanding of the Scriptures and studies of various works by noted theologians, historians and religious philosophers.   A few of them are listed below.

• Links to religious articles from my library and other resources.
• Ok, it doesn't have anything to do with Christianity or religion, but I also wrote a research paper recently on whether Puerto Rico's proposed statehood would change the way in which some people treat Puerto Ricans.

Writing Short Stories

As you can see particularly from the other sections on this page, I love to write.  One of my favorite pastimes in this regard is writing (and reading) short stories and essays.  Having done much of the latter in the course of my schooling, it stands to reason that I should likewise try my hand at the former.  When it comes to essays, my preferred topics, aside from what my college instructors have required of me, are described in the section on Language Studies and Theology and Comparative Religion.  Another of my pet projects is a sci-fi novel I started drafting when I was in high school.  I'm not ready to disclose anything about it yet as it's been on my To-Do list for most of the last few years pending the completion of my college education in accounting and because I want to protect the majority of its content, but perhaps later I can summarize a chapter or two from it here for your enjoyment.  We'll see.

Like so many of us, I have a list of my favorite authors in several literary genres.  Here are links to a few of those who have their own web sites and catalogs.

• Links to and summaries about my favorite authors and books.