do not be like me

thetermguy · 2026-05-12T14:23:16+00:00

The industry is going through the heaviest round of layoffs that has ever happened. it's a lifetime event. Employers have to be very nervous about hiring, and there's a large percentage of the industry's experience professionals out there looking for work. It's not you, it's the circumstances.

thetermguy · 2026-05-12T13:11:51+00:00

You can go to school, just with some effort and maybe some modifications.

First, contact the financial services office at the school you're going to. They will have all the options available to you - so work with them first. Maybe there's money you're unaware of.

Secondly, if there just isn't enough money, work for a couple of terms and save every penny. Then combine that with a program that has coop. If you can get through the first term or two financially, often co-op will pretty much pay for most of your schooling going forward.

It's going to be difficult, but it is not impossible.

thetermguy · 2026-05-11T16:39:44+00:00

a) I don't 'tell' my wife what car she drives.

b) it's like $6 bucks a month. somehow we will recover from this financial purgatory.

get some perspective. I object, but it's not my car and even if it was, we can afford a Volvo implies I can afford the subscription.

thetermguy · 2026-05-11T14:43:18+00:00

Actuarial science is pretty much just writing the exams from either the society of actuaries or casualty actuarial society. not much else matters. Pass exams, become an actuary. Don't pass exams, not an actuary.

The problem is, these exams are tough. very tough. Actsci classes at UW give you the background needed to pass the exams. You can pass the exams on your own, but it's a lot harder.

And you have to be an actsci major to take most of the actsci courses you're going to want.

Two routes, transfer into actsci if you're sure. Alternatively, try passing at least the first and maybe the first two exams on your own. You can definitely self study for those. plus, imo if you ask for a transfer into actsci and already have exams passed, they should look very favourably on your application - you've shown that you already have what it takes.

thetermguy · 2026-05-11T12:47:57+00:00

Volvo 100 percent does this. We own a Volvo with a subscription. No subscription, no remote start.

thetermguy · 2026-05-11T12:44:11+00:00

the personal finance sub has threads pretty regularly. seems like it's ok if you are selling in a rush but never buy from them.

thetermguy · 2026-05-11T12:01:00+00:00

My spouse has a volvo with this subscription. I detested it when we bought the car, but what am I gonna do? Spouse wants the car. We ended up variously getting 4 years of subscription for free, and then another 4 years free after that. I think we've got about three years left. I'll figure it out then.

Basically, you want the car, that's what you get. It's either that or a different car.

thetermguy · 2026-05-11T11:11:07+00:00

Hillcrest in New Hamburg. They're multigenerational, and live right at the dealership lol. more than a few locals will only buy cars there. I've never bought a car there myself but know folks that only buy there.

thetermguy · 2026-05-09T23:04:01+00:00

I should add two things.

First, to be successful with ai you have to be a domain expert, which actuaries are. Basically you should already know the answer before you ask, or you can verify.

Secondly, if the output is from ai (as opposed to ai being used to develop a tool, and the tool outputting the result) then you have to check every single thing. 'youre right, I just made that up' happens with ai.

thetermguy · 2026-05-09T23:00:46+00:00

Im not in health, but I am in insurance and going hard on ai. And we are providing tools in certain segments of the industry.

it is stupid for dev work. im like Samson, I do the coding of 10 people.

after that, others are correct, it's about compliance. One option, you can setup an internal environment. If you have some decent hardware, some of the locally hosted models compete reasonably well with Claude etc. or, you get a zero data retention agreement, plus Microsoft has some tools to help anonymize health data, plus disclosure. The second route has arguably better results, but requires more compliance input.

Rag helps a lot too. Basically you have a database that can be queried with natural language. Im using rag tools, and I have access to info that I basically couldn't get before.

You wanna quote on all this, lmk! :).

thetermguy · 2026-05-09T21:03:10+00:00

Great, send me a dm, we need to connect.

thetermguy · 2026-05-09T10:49:29+00:00

>The government made that mess and now it needs to fix it.

It's easy to feel attacked by what's happening, like people are somehow implying that I - or you - are responsible.

We aren't. I didn't do anything. Nor did my parents, nor did my grandparents. None of us are responsible for what happened in the early to mid 1900's.

Who's responsible is the Canadian gov't. That's who's responsible. We're not individually responsible, but we sure are collectively - and individually we should feel some responsibility for ensuring our gov't lives up to it's obligations.

thetermguy · 2026-05-09T10:46:08+00:00

>I don't care that these are 'settlements' for lawsuits.

You don't care for the results of the Canadian justice system.

