Insurance companies often write multiple lines of business. A given firm may insure people’s cars, the drivers of those cars, their houses, maybe their businesses. Each of these lines shows different loss characteristics and these can change over time. Part of my job is taking a loss listing and assigning the losses to categories so I can then do juju on them as similar groups. Sometimes this isn’t straight forward so I’ll contact someone more familiar with the client who may know. Today I had one of those calls:

Me: So, there’s a claim in 2004 with no real description except that it happened to a fuel oil company. Lists a destroyed vehicle, and about five million more in property damage but no one was injured. What was happening there?
Broker: Oh, that was an explosion.
Me: Any more detail?
Broker: Guy thought he had turned a valve off, turns out he hadn’t. Underground parking lot filled with gas until the building’s heat kicked on and triggered an explosion.
Me: Wow. Gonna call that auto liability.
Broker: Those are rare, though.
Me: How about the loss in 2007? That looks like a bundle of about eleven claims.
Broker: Oh, that was the beginning of the shale boom in that area. New guy operating a truck and he didn’t properly seal a container and it exploded. But that was a one time deal.
Me: Good to know, that’s AL (short for auto liability) too, and in 2011? Again, this one lists a lot of auto liability but no details.
Broker: Oh yes. A truck was on the highway and some volatiles were leaking because it wasn’t properly closed and it started a fire and there was a small explosion.
Me: Uh, huh. Soooooo….
Broker: That’s probably AL too.

I’m an actuary and don’t really do loss containment or preventative action, but it seems like if your three largest claims are all caused by exploding vehicles that someone didn’t properly operate, maybe you should work on that.

My firm hired four inexperienced actuaries. That increases our basic pricing team from three to seven and I get to have a hand in their education. To make room for this gaggle of new proto-actuaries we’re shuffling some existing people into offices that are now empty. Their time there will be comparatively brief; we’ll be moving into a new office space with very few private offices in about six months, but for now some group gets to have their tiny domains.

Since the move in has happened, I’ve noticed two changes:
1) They spend most of the time with their office doors closed. This suggests to me, that given the opportunity for privacy, they will take it.
2) They ask people to swing by their offices. I’m not entirely sure where this tendency comes from. It could be a subtle observation that the person leaving their office has a tiny amount more walking to do vs someone who just goes to threshold of their fief. It come be a tiny tyranny. It could be trying the phrase on for size.

I hope the latter fades quickly. In the mean time, I’ll enjoy the quieter work place.

The move to an open office plan is not one I meet gladly. My current tactic is to accumulate enough monitors to block out intrusions and bathe myself is soft warm light. I have some pack ratting to do.

This happened two weekends ago:

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHNT” this wasn’t the simple klaxon of the fire alarm from within my apartment, the one that I associate with the celebration of preparing bacon. This was the shrill whine of “the building’s on fire”. I rose, grabbed a blanket, grabbed my phone, grabbed my keys, put on my slippers and descended two stories to the sidewalk. Nothing appeared to be on fire. Good.

I walked back inside, saw that the alarm control panel on the ground floor said “BASEMENT” and “GROUND FAULT” and called the landlord to call the emergency person to call the staff person to ask them to turn the alarm off.

Me: The alarm’s going off.
Landlord: Is anything on fire?
Me: No. (Good question though)
Landlord: I don’t have the passcode.
Me: Ok. Please call when you get it.

The fire department arrived. Asked if anything was on fire, I said nope and a gaggle of Irishmen looked about. While they were, a vagrant asked me for a dollar to buy a donut. I was arguably more disheveled than he but he asked anyway. I said no and he shuffled off.

The fire department left, giving me permission to go back inside. I smiled and said thank you. They sheepishly apologized for their powerlessness.

Every pass code I’ve encountered has been four digits. My building number is four digits. Hm? “4-0-1-4, enter, silence alarm, huh.” So that worked and the alarm went off. I went back to bed and 30 minutes later the alarm went off again. I entered the code again and this time the alarm stayed off for maybe 15 seconds. I entered it again when LBM (large black man), one of the people who works in the ground floor furniture store saw me entering the code and asked “You got a leak up there?” I said no and he said “something’s leaking through the ceiling and dripping onto the power box for the alarm system, setting off the ground fault. He knocked loudly on my downstairs neighbor’s door. He then knocked very loudly and no one came.

