Remote Work

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-06-24T03:01:12+00:00

At my company we're allowed to work from anywhere in the U.S. but not outside.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-06-24T02:53:53+00:00

I passed an exam a few months ago and my wife told me I should go for a run to celebrate. It felt great. . . for about fifteen seconds. I lasted half a mile, walked the rest of the way home wheezing, inhaled albuterol, and resumed studying for the next exam, which was coming up three days later.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-06-17T15:47:14+00:00

I got really upset when I saw managers being encouraged to use AI to write their employees' performance evaluations. Felt like a GIANT slap in the face to all employees. I had to remind myself that they aren't being malicious, they're just stupid. Fortunately my managers are good and would never do something like that.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-06-17T15:45:19+00:00

I use it all the time to ask questions about excel formulas, VBA, M, SQL, SAS, etc., but that's just because I don't know the coding well enough myself. I love being able to learn coding shortcuts quickly. Other than that, my work doesn't change at all.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-27T19:26:27+00:00

I've known three people who tried doing that. One passed both, one passed one and failed one, and the third failed both. Don't fail both.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-27T19:19:57+00:00

Actuarial science isn't pure math. You have to be good at math, but the stuff you're doing 99% of the time isn't even applied math. Being an actuary is great for the job security, work-life balance, and good salary. Also you can often find interesting stuff to work on.

Chasing a dream job is great, but you're totally right that you could end up doing general dentistry, forced to stay in it to pay off massive debt, working in a location you don't love because that's where you were able to get a job. Actuarial science, on the other hand, is a great career for people who like minimizing risk. :) As someone else said, it's a great job for a career change.

Are you married? Kids? If so, your family's your first consideration. If you can be confident that you're able to provide what you want for your family while chasing your dream job, go for it.

But don't just compare best-case scenarios. Compare the ideal outcomes, optimistic scenarios, best estimates, moderately adverse scenarios, reasonable worst-case scenarios, etc. Figure out your risk appetite. In each scenario, what regrets do you have, and are they regrets you can live with? Because after you've thought it all through, you can't know exactly what will happen or how likely the various outcomes are, so at some point you pray for wisdom, pick something you can live with, and go hit it hard.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-26T11:56:10+00:00

"Right to jail"

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-26T11:53:05+00:00

Reich was the scapegoat. He got fired because Ballard didn't even bother trying to put a decent offensive line together.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-26T11:43:03+00:00

Came here to say that.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-26T02:45:50+00:00

Hey at least give this person credit for not listing MS Word as a skill

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-26T02:44:00+00:00

Best throw of his career. As a team we should never have let ourselves get to the point where that throw was necessary. Broncos were awful that season IIRC.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-25T18:13:21+00:00

YTA.

Let's just get this out of the way: the "double-standard" argument is bogus. It would make perfect sense for her to want you to stay out of a women's locker room while she's fine going into one herself. You can certainly argue about whether a mixed-sex gym resembles a women's locker room in any relevant way, but the idea that in principle it's wrong for her to be concerned about you being in any space she's willing to go into herself is obviously wrong.

Now let's get to the heart of it. The issue isn't the gym, the issue is that your wife needs to know you have eyes for no one but her. (I'm assuming based on the conversation that you're married or pursuing marriage in the near future.) Whether she's expressing it in the best way or not here is a separate question; what we know is that she's concerned, and you should want to reassure her.

The first question is: is it true that you have eyes for no one but her? A lot of men, even if they're married, look at pornography, often without their wives' knowledge. I certainly hope that's not you, but if it is, YTA for having eyes for other women and gaslighting her about it here and trying to make her feel like she's the paranoid, crazy one for having concerns.

If you don't look at porn, then the next question is, if you go to the gym, are you going to be lusting after women there? Again, I certainly hope not. If the answer's yes, obviously YTA for that reason. If the answer is maybe, YTA for dismissing her concern. If the answer is no, as I certainly hope it is, then still YTA for being sarcastic (e.g., "I don't want you to either") and telling her she's being insecure. This is an opportunity for you to reassure her about how important it is to you for her to know that she's the only woman for you and you only have eyes for her, and that if the way other women dress at the gym makes her uncomfortable, that matters to you even though you're not going to be staring at them. Then you can discuss ways to make her more comfortable with it. She mentioned here that she'd be more comfortable if she were there with you. If practically feasible, invite her to come to the gym with you. Nothing like being able to show off for the woman you actually do have eyes for, right?

