Happy Thoughts

  1. My company does expect video on. I often don’t, because when it’s just my own team, we see each other enough, but with other audiences, I will.

  2. This is a call with friends to catch up, so I could go either way on this one.

  3. I have a call with the chief actuary immediately after this one, so I will need the camera on for that, and won’t have time to get ready in between.

Another £3.2bn mega deal just came through.

UK PRT market is completely off the rails right now.

Sounds like the 2nd half of 2023 is going to be ultra busy with work.

So many pension schemes are now fully funded so its going to be buyout central.

Looking forward to that moon-sized bonus in 2024 :slight_smile:

This seems to be a US thing. Asking for video.

We never do it unless you are doing some Expert Panel (to defend a paper) or talking to CFO or CRO.

It is such a lovely day I am going to actuarialize on the back deck!!! :sunglasses:

:ice_cream: !!! :yum:

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So that’s what the kids are calling it these days?

I dunno what kind of emails you folks.get from your mother, but heres what my 80yo mother just sent me.

We started with 4 pigs, two for us and two for Doug. A couple of weeks ago we started to get suspicious. Does that one look pregnant? Maybe that one also? and now maybe the third one as well. Right now pig #1 is having her babies. Last count eight and more to come. Upon closer inspection pig #4 is a fixed male so at least he wont add to the count.

Lol.

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In my experience, it varies in the US. I’d say more companies are ‘camera on’ than not, but not by a huge margin.

My current employer is fully remote and we are a cameras on culture, but if you’re eating or taking a call while walking or whatever, cameras aren’t mandatory. And nobody GAF what you’re wearing, or if your hair is messy, or whatever.

I was at a team dinner on Thursday night. Was talking with the guy next to me, he is in a more sales role, not actuarial. We work together often, but we don’t socialize much. We were talking about our kids, as we have kids around the same ages. I mentioned “my 10 year old this” and “my 7 year old that.”

He asked me, “which one is older?” And I paused for a second, trying to make sense of the question, before responding, “the………10 year old?” And the whole table erupted in laughter, it was probably the best response I’ve ever had, the delivery was one point, the moment was right. I will be riding that high for years.

(Turns out, he thought I had a boy and a girl, and that was what he was asking.)

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Foraging yesterday





The girl on the left was total plant lady. She kept getting distracted finding plants and looking them up in a book lol.

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I’m a bit surprised that all of your ramps had bulbs included. I was taught that you should pick mainly leaves and just a few bulbs as they take 7-15 years to grow. Otherwise you (and other foragers over the following days) may wipe out the entire patch and they will never grow back (as has happened in many parts of North America).

We are harvesting the bulbs, so yeah, they all have bulbs.
Theres a lot of different opinions on harvesting them sustainably my son has a bit of an education in this area and calls bullcrap on some of the ideas out there. And since i dont know, we go with his method.

We take small clumps out of large patches then move on to a new patch. Imo thats all we have to do. The area we harvest is huge and we are the only ones that harvest there so we just move to a new area every year. Theres areas.that we will likely never even get to. Our minimal harvesting has no impact imo since we just take a small sample from a large patch, and dont repeat areas year over year.

Im aware of the concern over sustaining them. If i was in an area where the were under pressure i just wouldnt harvest any. But we have so many where we are we really dont have any impact.

We are hitting a 100 acre area of landlocked bush on private land thats full of them, surrounded by miles of bush also full of them. It’s an hydro tower cooridor that stretches 50 miles at the back of farms, not accessible to the public :).

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Just got a text reminder for my massage in 2 days.

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It’s the time of year for such happy thoughts. Age 65, mentioning both parents, :tup:

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I planted some ramps last year. I was pleased to see they mostly survived this year. Hopefully they will multiply in a few years.

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Radishes have sprouted in my garden!

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Well, other than some herbs and two pepper plants, I don’t have anything growing in my yard. Certainly no ramps, I’m super jealous of that and maybe I should plant some. But the farmers’ market has kicked off in my town and there is one open tonight, two blocks from my house. So we’ll be walking up there after work.