Norbert Wiener? Never Heard of Him

Let me tell you what a great physicist I am. I was an hour late getting to bed last night because I couldn't do a simple nonhomogeneous linear differential equation.

To the normal people out there, that won't mean anything, but the nerds will understand how pathetic it is. The equation in question should take about twenty seconds to solve.

I sat down to root through Practical Electronics for Inventors last night, and I was reading about simple circuits with capacitors, resistors, and inductors. And the author said something like, "Here is an integral describing the current in an RL circuit, and here is the result when you work the equation." That made me mad. How insulting, presuming I can't do this stuff myself!

So I scribbled the equation down on a sheet of paper and gave it a shot, and I got a crazy result over and over. I thought, "Damn, I really DON'T remember anything."

Finally after almost an hour of grumbling and figure-checking, I realized one of the terms in the answer had to be set to zero. POOF. That made my answer identical to the book's answer. I was right after all. But I was so lame I didn't realize it.

I was actually scared when I saw the word "nonhomogeneous." I wasn't totally sure what it meant! I thought, "I seem to remember these being a lot harder." Too funny. I thought I was going to have to open Gradshteyn and Ryzhik, which I keep in the living room, for sentimental reasons. Next to Morse and Feshbach.

I might have had a hard time telling you what "nonhomogeneous" meant even when I was doing physics fairly capably. I was never really interested in the names of things. Doing math well is like dancing or karate. You shouldn't have to think, "Okay, de Moivre's theorem next." You just do it instinctively. So even when I actually had a clue what I was doing, I often didn't think of the rules and descriptive names.

I think some of this junk can still be resurrected from the La Brea tarpit that is my brain, even after ten years.

This morning I remembered a forgotten goal. It used to irk me that I hadn't learned enough about electronics to cope with the crap that goes bad around the house. Especially digital stuff. I graduated before I got into it. I don't have the foggiest notion how a digital display works. I think maybe they're operated by tiny elves under the plastic.

Maybe I could get sharp enough to fix my old Onkyo CD player! I have an old DX-C606 with a drawer that doesn't to open and close when it's supposed to. A repair place would want over a hundred bucks to fix this antique. I'm not willing to pay. But I love it. It was my first CD player, and it's pretty and quiet, and it sounds great, and the remote makes sense.

Maybe I shouldn't throw out my old 27" ProScan yet, either. I was going to put it out for the trash-pickers. Maybe there is hope for it.

My father always moans because I can't fix anything. He says, "I thought you were a physicist. Why can't you make the TV work?" I tell him I was absent the day they taught TV repair. I should learn to fix things just to teach him a lesson. "Oh, the cable box? It's working now. And it also turns your sprinklers on and off and takes phone messages."

So far, this has been fun, and I haven't blown anything up, spent any real money, or had a nervous breakdown. I hope I end up getting something out of it.