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  ENGINEERS:

  Engineering is so trendy these days that everybody wants to be one.
  The word "engineer" is greatly overused.  If there's somebody in your
  life who you think is trying to pass as an engineer, give him/her this test
  to discern the truth.

  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
      *Sex

  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 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 private parts
  are swinging around in plain view, then the objective of clothing has
  been met.  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.  By definition, 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.
        *  Etc.

  Female engineers become irresistible at the age of consent and remain
  that way until  their clinical death.

  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. An incomplete list of engineer lies is listed
  below.

        "I won't change anything without asking you first."
        "I'll return your expensive and 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.  Have you ever
  noticed that
  when a technical goal is reached it's called a "scientific achievement",
  but when it doesn't it's called an "engineering failure"?

  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 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

  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 this includes 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 Jim 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.