Ceiling Fans

My ceiling fan makes a peculiar humming noise. It makes me think about how the fan is spinning at some frequency and causing vibrations in the blades. Perhaps the vibrations of the blades are resonating. Or perhaps the humming noise is simply from the lights on the fan.

I'm not sure but it may be spinning at approximately 70cylces/30sec (~14Hz). My eyes feel weird now. Counting spinning blades is trickier than I imagined.

At a team meeting last Thursday, two guys from my group came wearing similar shirts:

The key difference we all noticed was the way the stripes were different. We declared the stripes to be the inverse of each other.
And our principle engineer suddenly said "Then together you are an identity matrix!"
To which, the response was chiefly "I cannot believe you just said that!" and "Once a nerd, always a nerd" and other similar things of that sort. There was also a great deal of laughing.





In case you are wondering a matrix multiplied by its inverse matrix produces an identity matrix.

For example, if I had a 2x2 matrix (called A) like this: [1 2
3 4]
the inverse (called A^-1 would be: 1/(1*4 - 2*3) X [4 -2
-3 1]

Multiply the two (A*A^-1) gives you the identity matrix (called I): [1 0
0 1]
Ones run all down the diagonal of an identity matrix, while the rest of the spaces are filled with zeros.

For a better and more clear explanation visit Wolfram MathWorld
. They can definitely explain much clearer than I just did.

Noise and Bubbles

I voted today like all good Americans should have who can. Voting in my new city in CT was different from voting in my old city in NY. Today I received a paper sheet with lots of bubbles and I went to a little table thing and filled the bubbles in with a special black marker. It was like voting for our union president and grand marshal back in college, except we used pencils then. And then I took my piece of paper and inserted it into the optical scanner with apparently scanned my votes or something. Previously in my old city we had a gigantic machine thing that you went in and close curtains around you and then pushed levers. It was interesting.

Speaking of voting, two of my coworkers began discussing parties today. And then they realized they had opposing views. So they decided to postpone their argument over healthcare until after they left work.

Although I graduated as an aeronautical/mechanical engineer, I'm working sort of as an acoustical engineer in the acoustics department at my job. As a result, I have learned much about noise and sounds and things. So while driving my car home today, I turned some music on and immediately began thinking about the structure-borne vs. airborne noise radiating from my car due to the music. And I even thought a little bit about the paths that the structure-borne noise would travel through. I love my work!

Walking and Enchiladas

I walked three miles yesterday because I discovered there was a sort of park practically behind my apartment complex.
It was very beautiful. All the birds were out looking for last minute food, I think. It was a little chilly, but I didn't notice it until I put my hands up to my face and felt how cold it was. I love chilly days. They make me want to eat hot and spicy things.
So I made hot and spicy enchiladas for dinner when I came home. Except, they were almost too hot for me! So I had to drink much milk while eating dinner.

Today I had two coworkers trying to help me debug my code. The three of us sat (or stood) there in puzzlement for an hour and a half as we ran through checks. Afterall, it turned out I needed to change a constant because the code didn't like dealing with such large negative numbers (-100 is very large negative number). I figured this out after another hour and a half of debugging. One of my coworkers was very confused about how this constant could even be negative. But I couldn't answer him because I did not know myself. My knowledge on the subject is still very small. Perhaps after I have worked for a longer time here, I will understand.