Didn’t post anything over the past two days because basically my day has been encompassed of sleeping, eating, LOTS OF STUDYING, some Smash and March Madness. All of this probably started Thursday night, (notice the last post is from Friday at about 4:20 AM). I looked over the Section 0 and 1 that night and played some Super Smash Bros. Brawl – a game that was probably not a fan of at first, because I was never really into character games like that but I think it is safe to say I might have rushed to judgment on that one. Whoops. As for the studying for this big exam goes, I breezed through Section 0 and 1 that night because it mostly reviewed Algebra and Pre-Calculus stuff as well as basic probability concepts. That wasn’t so bad and it only covered about the first 50 pages of this exam review book (out of 400+ pages). Then Friday I started a little bit of Section 2 – Conditional Probability and Independence. Yea that was a review of the Prob/Stats class I have already taken but that was about a year ago and since I haven’t used much of these concepts since then, there is a tendency to forget. I was real good yesterday with a solid 5 hour lockdown mode and completely finish Secion 2 with its 20+ problem sets that I did twice just to make sure I had everything down pat. Section I got through most of it last night and today and now I think this pretty much covered everything I knew, maybe another section on random variables I think. Then the new stuff starts.

Well I haven’t really posted much about what is going on recently so I’ll try to hit as many of those as I can in this post. Gonna cover my ABC talk here… a little regarding my actuary test that I really need to start studying hardcore for, probably gonna talk a little baseball (who wins what division and makes the playoffs) and a tournament called March Madness.

I finally registered for my first Actuary exam. It’s called Exam 1/P – Probability. You can guess what topic is covered on there, but it’s a 3 hour test of rigorous stuff which I am not looking forward to at all. I’ll probably cut back on this blogging a little bit just a little bit because I really need to start studying for that. I am on Chapter 2 of the book which is really well written and I think there are like 10 in total and the exam is the 2nd week of May. Not a lot of time left and I know I will look for every opportunity to try not study, so if you see or talk to me where I am wasting time, tell me to go and study for my test. It’s really cool stuff though (yes I’m a math major) but the concepts and what not and calculating the probability of this event or that event happening given that you already know this or that about the situation. What else could you want?

Anyways, enough math talk and back to sports. I’ve woken up the past few days and really tried to get back to watching ESPN in the morning with my “breakfast” whether that be at 8am or 1pm and you can really tell baseball stuff starting to creep their way into the news. Before the season officially starts over here in the US, I’ll put up a little prediction for each division and why.

Here is this 8th grader – Johnny Gilbert who happens to be a HUGE Buckeye fan and he’s on ESPN’s First Take talking about his bracket where he had the all Sweet 16 teams correctly predicted. This kid is no joke either where he randomly picked teams and happened to turn out lucky. Watch him speak about his bracket and what he did to choose the upsets like Western Kentucky, Davidson and Villanova into the Sweet 16. He even has Davidson going to the Final Four but has UCLA beating the Tar Heels in the Championship game. I certainly want to see this kid get as many picks correct as possible and what an awesome story that would be for this kid who through 64 games so far, has ONLY 7 incorrect picks.

The ESPN video is below and for his bracket, click here. Man I wish I had his bracket right about now.

Popularity: 4%

It’s weird how my pipeline (Stevens) email address information was randomly reset this morning. I woke up to my Outlook telling me that my log in credentials were incorrect… go figure. I am a little paranoid about my passwords and as I was telling one my friends yesterday or the day before that I take quite a lot of pride in what I set it as and not only that but I really really like what I set as my password… my friend proceeded to call me weird and stopped talking.

Anyways since it did reset this morning, I went online to search and see what several sites give as recommendations when generating or selecting a new password. Here’s what I found.

- Avoid using a word: It is not recommended to use words straight out of the English dictionary since those are more easily guessable
- Characters and Casing: Use a combination of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and standard symbols (! @ # $ % ^ & *) when trying to decide on a new password.
- Common Mistakes: Don’t use personal information that someone could easily figure out. Avoid using your birthdays, bank account pin numbers, a phone number or even your pet’s name
- Multiple Passwords: Have multiple sets of passwords. A relatively easy password that you can use for common use like newspaper registration or deal sites force you to register – primarily where you don’t really care if someone does end up finding out what it is. A harder password for your more private information like email accounts and maybe a login with a financial institution.

Not sure why I wrote an entire post on passwords but anyways, you’re probably just better off not telling anyone to avoid any hassle down the road.

As per Rusty’s request… here is a hockey video from about a week ago is when I think this one happened. Vesa Toskala allows a goal from a puck that was shot from the opposing blue line. Just tons of bounces for the puck and a tough break for Toskala. Luckily, Leafs come back to win the game to keep their playoff hopes alive.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqdMiu0813s

This one happened this past Saturday. Patrick Roy’s son (the goalie) gets involved in the full fledged brawl in the QMJHL Playoffs.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th33ZesLBhg

I’m real hesitant to put this video up even though Rusty just showed it to me now. Joe showed it to me last night and I’m not sure if he wanted to put it up himself. It’s a real awareness test and I only know one person so far who passed it… and it was Petey from all the way in Hong Kong who passed.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

By the way Mr. Sullivan if you’d like to stake claim on the video, I’ll gladly remove it and link you. For those of you interested, he runs a pretty awesome blog himself here – Jolly White Giant.

Popularity: 1%