Engineering sucks. On the other hand, at least I dont work in FedEx Kinkos.

All the ice bitches in Finland marry engineers.

I'm moving to Finland. I always wanted an ice bitch.

No you don't. They will suck the life out of you till there is nothing left but misery. And even then the ice bitch is not satisfied.

Engineering sucks
Evidence?

Evidence?
Dilbert.

Actually engineering doesnt suck, its scores quite high on job satisfaction. But some companies.....

Dilbert is actually evidence that "people" (i.e. non-engineers) suck....:)

Opinions on engineers sucking or not from engineers are not objective and hence rejected from here on.

That leaves my opinion.

Which I haven't expressed yet. Except that engineers seem to be perfect Finnish ice bitch prey.

Nick,

you need to go out on 42nd street SOHO


:p ... jk
Rick

What is an ice bitch?

Except that engineers seem to be perfect Finnish ice bitch prey
Really? What do Finnish Ice Bitches know about strength of materials? Would they be able to contribute to a discussion on the best way to take something apart? If not a real engineer wouldn't even notice her...

Ah.... mr.spurious monkeyass and nickel-dick-eon wat the fuck r u guys?punks?because i don see any kinda professionalism in you well i see you guys are pimps or druggers thats all i have to say

Oops, somebody can't read between the lines... Rusty, learn HUMOUR.

Oops, somebody can't read between the lines... Rusty, learn HUMOUR.

He probably learned humor, which is less funny than humour. :p

Ah.... mr.spurious monkeyass and nickel-dick-eon wat the fuck r u guys?punks?.....i see you guys are pimps or druggers thats all i have to say
Its worse than that - I'm an Engineer. :eek:

What kind?

Mechanical.

Its worse than that - I'm an Engineer. :eek:

that sucks

Engineering sucks. On the other hand, at least I dont work in FedEx Kinkos.

But you can, I'll hire you if you want :L

Yeah, what is an ice bitch?

Mechanical

Come work in BAE systems with me.

Dorothy is very upset as her husband Albert had just passed away. She goes to the mortuary to look at her dearly departed and the instant she sees him she starts wailing and crying.

One of the attendants rushes up to comfort her. Through her tears she explains that she was upset because Albert was wearing a black suit and that it was his dying wish to be buried in a blue suit.

The attendant apologizes and explains that they always put the bodies in a black suit as a matter of course, but he'd see what he could do. The next day Dorothy returns to the mortuary to have one last moment with Albert before his funeral the following day.

When the attendant pulls back the curtain, Dorothy manages to smile through her tears as Albert is now wearing a smart blue suit. She asks the attendant, "How did you manage to get hold of that beautiful blue suit?"

"Well, yesterday afternoon after you left, a man about your husband's size was brought in and he was wearing a blue suit. His wife explained that she was very upset as he had always wanted to be buried in a black suit," the attendant replied.

He continued, "After that it was simply a matter of swapping the heads around."

http://wilk4.com/humor/humore9.htm

Come work in BAE systems with me.
Doesnt that suck?

I r industriul engineer.

I r smrt.

I r.

I need ice bitches.



The company I worked for (for 7 years) as their quality manager went out of biz about 6 months ago tho. For the last 4 yearsish, I've been fixing computers on the side for cashish. Now I just fix computers. The job wasn't bad, as they never really asked anything of me, but it was also annoying for that reason. I wanted to be productive, etc. Kind of explains one of the many reasons behind them going out of business. Regardless, unemployed is a nice gig if you can swing it. :P

I r industriul engineer.

I r smrt.

I r.

I need ice bitches.



The company I worked for (for 7 years) as their quality manager went out of biz about 6 months ago tho. For the last 4 yearsish, I've been fixing computers on the side for cashish. Now I just fix computers. The job wasn't bad, as they never really asked anything of me, but it was also annoying for that reason. I wanted to be productive, etc. Kind of explains one of the many reasons behind them going out of business. Regardless, unemployed is a nice gig if you can swing it. :P

With the amount of education, wits and experience in your possession, you will certainly rebound like Phoenix. Goddess of Free Market will not leave your potential unused and efforts not rewarded. May I say Bill Gates Jr.?

Well, let's just say there's a fine line between "self-employed" and "unemployed". :P

Is anyone around here a surveying engineer?

