Rick Bynaker's Home Page


Welcome to my home page! If you link somewhere and there's a problem, let me know. Also, please tell me if you think I should link to your page or if you've found pages with similar interests you think I might like to visit.

Sections


Who Am I?

Stats:

DOB: 6/22/71
HEIGHT: 6 ft.
WEIGHT: 250 lbs.
HAIR: Brown, medium length (as far as guys go anyway), in the winter I usually have a beard to keep me warm.
EYES: 2
Okay, I couldn't help myself...it's hard to say what my eye color is. It's kind of a green/blue combination. Not clearly defined really. Some people have very green eyes, some people have very blue eyes, I have two eyes (and as of February 1995 glasses) (and as of May 2001 no more glasses!)


Where am I?

I live in a house in McLean, Virginia.


What do I do?

I'm an accountant. I've done all sorts of accountingy type things (if you're really interested you can take a look at my resumé). Right now I'm self-employed--I've floated around a couple Internet jobs after leaving public accounting. Now I'm doing Accounting and Tax Preparation. Mostly I do income tax returns and bookkeeping. You can visit my business web page at www.bynaker.com.

I graduated from George Mason University with a BS in Accounting and passed the November 1993 Uniform CPA Exam, on my first try I might add (hey, it's my web page, I can brag if I want to!)


Interests

Dogs

I'm a dog lover. Big dogs, little dogs, all kinda dogs. At least I like them as long as they're somebody else's dog. I like to travel too much and it just wouldn't be fair to the dog to have to kennel them or have a friend take care of them while I'm gone.


Computers

Yes, I'm one of those computer geeky types. When I worked for RLM I was termed "Rick the DOS king." I'm not too fond of Windows but I've been forced into it (that popular demand thing.) They did get a lot better with 98 but there were still some buggy things. Everything I use at this point is on XP. Haven't made the move to Vista or Windows 7 yet but I expect I'll be forced into it soon enough. I've worked with a bunch of software, some of which is listed on my resumé. I'm also quite fond of Unix. What you're currently reading is hosting on an old PC running FreeBSD with an Apache web server.

My latest dabbling has been in PHP and MySQL. I wrote a due date monitoring/project management system which I use for my business.

Travel

I've travelled extensively across the U.S. If anyone's counting (other than me that is) with my Summer 2004 trip to Hawaii, I've been to all 50 states.

I've also been to Eastern Canada, Vancouver (on the way back from Alaska), Mexico (just over the border from San Diego, Cozumel, Acapulco, Huatulco), Australia (mostly Queensland but a little into New South Wales), Taiwan, Denmark, The Bahama's, Bermuda, St. Maarten, Aruba, Grand Cayman, Costa Rica and Panama. For my next trip I would like to take a train across Canada.

I really love the outdoors. I've never been much of a city sight-seeing type person, I'd much rather visit a national park and see something that hasn't been destroyed by humans yet. There are so many good ones but some of my favorites are Yellowstone (WY), The Painted Desert (AZ), Crater Lake (OR), Shenandoah (VA), Algonquin (Ontario, Canada), and Denali (Mt. McKinley). Denali has been my most recent addition to this list. I visited there in August of 2001 and it was breathtaking.


Music

My musical tastes are very limited. I really only see two categories of music, country and non-country. :) Some of my favorite artists are Travis Tritt, Blackhawk, Vince Gill, George Strait, Don Williams, and Sara Evans.


Food

I love Italian food. Any type of pasta with meat sauce. I'm also a meat and potatoes kind of guy. And of course pizza, but that goes without saying. I can't cook worth a damn (I can throw some meat and beans in a crock pot and make chili) but I eat mostly in restaurants. I figure if you want something done right, you go to a professional, right? :) I'm also fond of Mexican food but I'm not a fan of onions or sour cream so that limits my choices some. Tacos, fajitas and burritos are good though.


Philosophies

Here are what I think about some things. I'll add more as I have the time and ideas. In no particular order...

Make-up

I think this is the biggest waste of time and money in the world. I fail to see the point of it all. I think if people would just accept who they are rather than make themselves up to be someone they're not the world would be a much better place. People end up liking the color of your lips and eyes and not really liking you. I'm a down to earth kind of guy and what you see is what you get and it would be nice if everyone else were like that too. Not much else to say about it, you either understand or you don't.


Religion

I don't really have any religious beliefs. I certainly don't follow any structured religion. As far as the God thing goes, sometimes I believe and sometimes I don't. I do however acknowledge other people's right to believe whatever they want to believe as long as what they believe does not interfere with someone else. (Huh?)


Politics

I tend to be conservative when it comes to politics but I'm certainly not married to the Republican party. I vote for people, not parties. I guess if it really came down to it, I could probably be categorized as a Libertarian. I think the government should mostly just leave people alone. Sure, I understand the need for a national defense, a police force, and transportation and those things have to be paid for with tax dollars. No problem. But I don't see why I should have to pay for welfare and social security. If the government would just stop taking my money in the name of FICA, I would be more than happy to let them keep everything I've given them so far and never pay me a dime.


Accounting Links
Internet Traceroute Gateways and Looking Glasses

Rick Bynaker, CPA
rick@bynaker.com
This page last revised February 25, 2010, revision 2.2.00
Other pages last revised February 25, 2010.