Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Engineers

I thought I would share these. When I found them, I was amazed at how accurate they are. Sometimes depressingly so.

Understanding Engineers - Take One

Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?"

The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want."

The second engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit."

Understanding Engineers - Take Two

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Understanding Engineers - Take Three

A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!"

The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!"

The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greens keeper. Let's have a word with him." [dramatic pause] "Hi George, say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?"

The greens keeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime."

The group was silent for a moment. The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight."

The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them."

The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?

Understanding Engineers - Take Four

There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multimillion dollar machines.
They had tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work but to no avail. In desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past.

The engineer reluctantly took the challenge. He spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is."

The part was replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly:
One chalk mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $49,999
It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace.

Understanding Engineers - Take Five

What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers?

Mechanical Engineers build weapons.
Civil Engineers build targets.

ENGINEER IDENTIFICATION TEST

SOCIAL SKILLS

Engineers have different objectives when it comes to social interaction.

"Normal" people expect to accomplish several unrealistic things from social interaction:

*Stimulating and thought-provoking conversation
*Important social contacts
*A feeling of connectedness with other humans

In contrast to "normal" people, engineers have rational objectives for social interactions:

*Get it over with as soon as possible.
*Avoid getting invited to something unpleasant.
*Demonstrate mental superiority and mastery of all subjects.

FASCINATION WITH GADGETS

To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1)things that need to be fixed, and (2)things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them. Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems. Normal people don't understand this concept; they believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.

No engineer looks at a television remote control without wondering what it would take to turn it into a stun gun. No engineer can take a shower without wondering if some sort of Teflon coating would make showering unnecessary. To the engineer, the world is a toy box full of sub-optimized and feature-poor toys.

FASHION AND APPEARANCE

Clothes are the lowest priority for an engineer, assuming the basic thresholds for temperature and decency have been satisfied. If no appendages are freezing or sticking together, and if no genitalia or mammary glands are swinging around in plain view, then the objective of clothing has been met. Anything else is a waste.

LOVE OF "STAR TREK"

Engineers love all of the "Star Trek" television shows and movies. It's a small wonder, since the engineers on the starship Enterprise are portrayed as heroes, occasionally even having sex with aliens. This is much more glamorous than the real life of an engineer, which consists of hiding from the universe and having sex without the participation of other life forms.

DATING AND SOCIAL LIFE

Dating is never easy for engineers. A normal person will employ various indirect and duplicitous methods to create a false impression of attractiveness. Engineers are incapable of placing appearance above function.

Fortunately, engineers have an ace in the hole. They are widely recognized as superior marriage material: intelligent, dependable, employed, honest, and handy around the house. While it's true that many normal people would prefer not to date an engineer, most normal people harbor an intense desire to mate with them, thus producing engineerlike children who will have high-paying jobs long before losing their virginity.

Male engineers reach their peak of sexual attractiveness later than normal men, becoming irresistible erotic dynamos in their mid thirties to late forties. Just look at these examples of sexually irresistible men in technical professions:

* Bill Gates.
* MacGyver.
* Et cetera.

Female engineers become irresistible at the age of consent and remain that way until about thirty minutes after their clinical death. Longer if it's a warm day.

HONESTY

Engineers are always honest in matters of technology and human relationships. That's why it's a good idea to keep engineers away from customers, romantic interests, and other people who can't handle the truth.

Engineers sometimes bend the truth to avoid work. They say things that sound like lies but technically are not because nobody could be expected to believe them. The complete list of engineer lies is listed below.

"I won't change anything without asking you first."
"I'll return your hard-to-find cable tomorrow."
"I have to have new equipment to do my job."
"I'm not jealous of your new computer."

FRUGALITY

Engineers are notoriously frugal. This is not because of cheapness or mean spirit; it is simply because every spending situation is simply a problem in optimization, that is, "How can I escape this situation while retaining the greatest amount of cash?"

POWERS OF CONCENTRATION

If there is one trait that best defines an engineer it is the ability to concentrate on one subject to the complete exclusion of everything else in the environment. This sometimes causes engineers to be
pronounced dead prematurely. Some funeral homes in high-tech areas have started checking resumes before processing the bodies. Anybody with a degree in electrical engineering or experience in computer programming is propped up in the lounge for a few days just to see if he or she snaps out of it.

RISK

Engineers hate risk. They try to eliminate it whenever they can. This is understandable, given that when an engineer makes one little mistake, the media will treat it like it's a big deal or something.