Why, do you need a survey?

No, I wanted to talk about surveying engineering with someone from another country to see what's going on over there. Out of curiosity. I am working on my thesis and will be finishing soon, I hope!

HEY man nickel im sorry man i don know humour man and definitely cant read between the lines and u got a really good image in ur avatar

Yeah its sexy.

Come work in BAE systems with me.

Whoa, Whatcha working on now ?

Some killing machine.

Hope that killing machine can be integrated to cell phones.

Its worse than that - I'm an Engineer. :eek:
Reminds me of:

It's worse than that, he's dead, Jim.
and, of course:
Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor. Not an engineer

The engineer's creed: if it ain't broke, fix it till it is!

Actually, it is the other guy that does....fix it till it is broke...

Meet the anti-planner

By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, November 3, 2007

It is safe to say economist Randal O'Toole is an expert in many of the things that have caused Pittsburgh and other cities great pain -- government planning, government mass-transit systems and government attempts to shape or contain the redevelopment of cities. A senior fellow at the Cato Institute, he specializes in urban growth, public land and transportation issues. His daily blog is called The Antiplanner and his new book is "The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future." I talked to O'Toole Thursday by telephone from his home in Bandon, Ore.

Q: Can you give us a quick synopsis of "The Best-Laid Plans"?

A: Well, I've often heard people say, "I'm not against planning, I'm just against bad government planning." After 30 years of looking at government plans -- forest plans, park plans, transportation plans, city plans, state plans, all kinds of plans -- I've realized all government planning is bad. Government planning -- that is to say, comprehensive, long-range planning that often tries to plan and control other people's land and resources -- always does more harm than good because the planners don't have an incentive to make sure that their plans are the right plans. Cities, forests and so on are just too complicated to plan, so they oversimplify, and since they don't pay the costs of their mistakes, they don't have an incentive to try to get it right.

Q: Who did you write the book for?

A: The book is aimed at people who are annoyed with planning but haven't thought about what to do instead. I'm arguing that we need to stop planning. We need to repeal planning laws. Congress and the states should stop passing new planning laws. Cities should shut down planning departments and do other things instead that will actually solve the problems planning is intended to solve but too often makes worse.

Q: If you had to single out which kind of planning was most harmful, what would it be?

A: Certainly, in general, "Smart Growth" planning is planning on steroids. Back in the 1950s, we had urban renewal that devastated individual neighborhoods and often replaced them with unlivable high-rise towers that since then have been blown up because they have been proven to be so terrible to live in. But that just harmed individual neighborhoods. Smart Growth attempts to apply the same benefits to entire urban areas -- not just cities but all the suburbs, all the incorporated areas around those urban areas -- with devastating effects. Smart Growth makes housing too expensive; it makes traffic worse; it usually results in increased taxes or declining urban services. If I had to point to just one Smart Growth plan that was the worst, it would probably be San Jose's in California. But, of course, Portland, which is often held as a shining example of good Smart Growth planning, has lots of problems too.

Q: What's the short definition of Smart Growth?

A: The short definition is that cities should grow up, not out. They should have higher densities. They should have more pedestrian-friendly design and transit-oriented design. Transportation should be more focused around public transit, bicycles and walking than around automobiles. The higher densities are meant to encourage people to drive less and use transit more and to minimize urban sprawl.

Q: Who are the political and economic interests that push planning like Smart Growth and what are they after?

A: There are a number of different interests, and they don't have the same goals. Just to name a few, there are downtown property owners who resent the fact that a lot of new development is going into the suburbs. Smart Growth makes suburbs more congested and more expensive, so it gives downtowns a slight advantage that it otherwise wouldn't have. Because the city is already congested and expensive, by making the suburbs congested and expensive, people have less of an interest in going to the suburbs. Also, there are contractors who like to build things like rail transit, which is extraordinarily profitable to build -- far more profitable than highways. They'll support Smart Growth. There are certain types of housing developers who specialize in in-fill housing, higher density housing in cities rather than lower density housing in suburbs; they support Smart Growth. Then, of course, there are environmental interests who don't like to see people driving. There are also central cities like Portland that think that if they can have Smart Growth and cram more people in their city, they can therefore have a bigger tax base than if they allow those people to live out in the suburbs. Each of these interests has a different goal, but the one thing they have in common is that they all benefit from congestion -- so I call them "The Congestion Coalition."

