Wii Fit, EA Active, and posting from my Blackberry

So, party because of Wii Fit and EA Active and partly because I really
like that I can post blogs from my blackberry, here's another update
from the life of Scott.

Now, I'm a pretty big guy, so I've been blessed with the ability to
impress my wife by lifting extremely large tree branches and tossing
them over my head during post pruning activities, but I don't think
anyone would mistake me for some one that was actually in shape.

But, I'm getting alittle older and starting to realize the benefits of
getting in shape. Now that I'm almost 30, I know things now that I
didn't know 10 years ago. Things like the exact cost of my health
insurance and how much of it is paid by my employer. And, that taxes
are higher on fast food and restaurants than they are on produce.

So naturally, when I got Wii Fit, I played it for a couple days and
then put it back on the shelf for almost a year. But then, I got EA
active and played that for a few days and ... put it on the shelf for
a year. But then, I pulled both of them out, added a reminder on
google calendar, and have been playing both for about 4 weeks. And
I've been surprised by the results.

Now, I admit that because I'm a mathematician, part of it is my love
for charts and graphs. Every time I look at the random fluctuation
around the 5 pounds I've lost so far, I can't help but imagine a least
squares line fit to the data while I project it out to come up with my
best estimate of when I'll hit my goal. (Right now, I'm guessing
Febuary or March, but we actuaries like to be conservative, so for the
record, I'll say april or may.)

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Sent from my mobile device

A quick post for a quick study break

So, I think I figured out how to post blogs from my blackberry using
email. This is mainly just a test to see if it works right. I'm
alittle concerned that the spacing between paragraphs will be off.
And this post is mainly just to a test to see if putting two blank
lines between paragraphs will show up as one blank line on the blog.
Here we go.

This new paragraph is on the topic of exams being very hard.
Especially exams of the actuarial variety. I'm currently studying for
CAS exam 6 and can confirm that it is of the actuarial variety and
indeed hard.

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Sent from my mobile device

U of I 2009 College of Business Diversity Exchange

Today was the college of business's diversity exchange. They called
it an exchange, but it was a lot like a conference.

They had some pretty cool activities to illustrate some aspects of the
benefits of diversity. I learned a lot.

In the first activity, they gave it person a picture from a series of pictures that kind of told a story. Then they had to put the pictures in order without letting anyone else see what their picture is. The idea was that each person usually only sees part of the bigger picture and that it helps to work together in order to see the whole thing.

The second activity divided the group into smaller groups of 4 or 5 people. Then the gave each group the rules to a card game. The objective of the card game was the same for each table, but the rules were slightly different. At first, there's no problem, but when we had the winners from each table move to another table and told them they weren't allowed to talk, it caused a little confusion. The idea was that sometimes we go into a situation thinking that everyone has the same understanding of something. But with different backgrounds, people often come together with the same objective, but sometimes have a slightly different understanding of the rules.

Overall, it was a pretty good event. It was nice that our company could be a part of it (even though it was a very small role).