Two engineering students were walking across campus when one asked the other, "Where did you get such a great bike?"
The second engineer replied, "well, I was minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up to me on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, stripped off all of her clothes and told me to take anything I wanted."
The second engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice," he said, "her clothes wouldn't have have fit you."
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.
A mathmatician, a physicist, and an engineer were all given a red rubber ball and told to find the volume.
The mathmatician carefully measured the diameter and evaluated a triple integral.
The physicist filled a beaker with water, put the ball in the water, and measured the total displacement.
The engineer looked up the model and serial numbers in his red-rubber-ball table.
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. Finally, at the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in
chalk on a particular component of the machine and said, "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.
What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons. Civil Engineers build targets.
Understanding Engineers - Take EightAn architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress. The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, and mystery he found there. The engineer said, "I prefer both -- it's perfect. My wife thinks that I am with my mistress, my mistress thinks that I am with my wife, and I can go into the office and get some work done."
Understanding Engineers - Take Nine
An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and
said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess."
He bent over, The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want."
Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into
his pocket.
Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a
beautiful princess, that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why
won't you kiss me?"
The engineer said, "Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a
girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool!"
Three men are condemned to death by guillotine: a priest, a thief, and an engineer. The priest is brought forward to go first. He says, "I'd like to be beheaded lying on my back so I can face upward towards Heaven and my God." They grant his request and place him facing up. Just as the blade is about to reach his neck, it stops. Everyone marvels and assumes it's a sign from God and let the priest go. The thief is up next and being crafty as he is, also requests to face upward, hoping for the same outcome. Once again, the blade stops just short of his neck, and he's set free. The engineer knows a good thing when he sees it and also requests to face upward. As they're raising the blade for his execution, he says, "Oh wait, hang on. I see what your problem is."
Understanding Engineers - Take Eleven
An engineer died and reported to the pearly gates. An intern angel, filling in for St. Peter, checked his dossier and grimly said, "Ah, you're an engineer; you're in the wrong place."
So the engineer was cast down to the gates of hell and was let in. Pretty soon,One day,God's face clouded over and he exploded, "What? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake; he should never have gotten down there; send him up here."
Satan shook his head, "No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him."
God was as mad as he had ever been, "This is not the way things are supposed to work and you know it. Send him back up here or I'll sue."
Satan laughed uproariously, "Yeah, right. And just where are YOU going to get a lawyer?"
The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
A young engineer was leaving the office at 6 p.m. when he found the CEO standing in front of a shredder with a piece of paper in his hand.
"Listen," said the CEO, "this is important, and my secretary has left. Can you make this thing work?"
"Certainly," said the young engineer. He turned the machine on, inserted the paper, and pressed the start button.
"Excellent, excellent!" said the CEO as his paper disappeared inside the machine. "I just need one copy."
If Dr. Seuss did Technical Writing,
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash.
If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as fussy as your spouse,
then you may as well reboot it; there is nothing more to do
flip the switch, start to pray that Windows will pull through.
There was an engineer, manager and programmer driving down a steep mountain road.
The brakes failed and the car careened down the road out of control.
Half way down the driver managed to stop the car by running it against the embankment narrowing avoiding going over a cliff.
They all got out, shaken by their narrow escape from death,The engineer said "No that would take too long, and besides that method never worked before. I have my trusty pen knife here and will take apart the brake system, isolate the problem and correct it."
The programmer said "I think your both wrong! I think we should all push the car back up the hill and see if it happens again."
There was this male engineer, on a cruise ship in the Caribbean for the first time. It was wonderful, the experience of his life.
A hurricane came up unexpectedly. The ship went down almost instantly.
The man found himself, he knew not how, swept up on the shore of an island. There was nothing else anywhere to be seen. No person, no supplies, nothing. The man looked around. There were some bananas and coconuts, but that was it. He was desperate, and forlorn, but decided to make the best of it. So for the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice and mostly looked to the sea mightily for a ship to come to his rescue.
One day, as he was lying on the beech stroking his beard and looking for a ship, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. Could it be true, was it a ship? No, from around the corner of the island came this rowboat. In it was the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen, or at least seen in 4 months. She was tall, tanned, and her blond hair flowing in the sea breeze gave her an almost ethereal quality. She spotted him also as he was waving and yelling and screaming to get her attention. She rowed her boat towards him.
In disbelief, he asked, "Where did you come from? How did you get here"?
She said, "I rowed from the other side of the island. I landed on this island when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing", he said, "I didn't know anyone else had survived. How many of you are there? Where, did you get the rowboat? You must have been really lucky to have a rowboat wash-up with you?"
"It is only me", she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up, nothing else did."
"Well then", said the man, "how did you get the rowboat?"
"I made the rowboat out of raw material that I found on the island," replied the woman (who was a mechanical engineer). "The oars were whittled from Gum tree branches, I wove the bottom from Palm branches, and the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree".
"But, but," asked the man, "what about tools and hardware, how did you do that?"
"Oh, no problem," replied the woman (who was also a geologist), "on the south side of the island there is a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock exposed."
