I know I'm an engineer when....

I read something on an engineering joke webpage and spot the technical inaccuracies:
"Thermodynamics and Couch Potatoes
As we all know, it takes 1 calorie to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade. Translated into meaningful terms, this means that if you eat a very cold dessert (generally consisting of water in large part), the natural processes which raise the consumed dessert to body temperature during the digestive cycle literally sucks the calories out of the only available source, your body fat.

For example, a dessert served and eaten at near 0 degrees C (32.2 deg. F) will in a short time be raised to the normal body temperature of 37 degrees C (98.6 deg. F). For each gram of dessert eaten, that process takes approximately 37 calories as stated above. The average desser tportion is 6 oz, or 168 grams. Therefore, by operation of thermodynamiclaw, 6,216 calories (1 cal./gm/deg. x 37 deg. x 168 gms) are extracted from body fat as the dessert's temperature is normalized.

Allowing for the 1,200 latent calories in the dessert, the net calorie loss is approximately 5,000 calories.

Obviously, the more cold dessert you eat,the better off you are and the faster you will lose weight, if that is your goal.

This process works equally well when drinking very cold beer in frosted glasses. Each ounce of beer contains 16 latent calories, but extracts 1,036 calories (6,216 cal. per 6 oz. portion) in the temperature normalizing process. Thus the net calorie loss per ounce of beer is 1,020 calories. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to calculate that 12,240 calories (12 oz. x 1,020 cal./oz.) are extracted from the body in the process of drinking a can of beer.

Frozen desserts, e.g., ice cream, are even more beneficial, since it takes 83 cal./gm to melt them (i.e., raise them to 0 deg. C) and an additional 37 cal./gm to further raise them to body temperature. The results here are really remarkable, and it beats running hands down.

Unfortunately, for those who eat pizza as an excuse to drink beer, pizza (loaded with latent calories and served above body temperature) induces an opposite effect. But, thankfully, as the astute reader should have already reasoned, the obvious solution is to drink a lot of beer with pizza and follow up immediately with large bowls of ice cream.

We could all be thin if we were to adhere religiously to a pizza, beer, and ice cream diet." (Source)
The main issue is that a food calorie is a thermodynamic kilocalorie, which is the energy required to raise a kilogram of water 1 degree C or K. This is another simple case of unit confusions; much as in engineering we use both the lbm (pound-mass; also known as a slug, and if that convention were used more, much less confusion would arise) and lbf (pound-force, the one the average person uses and loves on a daily basis).

Well, I guess my 15-111 Lab can wait a bit more...

I shall regale you all with a tale of exploits I participated in not two nights hence:

So Buehl and I decided we were hungry and wanted food; preferably half-priced food. #2 concurred and furthermore was not interested in going Salsaing with some of the others. After some explorations on campus we made it down to Joe Mama's for half-price. All went well there and we headed back.
Following some further explorations back on campus, we discovered something wonderful.
Yes, those are cluster chairs freshly interred in a dumpster. We three could hardly pass up the opportunity to obtain some of the coveted cluster chairs. So we did was was, admittedly, a pretty dumb thing: we climbed up on the dumpster and pulled out, eventually, 9 good chairs. We tied these together with all manner of things, power cables, zip ties, parts of power cables.
Then we set off across campus, towing these things back to our respective dorms.
Eventually we reached Forbes Ave. Unfortunately, we were unable to avoid the fuzz. Twice. Happily they believed us, mostly, both times and we ended successfully got the chairs back to our rooms. Woot.
Seriously, this is a ginormous improvement over my old chair. Comfortable and the right height to use a computer on these desks (that seem to have been designed to be as anti-computer as possible).
Anyway, now it's time for 15-111 and mebbe statics or thermo.