The alarm went off again and I showed the store below how to turn it off. On my way back up the stairs, my downstairs neighbor popped his head out of his door. “You!” I yelled. He looked at me. “You need to go downstairs and talk to the store, now. Something’s leaking.” He closed his door and I thought he’d come back out with shoes. He didn’t. I told LBM that he was there. He walked up the stairs knocked on the door, then hammered on the door. Downstairs neighbor opened the door a sliver *wham* LBM becomes ABM (angry black man) and throws the door open and charges through my downstairs neighbor’s seeming opium den. He comes back yells “YOUR BATHROOM IS FLOODED. WHY DID IT NOT OCCUR TO YOU THAT COULD BE A PROBLEM. YOU HAVE SET OFF THE FIRE ALARM AND DESTROYED MY CEILING. WHY WAS A FLOODED BATHROOM NOT SOMETHING YOU THOUGHT WAS A PROBLEM.” My downstairs neighbor’s response was….a blank stair. “CLEAN IT THE FUCK UP OR YOU WILL REPLACE MY CEILING”. I assumed he meant “would be responsible for paying to have it redone” but on reflection he may have meant “I will use your corpse as a cork”.

I almost enjoy scenarios like this. I get to show competence. I figured out how to contact the building super from frantic googling of our property manager’s parent company, I figured out the fire code, and helped write “Angry Black Man and the Downstairs Neighbor Whose Shit Flooded”. That said. The quietude of a place to myself would be quite nice. So the search continues.

I downloaded Surgeon Simulator 2013 wishing for a lighthearted game to play between bouts of studying. It’s like the QWOP of job simulators. The controls are quite difficult and hard to engage with the world. For instance, I found the easiest way to open the chest cavity is to take a drill and drag it around the rib cage as my hand limped from the weight. Tonight I invited Matt over to try. He took to it well and I have an amazing snap of him beating open someone’s abdominal cavity with an alarm clock. After some play we decided to see how speedrunners took to removing the ribcage.

Here’s how

Yep, hit them across the chest with a hammer fast enough and all the ribs just fly off. I hope it works that way in real life.

I spent the day inside, nibbling at things I needed to do, annoyed by still being sick. I dawdled and cleaned, and picked at notes, and watched the sun go down.

Sometime after dark, I went for cough medicine. My cough had gone from productive to just a dry hacking so went the six blocks to the still open CVS. After taking a moment to see if my anger at the large homeopathic remedy section would trigger dormant pyrokinesis, I grabbed a bottle of cough medicine and I went to check out. Went to self check-out. Scanned. Warning pops up “Age verification required”. Oh? I waited and scanned the store. People were popping in and out, making purchased via self check-out and returning into the night. I looked around, checked the aisles for anyone with a CVS shirt on, nothing. There was a contract security person and I was left to ask him “does….. anyone work here?” He replied “Someone will be here” but in that way of it being aspirational rather than knowing. There was a genuine moment of “am I in the clean but barren future where the only people in the store are the security and the customer?”. We stared at each other for a moment and a CVS person with a coat on came in. She seemed harried and was wrapped in clothing like she’d been brought in for a special occasion. She entered some command on the console and my purchase completed without issue. She muttered “last thing I thought I’d have to do age verification for”.

She hurried back out and I wondered if she was returning to the CVS Personnel Central Distribution Hub to wait the next event requiring human attention. I crested the door and my post-human tomorrow shattered. She had been taking a smoke break with the other cashier. From tyranny to freedom.

I looked at a house today. I thought I was going to like it. I didn’t. The lighting was high and sparse except on the second floor where the reflections off of parking lots, clouds, and brick row homes flooded in prismatic shades of grey. Most of the rooms were long or trapezoidal and had a Wonderland aspect to them. I couldn’t see myself living there. I made the barest effort to hide my disappointment as I left and another group entered to look around.

I had taken off early from work to go see the house which is less than a block from where I live. I logged back in to my work laptop and my boss shot me a message of “done so soon?”. I said I didn’t like it and she said you won’t like the first 100.

