Title: Are you an Engineer?
 
 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 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:
 (1)things that need to be fixed, and
 (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 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:
 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 objective of
 clothing has been met. Anything else is a waste.
 
 LOVE OF "STAR TREK":
 Engineers love all of the "Star Trek" television shows and movies. It's a
 small wonder, since the engineers on the starship Enterprise are portrayed
 as heroes, occasionally even having sex with aliens. This is much more
 glamorous than the real life of an engineer, which consists of hiding from
 the universe and having sex without the participation of other life forms.
 
 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 engineer-like 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.
 * 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 matters 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 nobody could be expected
 to believe them. The complete list of engineer lies is listed below.
 "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 any activity is technically impossible for
 reasons that are far too complicated to explain.
 
 If that approach 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:
 * How smart they are.
 * 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
 I'm including 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 phrase that means it's
 not fun to do), some clever normal people have 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 engineer and the problem. The engineer will set upon the problem like
 a starved Chihuahua on a pork chop.
 
 
 

Wil Stark, wstark04 (at) pobox _dot_com

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