It's National Engineers' Week!

In celebration thereof, an article has been put together for your amusement. It's at [Link: designnews.com]

How many of these things do you do? Relate to? Have zero clue about?

Enjoy.

You know you're an engineer or a UofM grad when you tell everyone within earshot in the first 5 minutes of every conversation.

My son is going to UofM for you guessed it...... engineering.... It makes me sad on many different levels.

That's not as bad as being some things. There are jokes about vegans and other irritatingly communicative and obnoxious subsections of humanity who walk into a place and instantly tell everyone what they are.

Warn him that when he's out of school, if he goes around saying "When I was at UM we..." Sooner or later someone will tell him he's not there any more and he doesn't know what's happening HERE.

Remember that a clear pronunciation of "UM" is what someone says when they don't know what to say: "Ummm..."


As for the article, my dad was an engineer and I picked up A LOT of attitudes about how to do things from him. I mind melded with something over half of the situations in that article.

The intro said there was a fake in the bunch and I didn't notice which one it was. Hopefully it wasn't one I identified with!

....if you have told at least 3 people today that you are an engineer.

Here ya go-


[Link: encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com]

And then, the questions started. "Why do you have a slide rule, pocket protector full of pens & pencils and a little ruler?".

It's February again?

[Link: en.wikipedia.org].)

Engineers week is always in Feb during Washington's birthday

Okay I'll bite. Guess I should don a flame suit as I'll admit I'm an engineer by degree.

What I want to add is the bs about STEM shortage, and forcing every kid into engineering. There is no engineering shortage in this country (plenty of studies support this), but there is a shortage of CHEAP engineers in this country. This STEM movement is ridiculous, and was created by industry to push down the cost of engineers through either market saturation or importing (or outsourcing) foreign talent. As much as I dislike some of the "professional" organizations, the ABA for lawyers and AMA for doctors have done a respectable job keeping these jobs at pay levels they should be at. Engineers, not so much.

My son is taking off to college in a few months. Originally he planned on going into engineering, but after talking with him it was apparent he was only doing this because both his parents are engineers (only she practices it though), and the school system and society says it's what he should be doing. We discussed other options, and found he had much more interest in a different program - still math based - and he will be employable with the degree (his mother is not happy with me).

I'm just fed up with hearing about engineering shortages and the push for all kids towards the non-well defined "STEM" programs.

Still, many high-paying engineering jobs are available and if the student is at/near the upper end of their class, the pay issue should take care of itself. One area that some don't consider is military contractors- those jobs require security clearance and apparently, that sometimes takes precedence over actual ability, according to a friend who has been employed as an EE by several of them.

Another thing about getting an engineering degree- it doesn't mean they need to be an engineer, by definition- they can go into many other areas which can allow them to use what they learned without being cooped up in a cubicle farm for their whole career.

Told ya.  Just give them a minute.  :)

You know you're an engineer if you sit in a dark corner and design things that you don't know how to use.

TSS,
it's more likely that the thing the engineer designs won't be able to be built by anybody with a lick of sense. The magazine that article comes from has an occasional column called "made by monkeys," reporting on such things as the Ford van in which you have to lift the engine an inch to get a wrench in the position where you can remove the spark plugs.

I have an Astro van and I had heard nightmare stories about changing its spark plugs. If anyone asked if I had done that, I told them I haven't been drunk enough to want to. I asked about changing the plugs and wires in an Astro forum and one response was "Do a three inch lift and it's easy".


On a semi-related note, I have been waiting for a cabinet needed to house some equipment in the den of a job. I remember a math class word problem that was worded to find out how we understood what we read, or not. In the question, it referred to a field trip and a number of people, but the bus capacity wouldn't allow all of them to sit in a whole number of buses, so the teacher had to explain that in order for the 143 people to be seated when the capacity of each bus was 52, three were needed, not 2.75.

The cabinetmaker asked for the dimensions of the equipment and I now know that I should have told him the width I wanted, not the answer to his question. Sure enough, 17-1/4" equipment and 17-1/2" wide openings.

Some engineer somewhere might argue with this conclusion by saying that if there were three buses, then each bus would have to have 47 2/3 people on it... and that would just be inhumane. There is always some rounding off between the world of the engineer and the world of... the world!


That's a hard lesson to learn. We have to think about what they're going to do with the information, and be sure that it's what WE want to do with the information! My go-to shelf width is 24" since most components can be slid forward and rotated for wire access on a 24" wide shelf. Obviously I usually don't get that size shelf!

Earlier experiences with cabinetmakers taught me that professions have their own concepts of things. This one cabinet guy referred to the left-right dimension of one shelf as its width, but he called the left-right dimension of another shelf its length. I asked him why. Turns out the first shelf was particle board and the second shelf was wood, and the dimension in line with wood grain is its length.

From that I worked this out: When you deal with a construction trade, be aware that there are three dimensions: height, length, width, depth, breadth, thickness, and gauge. Those are the three dimensions.

I learned from that one to always say "left-right" or "up-down" or "front-back." An "up-down" dimension of something below a reference point could be called depth, but a "front-back" dimension of a shelf opening could also be called depth.

Another cabinetmaker made a cabinet wide enough for two components to sit side by side, but it a center post made the openings not wide enough for even one standard width component to be inserted straight in from the front. There was a shelf, but it also could not go straight in. He made that "work" by making the shelf in two pieces, a front half and a back half.

Ernie, I had a similar issue with a brick mason that was building a firepace surround, where the panel was to fit between two brick columns.

It didn't matter to him that the Pioneer PDP was such and such wide, it only mattered that the brick was such and such wide.

He started laying the brick the way HE wanted and not what was needed.

Builder had to get involved and instruct him to set the brick in whatever manner it took to have the panel fit (in not so nice terms).

Turned out fine, but it was a battle time after time.