Name That Place

As I was reading through a magazine the other day, I came across this familiar sight. Do I have anybody who can name this place? Here's two hints:

1. The conference mentioned at the beginning of the article was written about in the Winter 2007 issue of a magazine.
2. If you've traveled somewhere with me in the last five years, your odds of recognizing this place increase.

For those of you who don't have the advantage of #2, you could always try googling it. Speaking of that, you know your company name or product has arrived when:

1. The name of your company becomes a verb (for example, "google" it).
2. An engineer/scientist names an electrical waveform after your product (the "Hershey Kiss" waveform).

Did I already talk about this once? It seems familiar, but I think I might have started forming the above thoughts a long time ago and then I never verbalized them in a post. I must be getting old if I can't remember something like that, and I'm too lazy to go back and check, so just deal with it if it's a repeat.

"Sage" Advice For Thanksgiving

This weekend I was reminded of a quote I saw at an exercise club a few years back. It said, "Remember, holidays are people events, not food events." While I did enjoy the people, I also totally ate way too much. I've never eaten so many times in my life and so much food when I didn't feel hungry. But it just tasted so good! I didn't take any pictures either, so you're stuck with using your imagination to see all the fun times I had.

While driving to Thanksgiving dinner, I had a great idea. I think people should start making Thanksgiving songs. That way we wouldn't have to start listening to Christmas music until AFTER Thanksgiving. How in the world am I supposed to get into the Thanksgiving mood when all I hear on the drive to dinner are Christmas songs? Does anybody have a Thanksgiving song to start off with next year?

A Must-Have For Everyone, Even If You Don't Have A Hitch

Why wouldn't you buy one of these? And while you're at it, take two, they're small. Which one is your favorite? I think my favorite is the surrendering deer.

View the Hitch Critters

Eso Si Que Es

After wearing these last week, I decided that it was probably time to dispose of this faithful pair, much as I would have loved to keep them. Unfortunately, they did not get the opportunity to be worn for the last time in Europe and then discarded in a European wastebasket. Not all sock dreams get to be fulfilled.

Drowning

Don't you just hate it when the mice who live near your hot tub ignore all the "Swim At Your Own Risk" and "No Lifeguard On Duty" signs and go swimming in your hot tub anyway? Then you have to scoop their bodies out when you find them a couple days later and fully drain the tub. Blech.

On a different note, a couple weeks ago a technician in the lab retired. That's not very remarkable in itself, but what was remarkable was that he filled out all the paperwork with HR and all that, but his boss didn't know until 4:00 PM on the day before he retired that he was retiring. Now that's what I call a lack of effective communication. The technician was a bit of an odd duck to start with, but I that still takes the cake on retirement stories so far. Ironically, his name is Norm.

Reminder

At the end of the day today I was feeling a bit down as the day didn't go all that well. But, when I checked another blog I regularly visit, I was reminded that I forgot to think of three things I'm thankful for today. I've noticed that's much harder to do on a not-so-good day. So here goes. I'm thankful...

1. ....for sleep at night, which helps me to recover from the previous day and to have a fresh perspective in the morning.
2. ....for the e-mail of appreciation and thanks that I received from a co-worker today.
3. ....I have not caught the illness/cold that a lot of people around here have right now (knock on particle board).
4. ....for a friend online to IM.
   

See? That wasn't so hard after all. I even had one left over. Thanks Jen for the reminder. Now I'm going to go do #1 so I can continue with #3. Farm out, right arm, gravy, all that stuff.

For one brief moment today....

I was scheduled to go to Korea for an "emergency" work situation next week. But alas, they decided I needed to stay home and continue my work here while they sent someone else to deal with the situation. Lucky me I'll probably get to be on a conference call with Korea in the middle of the night instead. Oh well maybe next time. There's always Mexico in the January/February time frame.

Foxy

Here's a few pictures from the last week. I've seen the fox in the picture below three times in a week's span. This is the best picture I managed to get of him.



Tonight Reggie almost ran over a baby raccoon. Raccoons, foxes, opossums; the wildlife has really been out in force this fall.

Even More Ridiculous

I went to Wal-Mart on Saturday, and they already had some Christmas stuff set up outside. On November 3rd! The poor pumpkins weren't even cold in their graves yet, and the turkeys haven't even approached the grave. The candy hadn't even fully settled in the kids' stomachs! I would advise selling any stock you have in Wal-Mart because I think their health insurance is going to increase sharply after all their employees go stark raving mad from listening to Christmas music for two months straight. I kid you not - they already had the Christmas music going over the PA system. Too far, Wal-Mart. Too far.

Hannah Montana

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but I finally heard about a Hannah Montana concert on the radio enough times that I had to go and look up what exactly the rage was all about. I also heard some mom on the radio a few weeks ago saying that she had bid more than $1200 on e-bay for a pair of tickets to a Hannah Montana concert so that she could take her daughter to it. At that time, the bidding wasn't closed yet either. Can you believe that? That's totally out of control.

Warning! Boring Math Explanation! Do Not Read if Allergic to Math!

I had a request to explain a couple of the previous engineering jokes. The two jokes with the punch lines were based off a mathematics/physics concept call a cross product. To explain a cross product, you have to start with a vector. A vector ALWAYS has a magnitude (scalar value) and a direction. A cross product is the multiplication of two vectors, and the result of the cross product is another vector that tells you how close to being perpendicular the two vectors are. The direction of the resultant vector is always perpendicular to both of the vectors that were multiplied. Thus, three dimensional space is required to do this operation.

If you cross vector A with vector B, the resultant magnitude is A*B*sin(angle between A and B), and the direction is determined using the right hand rule. Put your right hand fingers in the direction of A, fold your fingers toward B, and where your thumb is pointing is the resulting direction. When A and B are perpendicular (90 degrees between them), the sine of 90 degrees is 1, so the resulting magnitude is A*B. If the two vectors are parallel, the sine of 0 degrees or 180 degrees is 0, and the cross product is the vector 0.

One of the most common uses of the cross product is to determine torque. Usually you have a distance vector determined by the length of your wrench that points parallel to your wrench. Then you exert a force on your wrench perpendicular to the wrench, which when you take the cross product of these two vectors causes a torque in a direction perpendicular to the force and the distance. This is also why a longer wrench creates more torque - because the magnitude of the torque (cross product) is determined by the force*distance. The other common use of the cross product is to determine how much force a magnetic field will exert on an electronic charge.

So, the reason the joke is funny when it asks what you get when you cross a grape with an elephant is because the answer takes the cross product of the vector grape with the vector elephant. Statistics show 99% of the population considers these kinds of jokes to be lame. And, in order to take a cross product, both things must be vectors (no scalars allowed!).

Did you make it through all of that? How much drool is on your keyboard? Any vacant eyes yet? Was that so exciting that now everybody wants to be an engineer? Was the explanation so skilled that I should become a math or physics teacher? Probably not since it's hard to cram a whole semester of physics into a two paragraph explanation. ;-) But, it was fun for me to take a trip down college class lane. Next week: The joys of taking a dot product using vectors.