/elated

"Congratulations! A preliminary analysis of your test results shows that you were successful in achieving the passing score established by the SOA/CAS/CIA for Exam P/1 (Probability)."

Princess Celestia

Tabby was getting up in the middle of the night and joining Becky & I in bed. It's kind of cute when it happens occassionally, but not so much when it was happening every night. So Becky came up with a plan to motivate Tabby to stay in bed. We made a chart for her to put stickers on and got her a prize for when the chart was filled up. Every morning when she woke up in her own bed she got a sticker for her chart.

For the prize? Well, Tabby loves My Little Pony. She has a few ponies, some ads that came with them showing all the other ponies, we go online and watch the videos introducing each pony. And Tabby's favorite, of course, is the princess of all the ponies. When Becky was explaining the chart idea to Tabby, she got the prize out to show off and Tabby's eyes went wide with adoration as she gasped, "That's Princess Celestia!" Yup, Becky hit on the right idea.

There were some rough moments. Like the first morning when Tabby wanted to fill the whole chart up with stickers right away. And the second night when she joined us in bed, refused to go back to her own and really didn't get a sticker when she woke up that morning. After the first row was filled she asked if she could get Celestia now, and her mood visibly sagged when I explained that she had to fill up a whole nother row. But she did it. This morning Tabby has her Princess Celestia.

Win

So I'm lounging in bed the other morning in that wake up groggy, still half asleep, listening the sounds of the house state. The shower was going. Teenage boys walking in the kitchen, voices low, words indistinct. Suddenly little feet hit the floor in Tabby's room, ran across the house, pattered down the stairs and stopped at my door. It creaked open, my little girl peeked in and crossed to the side of the bed grinning.

"Good morning, Tabby!"

"Good morning, Daddy! I'm sure glad to see you home!"

She giggled as I swung her high up to crash into the mattress. And as I hugged her close all I could think was, "No Mr. Sheen, you are not winning."

European Court of Justice Ruling

A big topic in the actuarial world is a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice banning the use of gender to set insurance rates. For example, insurance companies in Europe can no longer charge men ages 16-25 more for auto insurance than they do women in that age bracket. At least, the fact that they're male can't be the reason they're charged more.

That's a huge change for insurance pricing and is expected to have mixed results in terms of how it affects gender economics. The auto insurance example is the first most of us experience, but later in life, men can get annuities with higher payouts. So while we typically think of men getting shafted by insurance companies, that's only because it's the experience most of us have personally seen. Gender affected rating actually adversely affects women significantly. And these are just two examples to illustrate the contrast between how insurance companies see men and women.

A lot of actuaries are taking the ECJ ruling as a "you guys have been getting it wrong" indictment. Taken as a criticism of their calculations, that would be absurd. Young men are charged more for auto insurance because they get into more costly accidents. Women receive lower annuity payments because they're likely to live longer. Actuaries don't have that wrong. What I think actuaries are taking as more damning is the implication that "you guys are reinforcing a social division that is wrong". From the actuarial point of view, the division isn't wrong. It's just the way things are. However, from a social justice perspective, simply because something is, doesn't mean it is right.

Personally, I don't think it should be taken as an indictment so much as an expression of how society is changing. Sure, actuaries have been rating a certain way for insurance companies forever. Over time, however, the general public (i.e. insurance customers) has come to view treating men and women differently in certain areas as wrong. Not all areas, maybe, but economics is certainly one area society has decided men and women should be treated equally.

Let's assume insurance companies, or at least the people in the companies, being human beings from the same society, agree that men and women should be treated economically equally. Which company is going to be the first to say, "Okay, we'll charge men and women the same rates." That's just not feasible in a competitive industry. Men will buy that company's auto insurance, while women flock to its competitors' lower auto rates. Women will buy life annuities from it, but men will look elsewhere for higher pay outs. That company will end up with all the bad risks and quickly go out of business.

The ECJ has given insurance companies an opportunity to make the change. It is putting societal values into something enforceable. It is societies way to bring insurance companies into line with its values. Personally, I think the ruling is okay. There are insurance companies kicking up a storm over it. It will be costly for them to redo their rates. But I think it's the right thing to do. Especially from the perspective of someone soon to enter the profession, I think telling insurance companies, "hey, you need to do a lot of actuarial work" . . . well, I'm kinda' hoping they do.

