Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Study Aid Review: Schaum's Outline of Electronic Devices and Circuits, Second Edition

 


This is a book that is not really keyed toward one class, although it is probably most helpful for a two-semester Electronics class (sometimes called Microelectronics). It mostly deals with diodes and transistors and then how Op-Amp circuits are fabricated using diodes and/or transistors. It is not a guide that would be good for, or even useful in, the first two semesters of circuits analysis which is taken at the beginning of an electrical engineering curriculum. This is very math-intensive, which is helpful if you have a teacher that requires you to get deep into the math. My electronics teacher basically just gave us the equations, deriving a few here and there, but did not require us to get too into the weeds and derive the equations ourselves. He did not really lecture from the textbook, and thankfully was pretty easy to follow. But, if you have a teacher that does heavily use a textbook that is hard to follow and/or does not give understandable lectures, then this may help you as it does give a concise (yet math-heavy) explanation of the theory. It is not something that is going to be easy to teach yourself the topic from scratch, however.

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