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. 

Monday, November 7, 2022

Study Aid Review: Schaum's Outline of Basic Circuit Analysis, Second Edition

 


As most science/engineering students know, Schaum's guides can vary widely in quality and helpfulness. This is one that, for the most part, is very helpful. It distills the concepts into easily digestible chunks, giving you enough of the theory to understand the concepts without getting bogged down, and many example problems. The first couple of chapters are basically an overview of various concepts, but once you get to chapter three, you will start with the material you will see in your first couple of class sessions of a circuits analysis class. The guide covers both DC and AC circuit analysis as well as power and three-phase circuits.

There are also chapters on PSPICE, which is one of the circuit simulation software programs that you may or may not learn how to use in your classes. In my electrical engineering program, we used Multisim and MATLAB, so the PSPICE chapters were of no use to me. The guide also has a chapter on Transformers which in my program was not covered in circuits analysis and only covered unless someone took Power Systems. So, not everything in the guide may be covered if you are actually getting this because you are taking a class. If, however, you are getting it to teach yourself the topic, need it for work, or just want to brush up, this is very good and much easier to understand than some of the circuits textbooks.



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