I decided that a house was something I wanted about two weeks ago. Exams were getting me down, so I thought about buying a house or dating again so I chose the easier of the two, home ownership. Ideally, Mike would relocate with me and I could stay within a few blocks of a subway station. Mass transit or simply time to get to places is probably my largest consideration after just having the check box of “enough space for my things” marked. The whole process so far has been impolite. The agents for properties I’m looking for lead with questions regarding financing when I’m largely driven by opportunity. Lenders seem to have no interest in sychronizing with incentives for first-time homebuyers and only vaguely aware of them. I don’t need to move, in fact my rent is going up by a whopping 1.6% this year. Getting a letter of credit and having that drive my house purchasing seems to putting the cart before the horse. I will look at places, I will like them, or I will not, and I will go from there. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Matt is considering moving back into the suburbs which I suppose has its benefits. Cost per square foot is certainly lower but there’s a certain emptiness that I feel I’d run into there. The constancy of people in the city is comforting, even if it borders on a kind of slightly angry truce with those around me. At the same time, I feel a growing itch that I should be doing more with the city I’m in. An alternative plan would be to move elsewhere until I finish my exam sequence, save up, and return with a proper apartment sometime when I can afford the $350k properties that tend to get me salivating.

I could also jettison the idea of living with someone and cut my space requirements considerably. But something magical seems to happen once you get two bedrooms. Suddenly a living room becomes a necessity and the kitchen becomes a proper room. I have more exploring to do.

This proved all too heavy for me so I wiped away thoughts of a house and decided to make a rice cooker cake. My rice cooker is just a heating coil combined with a thermometer. If the thermometer registers a temperature abouve about 215°F it turns off, presuming all the excess water has boiled away or been absorbed. Cakes generally want an internal temperature of about 210°F so all should be right in the world.

I pour the batter into the rice cooker, hit start, and three minutes later the rice cooker turned off. Darn. I hit start again and it immediately switched off. I waited a few minutes, hit start again and again the rice cooker stayed on for about three minutes. My fix to this cycle was to jam a spoon in the start switch to keep it in “ON” mode and 30 minutes later I smelled something nicely toasted…a little too toasted…maybe way too toasted… On closer inspection, the cooking time wasn’t 60 minutes but closer to 20, which I suppose is partly good, but the flip side is that I think I broke my rice cooker. The cake isn’t bad once you cut off the burnt part. Ce la vie.

I had the rare pleasure of logging into MyFitnessPal today and typing in a number for my current weight that was less than the last time I did so. This is the first time this has happened in well over a year and represents the embarrassing first step towards returning to a state where I will be happy with my body. My lack of happiness is not self-hatred but something much cooler, akin to when a person you don’t like walks into a party and you have to politely smile despite their presence. My body and its capabilities wander around with me. Just like that annoying person, you will never triumph over them, but you’ll be rid of them and the enjoyment you have when they’re not there will come back. Sometimes I notice me out of the corner of my eye, sometimes I don’t, but hopefully sometime a year or so from now I’ll say to myself “it’s been a while since I’ve seen that guy”.

My mental model takes a while to update. Like many of the timers in my life, how I see me drags behind about six months. I feel fatter now than I did when I was 342. This time six months ago I weighted 310 and could still run a few miles. The next five months are going to be somewhat painful in terms of the Terry in my head. After that, it’ll get better. Interesting, my mental model of others also takes six months or so to update, resulted in quizzical stares months after someone hit their target weight and regained weight as I go “wow, you look great”. This faculty has saved me somewhat especially in people’s final months. My memory of the departed is never them at their worst. I suppose this balances not recognizing others progress immediately and mislaying compliments.

This bout of weight loss feels different. My life isn’t as crowded in some ways having a straight forward job that’s close to home, good pay, and reasonably proximate friends, and few involvements in Scouting. The only large time sink I have is studying. I figure I’m ok with maintaining weight vs. losing it if I’m passing exams and ok stagnating with actuarial progress if my waist is shrinking. Now I just need to convince my boss and/or doctor of that exchange. It also feels different in the same way the second trip to a distant destination feels different. There is no excitement in this passage. I’m revisiting places I’ve been before. I’m 112 lbs from virgin territory. Theoretically, I know I can get there again, but what if my previous success was from some unique confluence? In a lab setting, I walked 4000-7000 steps more per day. I had a shorter working day. Sex hadn’t entered my life yet which engendered a certain vanity. Just because I’ve driven the road before doesn’t mean I’m immune to flat tires and getting lost. And the vehicle I’m driving has more miles on it as it were. Regardless, I think I can do it. Right now, there’s no reason not to think so. This isn’t a statement of arrogance, only of ignorance.