Happy Birthday!

One of these girls now has the answer to life, the universe and everything.

The picture is actually from a trip this summer to the botanical gardens in Milwaukee. But Becky still looks just as good.

She got candy for her birthday. When I picked up Tabby from school I told her we were going to get Mom flowers for her birthday and asked what she thought we should get Mom for a present. She suggested the candy. Of course, Tabby also told me that for her own birthday I should get her flowers and candy . . . so you know, maybe she wasn't thinking so much about what Mom would like. Which is okay. Becky had recently mentioned wanting chocolates, so I thought it was a fine idea.

We also went out to eat at Jimmy Johns. And Becky didn't have to fight for the computer to watch Ghost Whisperer. It was all hers for the evening.

Fire and Ice

I spent a Saturday at the Fire and Ice game convention in Manitowoc a couple weeks back. It was a great time. I saw Dan, Steve and Chris, whom I gamed with occassinally when I lived in Sheboygan, and Tye who is a great friend I first met in the UWGB Gamers Club and continued gaming with off and on for years after we both graduated. I also saw several people I recognized from and generally only see at Fire and Ice.

And of course I played games all day which I haven't had the chance to do since we moved to Green Bay.

Game 1: D12 Pirate Seas.
Participants: Me, Tye, his dad Al, and a couple people I didn't know and didn't see again after. Pete and Tom, I think.

This was a game Tye was playtesting for a group called the Red Shirt Gamers. Basic premise is that we're all pirates sailing around some islands racking up points (and resources) by visiting the islands and/or blowing each other out of the water. As we get points we can improve our ships from tier 1 to 2 to 3. The winner is the one who gets to a certain number of points first at tier 3.

It was a fun game. Relatively easy mechanics. We had to end the game before finishing it because the table was reserved for the next time slot. I had just blown Tom out of the water on his way to get a tier 3 ship, went and got my own tier 3 ship. Tye & his dad were close enough to their tier 3 ships that it was still anyone's game.

Game 2: Neuroshima Hex!
Participants: Me, Chris, a guy from Chicago named Travis and a guy named Tim from Sheboygan. I'd never met Tim before, but he knew Steve.

Neuroshima Hex is a tile placement game premised on a sci-fi future when earth has been taken over by neuro-machines? I don't know. Something like that. Each player draws tiles a random hand of tiles from his stash and places them on the board where they have some affect to either remove tiles placed by other players or help keep his own previously placed tiles on the board. Players get points by hits on other players "base" tile. Once you're hit a certain number of times (like, 30?), you're eliminated from the game. Tim bowed out about 1/3 of the way through the game to go play something else. The game was close. we eventually got to a point where I was at 4 points, Chris at 2 and Travis at 1. Chris knocked Travis out of the game and hit me 3 times. Then we spent several turns positioning tiles, I managed to get one hit in on Chris, then he took me out to win.

Game 3: Barbarossa
Participants: Me, Chris, Travis

Anime, Nazi, pin up girls invade Russia. A deck building game. Players start with a small deck of cards from which to draw a hand which is used to draft other cards from a public set into their own decks. The cards you draft let you get even more cards, some of which give points. Object of the game is to have the most points at the end. The game is actually only available in Japan and is printed entirely in Japanese. Travis had bought it while he was there once and had all the cards translated.

It was a fun game. I putzed around figuring it out and trying to grab cards with good synergy that would, theoretically let me get points faster eventually. Travis took a quick lead grabbing points cards as quickly as possible from the start and Chris followed his example. The final score ended up Travis 63, me 60, Chris 45.

Game 4: Dominion
Participants: Me, Travis

A card game with very similar mechanics to Barbarossa. In fact, if I understand correctly, Dominion came first and Barbarossa used its mechanics as a base design. Dominion is fantasy based, though, with military might and mystical might cards that each let you grab different points cards. I got lucky and the points cards that came up in the game fit well with the deck I accumulated. I won 65 to 50.