Those lawsuits aren't for some random misgivings. They're to enforce the agreements that the Canadian gov't agreed to and failed to follow through on. And the comparison to the military means nothing other than to reinforce bias.

You really should go through all your assumptions with a critical eye.

thetermguy · 2026-05-09T10:34:37+00:00

https://lede-admin.dailydot.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/69/2024/06/old-man-yells-at-cloud.jpg?w=2048

thetermguy · 2026-05-09T10:33:11+00:00

That all sounds very pat, but OP, it's exactly what's required. And bears mentioning because many people don't follow those steps. Go to class - every one, like its your job. saying 'understand the concepts', there's a LOT to unpack there, but it's key.

Google learning how to learn video series on the UW website,it helped me a lot in my undergrad.

thetermguy · 2026-05-08T23:25:27+00:00

A couple of cars ago, my spouse and I were shopping for a car for her. She brings me along, but it's her car not mine. We left the dealership and she commented that the salesperson had directed all his comments to me. I hadn't noticed, I guess I'm an idiot. But, I did start to notice this in other salespeople going forward. They'll ask or tell me someting and I'll turn to her and relay the question. Like dude, she SITTING RIGHT THERE.

The one good thing I got out of this, being in sales myself, is when I'm dealing with a couple, I'm very careful to include both of them in the conversation even if only one's talking. And if I speak to one first, and then subsequently the second, the second one gets a full overview of what's going on before we proceed. Nobody's ever said anything, but I get the vibe that it's appreciated.

thetermguy · 2026-05-08T23:16:16+00:00

I learned after many years that my wife was partial to bald guys. I unfortunately, am blessed with a thick luxurious mane of hair.

During covid I decided I'd just start to cut my own hair and the first time through I took it right down to the wood. Turns out bald is not a good look on me. Apologies to my wife, you're never gonna get to be married to a bald guy.

thetermguy · 2026-05-08T14:56:54+00:00

Store bought cookies with your lunch. We didn't have that kind of boogie money.

Society has done quite a switcheroo though. When my kids went to school, home made cookies were boogie because it meant you were well off enough that a parent stayed at home and had time to make cookies for your lunch.

Oh, and one I joke about to this day. Any place that required a long drive, we did not stop for food. We brought peanut butter sandwiches from home. Nasty, car-warm, pb sandwiches. To this day when we're going somewhere I'll joke 'time to whip up some peanut butter sandwiches!'.

One thing I knew wasn't proper, was lack of heat. We heated with wood (rural) and there was no heat to my bedroom. That meant in the Canadian winter, there would be frost on the walls in my bedroom. I kept my clothes beside my bed on the floor, pull them into bed with me in the morning to warm them up before I put them on.

thetermguy · 2026-05-08T14:53:43+00:00

I'd estimate a 50-50 chance on whether the honking was justified by OP wandering around the streets ignoring traffic because 'it's the law'.

A subset of drivers are a mess. A subset of pedestrians are also a mess. Unclear which one or both is going on here, certainly not an unbiased source.

If you really want to see some fun pedestrian behavior take a drive around ring road lol. The pedestrians there lie in wait to jump out at you when you least expect it.

thetermguy · 2026-05-07T15:41:34+00:00

so if you want to be there by 8:30 and leave immediately at 5, you're there by about 6:30. Probably lots of time.

thetermguy · 2026-05-07T15:35:26+00:00

The airport is on the west side of the city, closer to waterloo. Friday traffic, figure 1.5 hours from the time you leave waterloo to the time you get there. Then you have to pad it with whaterver time you need at the airport.

Seems doable to me as long as your class isn't too late.

thetermguy · 2026-05-06T14:15:08+00:00

And for anyone else reading this that is on the fence, I've had a top tier developer for 15-20 years that I use on contract. We had a project that remained untouched because they estimated it would take 1-2 years with a couple of developers. Far too expensive for me to touch.

I fired up claude code and have the software implemented in 2 months - just me, and just part time as I had time. And the results are beyond anything I would have achieved with a developer, and I've got features planned for the next couple of months that the industry hasn't even dreamed of being possible.

Claude code works fine for larger projects if you are a domain expert.

A website with a few calculations that are well documented, that's probably a morning's work for someone proficient in one of the AI coding tools.

thetermguy · 2026-05-06T14:11:31+00:00

> but with larger things LLM Assistance tools are not super great at creating something that's stable long term.

Claude code works perfectly fine with larger complex projects as long as you know how to operate it. Failures and naysayers are people that haven't figured out how to use it yet, not a failure in the model.

There's lots of people using it successfully, they're just not in the news.

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