How many of you are engineers etc?

Computer Engineer who now specializes in computer learning doing high frequency trading

 

Haha. I doubt you have that specific combination of traits! I also hope my statement didn't come off poorly. Most people on this site are a pleasure to talk to (and some are pretty witty/funny). I have encountered some people, though, who make statements that are totally wrong from a technical standpoint and stick by it when it's shown to be incorrect. That I don't understand. We're all ignorant about a lot of things. I think it's good to be confident (but not cocky) in our areas of expertise and to be accepting (but have healthy skepticism) of others' advice/opinions when it's their area of expertise. So far I'm enjoying reading others' experiences with the Prius Prime as well as some long-time Prius owners who know all about these vehicles.

 

I hope the OP realizes the title "engineers, etc." covers everybody in any profession or retirees. That "etc." carries a lot of weight.

 

Even "engineer" is a hopelessly general term now.

 

I am a science wannabee. And if I remembered just 10% of what I had learned through the years I would be a bit further along.

 

Computer geek, certified by a whole bunch of defunct companies (Nortel, Synoptics, Wellfleet, Bay Networks, 3Com, US Robotics, Telebit, Novell, et al), geek to English translator (aka technical writer). I would have been a scientist or engineer, but I'm horrible at math. Got into it because I'm good at language and able to get thing x to talk to thing y.

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As they say in the vernacular, "Gettin' a deegree don't make you an injuneer! You gotta have some brains and logical thinkin'! " Sounds to me like you're qualified!

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Hey this thing is messin' with my "vernacular"!!! It won't allow me to post "Got ta"; it keeps forcing the correction!!
Damn it!! If I wanna sound iggerrant, let me stay iggerrant!! Damn AI, trying to take over the world!!!

 

No degree, but developed and delivered training for plenty of nuclear and fossil power plants to know more than most. Also did training development and delivery for several Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software packages (SAP, BaaN) and Hyperion Solutions (now Oracle) software. Guess I've been around the block enough to be able to converse with engineers, who have their own strange language.

 

I worked with a guy who "came up through the ranks", started as a draftsman in steel detailing, moved to structural consulting engineering, became a fully accredited structural engineer. Amazing guy. Could do EVERYTHING. Tutored new engineers. Wasn't beneath him to do dimension checks too, which were really soup-to-nuts checks, that got everything sorted.

 

The company I used to work for was considering a policy that new electrical engineers had to work for a while as plant electricians. We were getting too many designs that were overly time consuming to troubleshoot and repair. In a factory, time is money. I worked my way up from unskilled machine operator, to chemical processing, to machine maintenance, to electrical maintenance, to supervising electricians & millwrights. What an experience!

 

One manufacturing place I worked for calculated that unplanned downtime cost the company $3000 per minute.

 

I did a number of jobs in my younger years, too numerous to list, although I will mention the one year that I spent as a parts driver in the parts department at a Datsun dealer. It was during the transition to Nissan and I remember during that time the cars had both brand names on them.


In 1986 I wound up working in a marketing department, during which time an IBM XT was plopped onto my desk and I was told to figure it out so that they could start using it for word processing and spreadsheets (remember Lotus 1-2-3?) I worked with computers ever since, including three years at a software company, although not as a programmer. I learned programming and found it fascinating, but not for more than a couple of hours a day then I would get restless. I also found that I didn't like hanging around with IT people all day (sorry folks!) No more than I had previously liked hanging around with marketing people all day (sorry folks!)

I found that I preferred QA, integration, software design and customer support, as a good mix of technical with interaction with both IT and non-IT people Wound up at a global paint company, but not in the IT department. The company created its own software for our customers to mix colors and track usage for cost and VOC reporting. And we even purchased PC's by the boatload so that we could integrate our software onto it and ship it out plug and play to our paint customers, and support the PC's in the field as needed. We were our own separate department for many of those years, but later since the software was so critical to our customers we got folded into the marketing department. So I was back in marketing! Until I retired last June. Well took severance/early retirement. Not sure I plan to stay retired, depends on whether I get bored or not, so far not.