EXAMPLES OF BAD PRESS FOR ENGINEERS

* Hindenberg.
* Space Shuttle Challenger.
* SPANet(tm)
* Hubble space telescope.
* Apollo 13.
* Titanic.
* Ford Pinto.
* Corvair.

The risk/reward calculation for engineers looks something like this:

RISK: Public humiliation and the death of thousands of innocent people.
REWARD: A certificate of appreciation in a handsome plastic frame.

Being practical people, engineers evaluate this balance of risks and rewards and decide that risk is not a good thing. The best way to avoid risk is by advising that any activity is technically impossible for reasons that are far too complicated to explain.

If that approach is not sufficient to halt a project, then the engineer will fall back to a second line of defense: "It's technically possible but it will cost too much."

EGO

Ego-wise, two things are important to engineers:
* How smart they are.
* How many cool devices they own.

The fastest way to get an engineer to solve a problem is to declare that the problem is unsolvable. No engineer can walk away from an unsolvable problem until it's solved. No illness or distraction is
sufficient to get the engineer off the case. These types of challenges quickly become personal -- a battle between the engineer and the laws of nature.

Engineers will go without food and hygiene for days to solve a problem. (Other times just because they forgot.) And when they succeed in solving the problem they will experience an ego rush that is better than sex--and I'm including the kind of sex where other people are involved.

Nothing is more threatening to the engineer than the suggestion that somebody has more technical skill. Normal people sometimes use that knowledge as a lever to extract more work from the engineer. When an engineer says that something can't be done (a code phrase that means it's not fun to do), some clever normal people have learned to glance at the engineer with a look of compassion and pity and say something along these lines: "I'll ask Bob to figure it out. He knows how to solve difficult technical problems."

At that point it is a good idea for the normal person to not stand between the engineer and the problem. The engineer will set upon the problem like a starved Chihuahua on a pork chop.

That is an octagon.

Problem solved.

We all know that is an engineer restraining device.

Put 3 engineers standing inside the ring and they will design a game that prevents any of them from leaving.

If it is cheap and does the job, design and build a better one that costs a lot more.

Something tells me Theo's office is filled with Dilbert comic strips.

I have cut out a few for work but the boss never lets me display them.

Mission accomplished! What was I thinking using 4 elbows and 4 10' lengths to use as a ring?????

Looks to me like a Superconducting Super Collider prototype.
Prolly should of used long ells. Better yet, flex.

Thanks Theo!
On the road away from family (and pond) doing my engineer stuff. Even when I'm home I drive myself and eveyone else that knows me crazy with most everything mentioned. Bit of heresy here, but sometimes I even think that it's NOT "about the fish/pond", but about all the cool pond projects I dream up to make my life easier/work go faster/etc. Usually though it results in more work/less done/money gone.

Thanks for the laughs! Seems we are in good company on this forum.
A fellow sufferer...

Dilbert is not a comic strip.

It is a documentary.

HAHA!

My ex-FIL is an engineer. Very smart guy. I could ever quite understand his need todraw out a diagram of every angle of attack, distance, force ratio, etc, every time he needs to wipe his butt though?.?.?.

Odd!!!! This thread is also showing up on "Types of Fish To Choose" as the last post on my screen..........It is not in the list of topics though.

Same thing here...

it's been engineered

Yep by a bunch of IT engineers. They always have some good laughs when they tell you they lost some critical info on your system. Then once your blood pressure goes back down they tell you its not really lost , they can get it back then the laughing starts again.

Engineers are analytical; politicians are (use your own word(s)). Note the nested parentheses.

Good stuff Theo. My dad was a highway engineer and I can completely relate to your post. When things broke around the house (washer, dryer, hand drill, etc) Dad and I would take it apart and attempt to fix it. Many times we did fix the item (completely rebuilt a washer once) other times the broken item, in it's disassembled form was secreted away awaiting to arise as some other project in the future.

Accountants and Engineers share many of the same traits. Engineers however have the glory job. With the right design and application an engineer's name becomes a household name. We have had a president that was an engineer (Herbert Hoover), an engineer has walked on the moon (Neil Armstrong) everyone knows these names. And yet no one remembers the name of Neil's accountant that recommend the application of internal revenue code section 179 to save Neil $381 on his 1040.

Good stuff. Especially helfpul for a fisheries guy employed in an engineering department.

Wasnt Niel's accountant named Jeff something or other?

Hey; Bean Counters have been invaluable in keeping rich guys out of the calaboose. Al Capone was a different story. Madoffs Accountant might just join him up the river looking at striped sunlight.

I hear striped sunlight is very romantic, if your name is Bubba that is...