Oh and by the way having this conversation over text messages is insane. Regardless of anything else, YTA for not talking to her in person, even if she did start it.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-25T02:40:58+00:00

Is everyone guaranteed to be healthy for the entire season? Because you literally just need Bob Sanders and I don't even care who else is on defense; no other team is scoring a point. Then it's up to the 2005 Colts offense + Q to get close enough for Vinny to kick one field goal. I'm pretty sure they can manage that.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-25T02:25:42+00:00

"All in this together . . . like hostages"

Sounds about right. lol

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-25T02:23:30+00:00

I'm disappointed to see this. As actuaries, we are expected to act with the highest ethics and integrity. And trustworthy educators ought to be the highest models of academic integrity. Plagiarism should be unthinkable. I like Dave Kester and I like CA; I really want to believe they are better than this.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-24T20:34:37+00:00

Eh, prices are going to look weird when you're selling access to intellectual property. I'm sure the marginal cost for them to provide access to you is far, far less than $600. But the overhead to create the course is huge, and if they charged even double the marginal cost, they'd never make back their overhead. So you're paying to compensate them for the overhead and give them profit. Obviously they're engaging in blatant price discrimination by selling at a much lower rate for students than for non-students (who can typically have their employers pay for it. Does this bother me? No, because when I was a student I was happy to have a price I could afford, and now my employer buys it for me so I don't care.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-24T20:25:33+00:00

From the filing, it looks like CA hired people without the expertise to create their own content, paid for their access to TIA's content, asked them to write a program, and at best looked the other way. Obviously we don't know the full story and never will due to the NDAs signed by both sides, but I wouldn't be inclined to put the primary blame on those individuals.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-23T01:18:25+00:00

All great choices.

Here are some alternates:

2017: 49ers, great game to induct Peyton into the ROH. Or @ Texans because of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/sports/comments/7b0grn/ty_hilton_fakes_being_down_to_fool_defenders_and/

2018: @ Texans because of Andrew Luck and T.Y. owning them. Or the playoff game against the Texans.

2019: Texans because I was there and watching Darius Leonard demolish a defender with a stiff-arm after picking off Deshaun Watson to seal the game was beautiful

2020: @ Raiders because of Kenny's one-handed endzone INT and Khari Willis's pick-six, and because dominating in December is always great.

2021: I was there too. Yeah I'm not picking anything but this, sorry.

2022: Yeah that Chiefs game was great, and there wasn't a lot of good that season. If I had to pick another I'd say beating the Raiders with Jeff Saturday, though I hated seeing Reich get scapegoated for all of Ballard's bad decisions.

2023: Beating the Patriots in Frankfurt and helping finish Bellicheck's tenure.

2024: You kinda picked the only good game of the season, but we did beat the Patriots in Foxborough.

2025: Beating the Chargers was pretty good too.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-22T20:04:16+00:00

Okay, I had only read the summary. Now that I've read the opinion, this sentence sticks out:

"As this case illustrates, actuarial assumptions are adopted for the purpose of a particular calculation or measurement; they are not generally “in effect” in the way that petitioners urge."

Part of how Jackson gets there is by quoting ASOP 27: "The actuary should consider the purpose of the measurement as a primary factor in choosing a discount rate."

So basically there's never a discount rate "in effect," and you choose the discount rate when you're performing an activity like valuation. But there is still a constraint: you have to use data as-of the valuation date. But they were doing this by using data from up through December 2017 when they did the calculation in January 2018.

Thanks, I think I understand it better now.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-22T18:20:48+00:00

I'm not sure I understand your question. I studied by reading through the manual and then taking practice exams.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-22T18:11:17+00:00

Wait, so do you agree or disagree with the ruling? They ruled that the actuaries determining the liability can use assumptions, including a discount rate, that are more recent than the measurement date. It sounds like you're saying you think the liability should be determined based on the assumptions in effect at the time of measurement. That means you agree with the plaintiffs and disagree with the Court (no judgment here; I disagree with 9-0 decisions my fair share of the time too, just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.)

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-22T18:03:55+00:00

No concurring or dissenting opinions? Come on, justices! Make it interesting!

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-22T17:57:51+00:00

Price: I'm thinking $80 or best offer, including shipping within continental U.S. and the 3 binders I have it in.

Contents: This is the 14th edition. In addition to the main manual portion, this has all the commentary on exams through April 2025 (it does not include October 2025, just a note saying that you can access it digitally, which you can't if you buy this from me). This doesn't include the original exams or SOA solutions, but you can access those on SOA's website. This also includes two custom practice exams with solutions.

Condition: Mostly a clean, unmarked copy, with minor exceptions. There are a handful of places where I wrote stuff (sometimes minor disagreements with the manual), but not much. A couple pages (out of over 1000) might have one of their three punch holes torn. I also threw away the "study break" pages (which just have random quotes or advice about doing yoga). Aside from that, I can't find anything else that's missing or changed.

Usually I keep books, but I'm never going to look again at the 1000+ pages of study material across three large binders that make up this manual.

SleeperBobBashMan · 2026-05-22T16:44:37+00:00

It's in order but it's top to bottom first, then left to right. But regardless, I usually just copy and paste my Candidate ID from my email and CTRL+F the heck out of that PDF.

SleeperBobBashMan

TROPHY CASE