The last time I worked to lose weight, I lost, on average, .245 lbs for about 800 days. I am going to shoot for a slightly more ambitious .3 lbs and see what I can accomplish in a year. During my last go, my weight loss regime usually stalled every few months as I need to change up to something new. This time, I hope experience will let me skip those. The flip-side of this is determination. Willpower, like the bicep is a muscle and it must be exercised. I feel that reserve isn’t what it used to be. Last time I weighted 330 and was losing weight, I had a lot of trajectory. Now I have much less.

Weight Goal: 220 during my September trip in 2015.
Fitness Goal: Run Broad Street Run in May 2015.
Stretch Goal: 5 pull-ups, Christmas of 2015.

Let us seem who I am.

My lunch location is determined in the following nested if statement:

IF I have a lunch engagement
THEN go to engagement

ELSE free food available work
THEN eat at work

ELSE in a rush
THEN eat with 3 blocks of work

ELSEIF eat at home

None of the first three conditions triggered much this week so I tended to eat at home. The other scenario whereby I’ll eat at work is if I’ve packed my own lunch. I am remarkably incapable of packing a lunch that doesn’t depend on salad greens and having none, I didn’t pack my lunch.

On the way from the subway station to my apartment which clocks in at maybe 100 feet, a fellow that looked like a homeless Dudley Moore started following me and asking me questions. I blocked him out and as I approached my front door, the mail man was there. He dropped the mail into the bottom metal box for my downstairs neighbor but then held off dropping mine in when the fellow following me said “Hello” to the mail man. The mail man stopped, somehow presumed the vagrant following me was somehow associated with me and gave him my mail. I slammed the door behind me and got halfway up the stairs before realizing what had just happened. I recalled there being two pieces and both were in glossy envelopes, statistically he is now in possession of a credit card pre-approval and a note to the previous tenant to pay a parking ticket in Seattle, Wa. I hope they make good rolling papers.

I have two sets of room mates, the inanimate ones like my printer and treadmill and the animate ones like Mike and the mice that seem to enjoy the coat closet. Each follows their own set of graces but recently the activities of the mice has raised alarm. Normally, they scurry around. Sometimes, they traverse slowly the living room floor as I imagine one would cross an unstable ice shelf, slowly until given reason to run. They don’t seem to consume my food nor poop anywhere conspicuous so I’ve ignored them until last week.

A mouse was on the counter top (which was new) and I managed to trap it in a flower vase and drop it in a lot two blocks away. The next day, I saw another mouse on the countertop and this one, faster than his friend, leaped onto the surface of the range (it was off) and dashed up the oven vent into the oven proper. This cannot stand. In my own house, I must be able to arbitrarily activate my oven without trepidation. The idea of having a toasted member of Mus musculus trigger the smoke alarms in short order will trigger nightmares. So, I put out non-lethal traps.

They’re pretty straight forward. A clear-topped steel box into which one puts some food is reachable via spring-supported ramps. Once the mouse crosses the ramp, the door closes behind them. Splendid. But I have Philadelphia public school mice. They are incapable of using it. Tonight, I saw two mice on two separate occasions approach the trap, sniff at it. Enter the one-way entrance and not quite make it through. You can call them clever but I think them fools. I will be rid of them one way or another and may choose less non-lethal options next.

I wonder if this is what conquering colonial powers feel like. “Just integrate and follow rules and everything would be fine. But you don’t so we have to put heads on pikes”. Is there another way for us to come to terms? Am I missing something? Am I letting my values override theirs? They carry toxoplasma gondii which is categorically an unwelcome guests.

Please mice, embrace the cracker and learn to use doors so we may live together in peace.

I had been to Zion National Park when I was in 7th grade as an arrogant lump of teenager. My father drove me to one of the lookouts and we toured the visitor center and I was unimpressed as it was neither unhealthy food nor Magic cards. My tastes had changed considerably since and every inch of the park now interested me. Chris and I were on camping time which involves going to sleep when you’re tired at some point after the sun goes down and waking when the tent gets too warm or the sound of European tourists rising guilts you into carpe-ing some diem. Driving down from Lava Point gives one only a taste of one part of the park but it’s a heck of a part.
So Much SKy

All of the road signs were pockmarked with small(ish) arms fire reminding us that while this was a National Park for Chris and I, people lived here. Those people had their own customs and their own thoughts on what made appropriate target practice.
Pockmarked

Chris and I breezed into the park, parked, and took the tram to the first point that had a decent length hiking trail. This is what we were looking up at as we hit the trail head.
Park Proper

I was far from peak physical condition but I felt the trail was hitting me overly hard. After a loop of about four and a half miles I felt near death. I asked Chris if he found himself tired and he looked back at me saying “we’re 7000 feet above sea level.” This made me feel much better and I only wish I could use that excuse when I got tired going up to my 3rd floor apartment back in Philly.