Game 5: Cyclades.
Particpants: Me, Steve, Tim and Heath. Heath is from Osh Kosh (I think? Maybe Fond du Lac). I see him pretty much every Fire & Ice.

This is the type of game I come to Fire & Ice to play. It was awesome. It was a resource driven war game, i.e. control areas on a map to gain resources, use the resources to purchase units, use the units to conquer more area on the map, fight other players towards some win condition. Cyclades is set in mythological Greece. Units are very, very simple. One type of naval unit, one type of army unit. Complexity in the game comes from the types of resources. There is basic "goods" that are used to purchase units and fortifications (strengthening your units and applying towards the win condition) and there's "favor" with the gods that reduces the cost of bidding for a god's patronage and finally there is the patronage of the gods. Patronage controls what you can do on any given turn. Naval maneuvers require Poseidon's patronage, army maneuvers require Ares', Zeus increases your "favor", Apollo your "goods" and Athena provides an alternate win condition. Each god also allows you to build one type of fortification and you essentially need two of each in order to win. Every turn you bid your goods (the same goods that are used to purchase units), with bonuses based on favor, against other players to get the patronage you want. That bidding process was a very fun dynamic to what otherwise is a very simplistic war game.

Heath and Tim jumped to high early favor with the gods, allowing them to pretty much get whatever patronage they wanted every turn while Steve and I took whatever was left to us. I typically defaulted to Apollo simply because I could get it cheaply. Which meant I racked up a lot of income per turn and could use whatever patronage I ended up with to its maximum utility. It was just a challenge to get the patronage that would be useful. Steve and Heath each met one of the two required win conditions early in the game, but the mechanics were balanced well enough that we could all stop each other from winning while we tried to manipulate the board positioning. It was intense, but I ended up grinding out two win conditions first while every one else was also within about a turn of winning.

And that's it. Fun, fun day.

Walker

I've heard Scott Walker say on several occassions something to the effect of, "Hey, why are you all so surprised? Why so upset? I told you during the election that this is what I was going to do. This is what you elected me to do." As if it were really that simple.

I don't doubt there are people who elected Walker to bust up unions. And there were probably people who elected him to devestate government programs. Then there are those who elected him to get strict concessions from the unions, like he said he would, but aren't quite willing to go along with Walker legislating the unions' concessions for them and killing their ability to recover from the economic downturn once it's over. There are those who might have thought getting localities to cut costs was a good idea during the campaign, but think maybe Walker is going too far when he not only does that, but also cuts state aid to localities and prohibits them from raising revenue. Ever. And of course there are people who voted for Walker for no reasons related to economics at all. Maybe simply because he wasn't the other guy. I personally know at least one guy who voted for him only because he promised he'd let us carry guns in public.

Kind of a funny tangent. I've been to one Democratic party organization meeting in the past. Yep, only one. At that one was also the head of a union at a local aluminum rolling mill. He claimed that he could convince every one of his union members to vote for Democrats if he could just make them believe Democrats weren't really going to take their guns away. So 2+2 = maybe Walker should rethink pissing off unions then telling their member to go ahead and carry their guns wherever they want.

In any case, it seems somewhat disingenuous of Scott to keep telling us, "This is what you elected me to do!" when #1, he really hadn't told us the details of what he planned and most importantly, #2, in light of recent polling indicating that people are thinking, "Dude, if we'd known you were going to totally destoy public unions and starve government into inefficacy, we'd have voted for the other guy!"

Chairs

This may look like a picture of two chairs . . . but the important part is the woman in the background there who refused to turn around and take credit for her work.

We bought these chairs 3-4 years ago from Acuity when it was replacing them with newfangled fancy pants chairs. Acuity had already owned them for nearly 10 years. Then we've been kind of rough on them. Especially with our Tabby potty training. Becky finally decided she had enough. We aren't really in a position to buy new chairs so she just decided to take one apart and figure out how to reupholster it. Has she ever done any upholstery work? No! But hey, how different can it be from sewing anything else, right?

Well tada! The red chair is what they both looked like. The blue one is Becky's handiwork.

I daresay it's better now that when we bought it.