"You must be an engineer" said the balloonist.
"I am" replied the woman "how did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost Frankly you've not been much help so far."
The woman below responded, "you must be in management."
"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
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.
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 greenskeeper. 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 greenskeeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They ost 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?"
Mechanical Engineers build weapons, Civil Engineers build targets.
Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet."
He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket.
The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week."
The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket.
The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess,
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."
So the engineer was cast down to the gates of hell and was let in. Pretty soon, the engineer became gravely dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and began designing and building improvements. After a while, the underworld had air conditioning, flush toilets, and escalators, and the engineer was becoming a pretty popular guy among the demons.
One day, God called Satan up on the telephone and asked with a sneer, "So, how's it going down there in hell?"
Satan laughed and replied, "Hey, things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next."
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?"
P = The problem logged by the pilot.
S = The solution and action taken by the engineers.
P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.
P: Test flight OK, except autoland very rough.
S: Autoland not installed on this aircraft.
P: No. 2 propeller seeping prop fluid.
S: No. 2 propeller seepage normal. Nos. 1, 3 and 4 propellers lack normal
seepage.
P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.
P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on backorder.
P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200-fpm descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.
P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.
P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what they're there for!
P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.
P: Suspected crack in windscreen.
S: Suspect you're right.
P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.
P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.
P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with words.
P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.
you see a good design and still have to change it.
you still own a slide rule and you know how to use it.
your family haven't the foggiest idea what you do at work.
in college you thought Spring Break was metal fatigue failure.
you have modified your can-opener to be microprocessor driven.
you are better with a Karnaugh map than you are with a street map.
you think the real heroes of "Apollo 13" were the mission controllers.
you take a cruise so you can go on a personal tour of the engine room.
you think "cuddling" is simply an unproductive application of heat exchange
you have owned a calculator with no equal key and know what RPN stands for.
you make four sets of drawings (with seven revisions) before making a bird bath.
you have trouble writing anything unless the paper has horizontal and vertical lines.
your ideal evening consists of fast-forwarding through the latest sci-fi movie looking for technical inaccuracies.
you think the value of a book is directly proportionate to the amount of tables, charts and graphs it contains
if you know vector calculus but you can't remember how to do long division.
if you've actually used every single function on your graphing calculator.
if it is sunny and 70 degrees outside, and you are working on a computer.
if you know how to integrate a chicken and can take the derivative of water.
if you think in "math."
if you have a pet named after a scientist.
if you laugh at jokes about mathematicians.
if the Humane society has you arrested because you actually performed the Schrodinger's Cat experiment.
if you can translate English into Binary.
if you can't remember what's behind the door in the science building which says "Exit."
If you are completely addicted to caffeine.
if you consider ANY non-science course "easy."
if 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.
if the "fun" center of your brain has deteriorated from lack of use.
if you'll assume that a "horse" is a "sphere" in order to make the math easier.
if you understood more than five of these indicators.
if you make a hard copy of this list, and post it on your door.