A sample of music an engineer would like
What is an ENGINEER?
The word "engineer" is greatly overused. If there's somebody in your life who you think is trying to pass as an engineer, look for the traits described in the following sections. You might start by giving him/her this test:
ENGINEER IDENTIFICATION TEST
Q: You walk into a room and notice that a picture is hanging crooked. You ...
Straighten it.
Ignore it.
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 anybody 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 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:
Things that need to be fixed, and
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 "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Engineers believe "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
Anyone wearing a short-sleeved "dress" shirt matching the background color of this
page is either an engineer, or posing as one.
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 primary objective of clothing has been met. A secondary
objective, of course, is to provide for mass storage of pens, pencils, calculators,
screwdrivers, high-powered miniature flashlights, batteries, sandwiches, cheese
snacks, and other items essential to engineer survival. Anything else is a waste.
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
Etceteras.
Female engineers become irresistible at the age of consent and remain that way until about thirty minutes after their clinical death. Longer it 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 interest, and
other people who can't handle the truth.
Engineers sometimes bend the truth to avoid work, however. They say things that sound like lies, but technically are not because nobody could be expected to believe them. A list of some common "lies" you might hear from an engineer:
"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 the activity is technically impossible for reasons that are far too complicated to explain.
If that approach is not sufficient to halt the project, then the engineer will fall back to a second line of defense: "It's technically possible, but it will cost too much."
EGO
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 almost better than sex.
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 (code phrase meaning, not fun to do), some clever normal people have to 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 problem and the engineer, who will pounce on it like a starved Chihuahua on a pork chop.