Zion National Park’s terrain is sculpted by the Virgin River, a body of water that moves some 90% of its water in only 10% of the year. Besides being an awesome example of the Pareto principle, it suggests that this place floods, and when it floods, it floods a lot. This flood/drought cycle influenced the ecology of the park and trees close to the river are either young enough that there’s been no major flood to uproot them or old enough that they can take a deluge. That’s a heck of an excluded middle.
Virgin River Valley

Chris and I felt beat up but happy after our trail loop and took a rest before attempting The Narrows Trail. Chris was faster on the uptake and it took me a little to realize that “Narrows Trail” meant “walk up the Virgin river”. I brought my camera and the views up the walls of the canyon was moving. Each inch of rock removed was worn of water and time.

Virgin River Valley

I have a near infinite capacity for kinetic activity that requires exertion without being exhausting and at some point I felt I was dragging Chris through riparian monotony. He didn’t complain and he was polite enough to point out that the trail functionally ended dozens of miles from where we were. This was what we looked like most of the time.

River Trail

After saying “Just one more bend” some fifteen times I called it quits after the water reached sternum depth and we did the trail again in reverse. I was glad I overbought shoes. Back at the trailhead, I washed out my shoes and we took the tram back to the park entrance.

We drove out through the park and headed onto Bryce Canyon National Park. Chris didn’t mind when I stopped to take pictures and near an abandoned section of state highway I took this shot.
Cloud Cover

This view isn’t as spectacular as say The Grand Canyon, Pike’s Peak or any other number of grand vistas but this is the kind of view that makes me wish I could slow down time, bottle a moment, and hold it for a day where I spend 10 hours staring at Excel. This was my favorite view of the trip so far, until an hour later I got another treat.
View

Theoretically there were and will be views more impressive but this one knocked me back for how locally quotidian it was. Some 30 miles from here Chris and I got a sandwich served by the least interested food service worker I may have ever encountered. This view was a 30 minute drive from where she worked and she probably thought nothing of it. I hope this is something I see often enough to be sated but not so often that it becomes pedestrian.

The sandwich stop was also my first interaction with “locals”. As we pulled up, the man from American Gothic was considering his Subway sandwich while Lennie from Of Mice and Men washed off his truck and frequently sprayed Chris and the car by accident. I asked the counter attendant where he went for fun. His reply was a town some 75 miles away. More people are in my office building than his county and we are in the same country. I hope we get a chance to swap some day. We saw more local on the way to Bryce Canyon in the form of the Bryce Canyon Airport. At first I thought this was a joke but I later checked with Google Maps. A plane can land here and that is both wonderful and terrifying.
Bryce Canyon Airport

Bryce Canyon itself was nice or at least that’s how it started. As we headed East into the park and higher in altitude and the sun slid south to the horizon this was the sequence of our responses to each new canyon.
“Hmm”
“Nice”
“Neat”
“Wow”
“Wooooooooow”
“Huuuh, hur huhh, hooooooo”

The last was just a grunt. A pilcrow marking that there was nothing more to be said on the matter where a period was simply insufficient. Chris identified a color of purple in the sky that may exist beyond the rainbow. At this late hour, we practically had the park to ourselves and each grand vista was ours.
America, The Beautiful

Beamed

Strata

Bryce Canyon

We settled in for the evening at a tent slip and I was angry at having cell reception. I wanted nature dammit. I inflated my air mattress and found that it had stopped holding air properly. Air was slipping out through the fill valve and I thought myself sneaky by wrapping the plastic wrapping from the sausage we had for dinner around the inlet and tying it in place. My knot wasn’t quite tight enough and air leaked out albeit slower and now with a high pitch whistle that sounded like someone squeezing a desert rain frog. Funny followed by rage-inducing. Chris nodded off and I deflated my air mattress to the point where my body blocked the fill valve. Here I was, in Bryce Canyon, lying on an air taco, with cell reception. What the shit.