Exercising

I have begun P90x, an intense exercise program that all my coworkers seem to be raving about. I sometime enjoy putting myself through intense pain and torture and I also like to exercise, so I am trying it out.
This is week 2. Today I did plyometrics which is basically jumping around many many times. More times than I normally jump around...so now my legs are killing me. I have to be careful too that I don't make too much noise for the neighbors downstairs. But I was able to follow the workout better today than last time. And I didn't feel like I was going to throw up either. So I guess it went well.

Beside exercising, there is a diet you follow too. You end up exercising so much so you need to make sure you are eating right to make up for it. Today I had eggs and bacon with toast and then chocolate milk. I'm not sure chocolate in the milk technically follows the proper diet, but that is pretty much the only way I will drink milk. And then I had yogurt and grapes and a salad with avocado and tuna fish and cheese. And then I ate a protein bar and soup and hamburg. That is a lot of food, but I am apparently still hungry, so I guess I must have sweat a lot tonight...

On changing the name

You may (or may not) have noticed that the name of my blog has recently changed.
Formerly, it was "The Young Thinker". Now it is "The Happy Idiot".
Back when I first began this blog, I fancied myself to be something of a thinker or philosopher full of many unusual and interesting thoughts.

Now I see more clearly. I am, in fact, nothing more than a happy idiot.

I expect by the time I am fifty that I will be calling myself "The Clueless Baby" or something of that sort. You begin to realize how little you know as you grow older.

On Mice and Spiders

A friend lent me some books. So I dumped them out of my bag and left them in a heap (please note that this was because I was so excited about them I dumped them out and spread them all over to look at their titles...so I guess it wasn't really a heap afterall). When I came back to read them, a large spider had joined the books.
Obviously this was because the spider was interested in the books. So I read to him.
Then I exercised. And then I read more to him. But just before I was finishing the last section I was going to read that night, he ran off toward the stove in my kitchen, disappearing underneath it soon after. No! Why Melvin? (his name was Melvin) Why must you run off while I was still reading to you? That was very rude you know!
But he didn't care.


Thoreau also lives under the stove. He is a grayish mouse with white paws. He likes to pop out while I am sitting on my kitchen chair. But he never does much more than stick his nose out. I sometimes bang on the stove down by the floor just to make sure he stays inside his house. His name is Thoreau in case I catch and kill him because I dislike Thoreau's writings. He seemed to be a rather selfish man (the man, not the mouse) not wanting to share anything even if it was a velvet cushion. He wanted it all to himself and he'd rather have a pumpkin to sit on if he could have it all to himself. Also I think he didn't understand the chief end of man. (which is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, if you didn't know either). Anyway, that was the plan, calling Thoreau that (the mouse, that is; the man was already called that). But unfortunately, some portion of my brain thought he was cute and wanted him to stay and thought I was Japanese. And so I subconsciously began referring to him as "Mouse-kun" thus doing the very thing I was trying to avoid by naming him after something I didn't like. I have no idea now what I shall feel when I actually set a trap to get him. Also I must do something about my brain using Japanese honorifics...maybe I'm reading too much manga or something.

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.