Engineer Humor

04/24/2006: From http://www.gdargaud.net/Humor/Engineer.html

You Might Be An Engineer If…

* You have no life – and you can PROVE it mathematically. (That is empirical…I have no life!)
* You enjoy pain. (uhhh…I resemble that remark!)
* You know vector calculus but you can’t remember how to do long division. (That would be me.)
* You chuckle whenever anyone says “centrifugal force”. (Yup)
* You’ve actually used every single function on your graphing calculator. (Screw graphing calculators…real engineers draw their own graphs thankuverymuch!)
* It is sunny and 70 degrees outside, and you are working on a computer.
* You frequently whistle the theme song to “MacGyver”.
* You know how to integrate a chicken and can take the derivative of water.
* You think in “math”. (Affirmative)
* You’ve calculated that the World Series actually diverges. (Proven by inspection.)
* You hesitate to look at something because you don’t want to break down its wave function. (Well…I DO think in terms of transfer functions…oh crap!)
* You have a pet named after a scientist.
* You laugh at jokes about mathematicians. (YES!!!!)
* The Humane society has you arrested because you actually performed the Schrodinger’s Cat experiment. (No…my cat is too smart for that one!)
* You can translate English into Binary.
* You can’t remember what’s behind the door in the engineering building which says “Exit”.
* You have to bring a jacket with you, in the middle of summer, because there’s a wind-chill factor in the lab. (I’ve had that problem before.)
* You are completely addicted to caffeine. (Yup.)
* You avoid doing anything because you don’t want to contribute to the eventual heat-death of the universe.
* You consider ANY non-engineering course “easy”. (LOL…how true!)
* When your professor asks you where your homework is, you claim to have accidentally determined its momentum so precisely, that according to Heisenberg it could be anywhere in the universe. (I’ve never tried that excuse, but I like it!)
* The “fun” center of your brain has deteriorated from lack of use. (Yupper!!!)
* You’ll assume that a “horse” is a “sphere” in order to make the math easier. (Affirmative)
* The blinking 12:00 on someone’s VCR draws you in like a tractor beam to fix it.
* You bring a computer manual / technical journal as vacation reading. (And what’s wrong with that???)
* The salesperson at Circuit City can’t answer any of your questions.
* You can’t help eavesdropping in computer stores… and correcting the salesperson.
* You’re in line for the guillotine… it stops working properly… and you offer to fix it. (only if you went to Purdue and the person in front of you graduated from Indiana!)
* You go on the rides at Disneyland and sit backwards to see how they do the special effects. (I have done that!)
* You have any “Dilbert” comics displayed in your work area. (Used to.)
* You have a habit of destroying things in order to see how they work. (I still do that!)
* You have never backed up your hard drive. (Uh oh!)
* You haven’t bought any new underwear or socks for yourself since you got married. (Never married…therefore never had that problem! LOL)
* You spent more on your calculator than on your wedding ring. (No wedding ring, but LOTS of calculators!)
* You think that when people around you yawn, it’s because they didn’t get enough sleep.
* You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon (not with $3/gallon!!!)
* You’ve ever calculated how much you make per second. (I’ve done that)
* Your favorite James Bond character is “Q,” the guy who makes the gadgets. (hehehehe)
* You understood more than five of these jokes. (and your point is???)
* You make a copy of this list, and post it on your door or your home page ! (Well…)

How Many Churchgoers Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb?

04/24/2006: From Terry Meiners:

How many Churchgoers does it take to change a light bulb?

Charismatic: Only 1 –
Hands are already in the air.

Pentecostal : 10 –
One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterians: None –
Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Roman Catholic: None –
Candles only.

Baptists: At least 15.
One to change the light bulb, three committees to approve the change, and 11 to decide who brings the potato salad and fried chicken.

Episcopalians: 3 –
One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks and one to talk about how much better the old one was.

Mormons : 5 –
One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.

Unitarians: –
We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that light bulbs work for you, you are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your light bulb for the next Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

Methodists: – Undetermined.
Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service and a covered dish to pass.

Nazarene : 6 –
One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.

Lutherans: None –
Lutherans don’t believe in change.

Amish: –
What’s a light bulb?

Vox Day on the Increasing Irrelevance of a College Degree

04/24/2006: In Vox Day’s latest column, he offered this brilliant insight (emphasis mine):

Technology has an uncanny way of puncturing such structural vacuities. Already universities are flirting with various forms of Internet-based distance education, and once a brand-name university realizes that it is far more profitable to charge $1,000 per class to 10,000 online students than $40,000 in annual tuition to 1,000 on-campus freshmen without harming the brand, the next great revolution in higher education will begin.

That economics lesson is priceless, and that process is already in motion. I happen to work for a distance learning provider. Using the Internet, we have combined to deliver educational opportunities for grade school (and high school) students needing remedial work, college students, and adults seeking their GED or other workplace-required skills.

The things we are accomplishing today–in the realm of distance learning via the Internet–were nonexistent ten years ago. I completed my entire MBA through the Internet (Morehead State University), and the quality of the education was quite impressive. As a side note: I found myself doing a substantial amount of side work tutoring students–in finance and economics–from other MBA programs! 😉

In my profession–Information Technology (IT)–a college degree helps open doors, but is far from necessary. I have a very good friend who is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) who learned computers and networking as he was being homsechooled. He owns his own business, and does a variety of consulting. It is very common to run into top-of-the-line software developers who have no college training at all.

A 9th-grade friend of mine taught himself C/C++ programming in high school, and went on to forge his own business through his innovative development of computer graphics.

I also know of network administrators–who are among the best security experts in the field–who do not have 4-year degrees. None of the network administrators at my place of employment has a 4-year degree. The lack of such has hardly hindered their careers.

To be clear, some areas of employment–engineering, medicine, almost anything requiring a background in the hard sciences–will always require some sort of four-year degree, plus (in the case of medicine) additional schooling and residence training.

However, Vox is right: the value of the traditional liberal arts education is declining rapidly.