" I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron," said the woman (who was also an accomplished metallurgist). "I used that for tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. But, enough of that," she said. "Where do you live?"
At last the man was forced to confess that he had been sleeping on the beach.
"Well, let's row over to my place,"she said. So they both got into the rowboat and left for her side of island.
The woman (who was also a bodybuilder) easily rowed them around to a wharf that led to the approach to her place. She tied up the rowboat with a beautifully woven hemp rope. They walked up a stone walk and around a Palm tree, there stood an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white (she was also a civil engineer and an architect).
"It's not much, " she said, "but I call it home. Sit down, please, would you like to have a drink?"
"No," said the man, "one more coconut juice and I will puke."
"It won't be coconut juice," said the woman (who was, of course, also a chemical engineer, experienced in brewing and distillation), "I have a still, how about a Pina Colada?"
Trying to hide his continued amazement, the man accepted, and they sat down on her couch to talk.
After a while, and they had exchanged their stories, the woman asked, "Tell me, have you always had a beard?"
"No", the man replied, "I was clean shaven all of my life, and even on the cruise ship".
"Well if you would like to shave, there is a man's razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom." So, the man, no longer questioning anything, went upstairs to the bath room. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a bone handle, two shells honed to a hollow ground edge were fastened on to its end inside of a swivel mechanism (as you've probably guessed, she had a degree in Industrial Design as well). The man shaved, showered and went back downstairs.
"You look great," said the woman, "I think I will go up and slip into something more comfortable." So she did.
And, the man continued to sip his Pina Colada. After a short time, the woman returned wearing fig leaves strategically positioned, and smelling faintly of gardenia.
"Tell me," she said, "we have both been out here for a very long time with no companionship. You know what I mean. Have you been lonely, is there anything that you really miss? Something that all men and woman need. Something that it would be really nice to have right now?"
"Yes there is," the man replied, as he moved closer to the woman while fixing a winsome gaze upon her, "Tell me... do you have an Internet connection?"
Q: Why did the chicken cross the moebius strip?
A: To get to the same side.
An atom walks into a bar and asks if anyone has seen his electron. The bartender says no, and asks the atom if he's sure his electron is missing.
Yes, says the atom, I'm positive.
They're Not Like Other People
People who work in the fields of science and technology are not like other people. This can be frustrating to the non-technical people who have to deal with them. The secret to coping technology-oriented people is to understand their motivations. This discussion will teach you everything you need to know. Customs and mannerisms were studied through observation, much the way Jane Goodall learned about the great apes, but without the hassle of grooming.
Engineering is so trendy these days that everybody wants to be one. The word "engineer" is greatly overused. If there's somebody in your life who you think is trying to pass as an engineer, give them this test to discern the truth.
Engineer Identification Test
You walk into a room and notice that a picture is hanging crooked. You ...
A. Straighten it.
B. Ignore it.
C. Buy a CAD system and spend the next six months designing a solar-powered, self-adjusting picture frame while often stating aloud your belief that the inventor of the nail was a total moron.
The correct answer is "C," but partial credit can be given to anyone who writes "It depends" in the margin of the test or simply blames the whole stupid thing on marketing.
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 human beings
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 palced into one of two categories:
1. Things that need to be fixed
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 eflon 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
Engineers are genrally satisfied with their clothing if basic threshholds for temperature and decency have been satisfied. If no appendages are freezing or sticking together, and if no private parts are swinging around in plain view, then the objective of clothing has been met. Anything else is a waste.
Dating and Social Life
Dating is never easy for engineers. A normal person will employ various direct and duplicitpus methods to creat 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 people harbor an intense desire to mate with them, thus producing engineer-like children who will have high-paying jobs long before finding romance.
o Bill Gates
o MacGyver
o Etcetera
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 amtters 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 the intention behind the statement is true. Some common engineer lies are:
o "I won't change anything without asking you first."
o "I'll return your hard-to-find cable tomorrow."
o "I have to have new equipment to do my job."
o "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?"
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 traet it like it's a big deal or something.
Examples of Bad Press for Engineers
o Hindenberg
o SPANet (tm)
o Hubble space telescope
o Apollo 13
o Titanic
o Ford Pinto
o 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 approcah 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:
o How smart they are.
o 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 this includes 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 ohrase that means it's not fun to do), some clever normal people have learned to look 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 this point, it is a good idea for the normal person to not stand between the engineer and the problem. The engineer wil set upon the problem like a starved Chihuahua on a pork chop.
"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied:
"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:
"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. he height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H =3D 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer."
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T =3D 2 pi sqrroot (l / g)."
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."
After Receiving an Invitation to an Inventors' Ball:
Edison thought it would be an illuminating experience.
Watt reckoned it would be a good way to let off steam.
Stephenson thought the whole idea was loco.
Wilbur Wright accepted, provided he and Orville could get a flight.
Morse's reply: "I'll be there on the dot. Can't stop now must dash."
|
| Web hosting by Utah Hub * Powered by CreativeTap * In association with Segomo |