My background is in math (BMath; Waterloo) and civil engineering (BASc, MASc; Toronto). As I learned to dislike statistics when I was studying math, fate provided me with the opportunity to do a master's thesis on applying good old-fashioned statistics to hydrology with the goal of finding improved methods of estimating underlying distributions from small samples. Fortunately, this relied heavily on Monte Carlo simulation and I was able to convince myself that it was based on software instead of statistics. I somehow ended up as a software developer working on real time control systems and ancillary applications for the broadcast industry.