You Might Be an Engineer If You…

1. Have half-broken objects in your house that you refuse to throw away with the hope that you can someday fix them.
2. Spend time looking at household products trying to devise a method for improvement.
3. Actually buy technical books.
4. Solder tools together to form new objects.
5. Constantly inform people that the ships in Star Wars should all be silent in space.
6. Tell people that time travel is impossible…and minutes later you think of how you would build a time machine.
7. Know 'natural frequency' has nothing to do with bowel movements.
8. Can do vector calculus in your head, but you forgot how to do long division.
9. Needed two dumpsters to haul off the scrap electrical parts from your work room when you last moved.
10. Not only know what a left-handed constabulator is, but you designed one once, for fun.
11. Recognize the importance of exercising your circuit breakers—and do it on the day the time changes because the clocks will be messed up anyway. *
12. Rotate your used and unused furniture as though they were non-radial tires. *
13. Used a CAD package to design your son's pinewood derby car.
14. Fast-forward through the latest sci-fi flick looking for technical inaccuracies.
15. Ever burned down the gymnasium with your Science Fair project.
16. Are convinced you can build a phaser out of your garage door opener and your camera's flash attachment.
17. Truly believe aliens are living among us.
18. Stump the salespeople at Circuit City each and every time you visit, and you enjoy it.
19. Have a functioning home copier, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal.
20. Are still on a personal tour of the engine room during your Alaskan cruise while everyone else is on the deck gazing at the scenery.
21. Can remember 7 computer passwords but not your anniversary.
22. Are working on a computer when it's sunny and 70 degrees outside.
23. Explain atomic absorption theory in response to your 3 year-old child's question, "Why is the sky blue?"
24. Collect circuit board jumpers just in case.
25. Have already calculated how much you make per second.

Since such a list might not be enough, maybe these will help bring a smile to your day…

Fairy Tales Can Come True

While doing research on her irrigation project, an environmental engineer came across a toad. "If you kiss me," the toad croaked, "I will be magically transformed into a burnin' hunk o' steamin' frosh, and I will be your faithful lover forever and ever."

To which she replied, "Hey, I'm an Engineer. I have no time for a boyfriend, but a talking frog is cool!"

Mind Games

Commenting on glass half full of water...

The mathematician says, "The glass is half full"
The physicist says, "The glass is half empty"
The Engineer says, "The glass is too big"

There is a half glass of scotch on a table

The Arts student says that it symbolizes unfulfilled emotions.
The Science student starts calculating the exact percentage full.
The Engineering student goes up to the glass, drinks the scotch and asks, "What's the question?"

Fashion Police

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.

A special thanks to our sources. Please, visit their sites. It's the Good Netizen thing to do.

Sources:

* Please visit Mr. Smith's site. The asterisk'd items have interesting backstories, and there's much more good material here: L. Robert Smith, P.E., F.ASCE, Past President of the Providence Engineering Society
ppi2pass.com/catalog/servlet/MyPpi_pg_links-humor.html

www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4818/eymbaei.htm

www.youmightbe.com/pages/engineer.html