quality time together

i granted andrew one birthday wish this year, in my attempt to make his birthday special and exciting. the birthday wish had some parameters: it had to be something i could do, not too extravagant, and just reasonable in general.

andrew decided his greatest reasonable wish was for me to play 2 hours of starcraft under his guidance and tutorial. i thought it was sweet that he wanted to spend time with me, but to be honest i wasn't super hyped about it. so on sunday we sat down together in front of his computer, me with my diet coke, andrew with a gleam in his eye, and we opened up starcraft. luckily for both of us, i have played early versions of warcraft and so real-time strategy was not a completely foreign concept. nevertheless, it was soon apparent that starcraft proficiency did not run in the family.

i played on casual, and actually advanced three levels (woot!) with andrew looking over my shoulder and basically micro-ing me. it was surprisingly enjoyable, mainly because andrew and i were there sort of working together. we might play a level every sunday just for kicks.

i also got a bit invested in the story. jim raynor is this bad a** rebel who is fighting the evil emperor of the universe. he had this hottie girlfriend who was infected by bugs and is now the bug queen, destroying worlds and attempting to eliminate humankind. i don't see a happy ending for raynor, but who knows, maybe joss whedon is not writing for them.

the "western outer-space" theme was prominent, and has been a favorite of mine ever since firefly. i do wish they had some more female marines and characters. the whole thing just seemed too male dominated for me. all the medics are female? all the marines are male? lame. i bet a woman could be as powerful in that huge space fighting suit that the marines wear.

in fact, i even dreamed about starcraft last night. i was with the ladies from our ward on an outlying planet. the zerg were fast approaching and raynor was calling all of us ladies in to fight the zerg or run simulations. it was up to us to save the planet, but we were still unsure if it was going to be possible. i woke up just as flying zerg thingies were entering our atmosphere.

i can't decide if that means i should never play starcraft again or if the dream was a prophecy for the future, and i need starcraft to hone the skills necessary to fight off bug like aliens who can infest humans...

What am I constantly studying?

Sometimes people ask me what I could be spending so much time studying, after all didn't I already graduate? I came across this sample exam problem that I thought I'd share to give you all some insight to problems actuaries are charged to solve.

For a tyrannosaur with a taste for scientists:

i) The number of scientists eaten has a binomal distribution with parameters q=0.6 and m=8
ii) The number of calories of a scientist is uniformly distributed on (7000, 9000)
iii) The number of calories of scientists eaten are independent, and are independent of the number of scientists eaten

Calculate the probability that two or more scientists are eaten and exactly two of those eaten have at least 8000 calories each.

Apparently actuarial science is just as much about dinosaur dietary habits as it is about financial models and life contingencies.

Drat

A new season begins and I get demoted. Makes sense because I lost my first 10 games in the diamond leage. At least I can tell my kids someday that I was in the diamond leage (even if it was only for a few weeks).