 

I wish more companies would do the same for mechanical engineers - such as required machining and assembly time. I see too many designs that are completely thoughtless regarding the necessary processes to make them.

 

When working for a fabricator, we received drawings where steel beams where run from steel beams/columns to weld plates embedded in cast concrete walls. No thought given to the placement accuracy of concrete walls, the beams were to butt directly against the weld plate, be field-welded. We gave them what they asked for. The face of concrete dimension was hopelessly off, but that was eclipsed by weld plates that were mis-located laterally on the wall, by feet, lol.

I once worked with a guy, another draftsman, kinda of a dogged, helpful guy, came out with a gem: "we're going backwards". It can happen: you can put in the hours, collect your paycheck, but be moving further from the goal.

 

I worked supporting hardware designers for two-way radios a while ago.
Shortly after I started they had to redesign a product that had been designed by student interns. It was a great design, but it could not be manufactured on a mass production line. They were missing that practical knowledge.

 

You know what attracts us to the Prius family?

We use our own common sense and objective observations. So the hybrid skeptics; the marketing liars, and; the auto magazine reporters can't change our minds or shame us into their rides.

Look, I appreciate the BEV advocates who see a beautiful future of roses and 'sweet violets.' But we live in the real world, the one that dawn Monday, November 13. Another day of the usual life challenges of taking care of our loved ones and what must be done.

So let's rejoice in our choices and enjoy our lives. If others who have not a clue wish to post their screeds, let them. We have to pay our bills with our 'greenback, Yankee dollars' which they have NOT volunteered to provide.

Bob Wilson

 

I went through a structural drafting course in '79. We dragged our feet in the architectural, civil, and structural concrete sections, so were playing catch-up when it came to structural steel. So to be fair, maybe with more time, this wouldn't have been the case, but, the sand-pounding issue, the one credo that never came up, that could have summarized the essence of drafting in one sentence:

Know your audience.

Instead, we were taught basically how to mimic, ape a draftsman. The behaviours to do, the language to use, how to draw, and on and on. Anyway:

Maybe a year into the job, working with a very sharp engineer, I'd turned out some drawings, for the redo of the rock breaker foundation on the side of a primary (rock) crusher. This was basically a very big jack hammer, mounted on the side, meant to break up oversized rocks that don't fit through the grill, fall down into the crusher.

It was currently mounted on the top level concrete, but had shook itself loose, so the engineer opted to create a steel structure, running independent of the concrete, all the way to bedrock, maybe 3 floors down. I drew it up, engineer checked it, I made the corrections, and off it went.

Maybe 3 weeks went by, the engineer came by, dropped off basically a Torah-sized roll of blueprints, and said have a look through these, they came back from the fabricator, for our approval.

These drawings completely blew my mind, for a couple of reasons. First, the near infinite increase in complexity, compare to the chicken scratch drawings I cranked out. Secondly: and more importantly:

Why the heck if you're teaching someone to draft a letter to someone, would you not give them an inkling, of who the letter is for??

 

Yes, I remember Lotus 1-2-3. And the add-in font pack that made it act something like a bastardized word processor. When all the problems you have are nails, the only tool you'll have is a Torx screwdriver.

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As a LAN administrator at a gold mine, 1988- 2002, I used Synoptics, Bay Networks, Nortel, and 3Com gear, plus a lot of FDDI cards in Suns. As a programmer I wrote in BASIC, ForTran, Pascal, COBOL, RPG, C, PL/SQL, and Business Objects. As a hardware tech, I mostly played with tricks to make Oracle faster on Sun Solaris. (The issue was both massively parallel and data independent, so more CPUs helped, more banks of RAM helped, and parallel programming helped. And I found an insane way to achieve disk writes at the speed of the controller, not of the disk, which helped.)

Programming is proof that wishing something is true can make it true. Hardware is proof that what you think is happening is not as important as what is really happening.

 

Did you buy your Synoptics, Bay Networks and 3Com gear from Anixter? Asking for a friend.

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