Q: Where do our friends in government and the politicians come in to play here?

A: Well, you see the same kind of relationships that you see in Pittsburgh with urban renewal. Smart Growth actually is not very marketable. A few people want to live in high-density housing. But most Americans prefer to live in a house with a yard. So in order to promote high-density housing and rail transit, you have to heavily subsidize it. That heavy subsidy means that somebody is going to make a lot of money from the subsidies. They in turn make campaign contributions to the politicians who then vote for the subsidies. So you end up with a kind of I'll-scratch-your-back, you'll-scratch-mine relationship. Of course, that's what urban renewal is about in Pittsburgh and everywhere else. Urban renewal is not just building new developments in slums or otherwise blighted areas; it's taking people's tax dollars to build those developments.

Q: What would you say to the average person to make him understand the dangers of government planning?

A: There are two big problems with planning. Everybody plans. We plan our vacations, we plan our careers. But our plans are flexible. If your Uncle Joe calls up and says, "I want to take you to Hawaii next week," you don't look at your calendar and say, "Oh, I'm supposed to be doing my laundry so I can't go." You'll change your plans if a new opportunity arises. When government writes a plan, that plan gets locked into concrete because immediately special-interest groups consisting of people and businesses that benefit from that plan form to make sure that the plan never changes. So it becomes extraordinarily difficult to change the plan no matter how mistaken and costly it turns out to be.

The second problem with planning is that cities are really, really complicated organisms. They consist of hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Each of those people has different tastes, different travel needs, different housing needs and desires. It's impossible -- literally impossible -- to plan to the level of detail to make sure that everybody achieves what they need and want. So planners oversimplify. They rely on fads.

The fad was once to tear down slums and build high-density housing projects. Then there was a fad to tear down neighborhoods and put in freeways. Now the fad is Smart Growth -- to build cities at compact densities and provide urban transit rather than highways. But each of these fads only accounts for a small portion of the people. Less than 10 percent of travel in any urban area except New York is by mass transit. Yet we see Smart Growth planners dedicating 50, 60, 70 and 80 percent of their transportation funds to transit and only 10 to 30 or 40 percent to highways that are used by 90 percent of the travelers in the city. So it's totally skewed, and they don't learn from their mistakes.

You look at Portland. It still has great PR, even though traffic congestion is horrible, housing is getting to be unaffordable, poor people are moving out, families with children have escaped over the border to Vancouver, Washington, because they can't afford a house with a yard in Portland. The New York Times will say, "Portland is a city that loves transit." Yet, in fact, the percentage of people who use transit has declined since they've started writing these plans.

Q: Has any city come to realize that building expensive light-rail lines is not a good idea?

A: One is Buffalo. They built one line and it shattered their transit ridership. They lost a lot of riders and they said, "We're not going to build anymore." Here's the problem with rail transit: It's so expensive -- and it almost always has cost overruns; cost overruns average 40 percent but in some cases they've been over 100 percent. So transit agencies end up cutting bus service and raising bus fares to help pay for the high cost of rail transit. The result is, you get fewer riders.

When Los Angeles was building its rail system, it lost 17 percent of its bus riders. They were sued by the NAACP for building rail lines into white, middle-class neighborhoods at the same time they were cutting bus service in black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

Q: That's what's going on here. Our light-rail line goes into middle-class neighborhoods and bus service is being cut back and fares are going up.

A: It's happening in Washington, D.C., in Chicago, Philadelphia, San Jose, Portland, Sacramento -- the list is endless. Because of the lawsuit, Los Angeles had to restore bus service and pretty much has stopped building rail lines.

Q: Has any city either resisted the kind of planning you want to see ended, or already ended it themselves?

A: There's been a lot of cities resist, but most of the cities that are doing this kind of planning are in states where the state legislature has mandated it -- Oregon, Florida, about 10 states have mandated it. They call it "growth management." There's a Florida growth-management act. Oregon has its land-use act, which is growth management. Washington, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire. Hawaii passed theirs in 1961 -- they were the first.

California's is unique in that they didn't have a law called a growth-management act; they had a law that gave cities control over the rural areas. You could not build a housing development outside of a city's limits without the permission of the city, essentially. That meant that the cities could deny all development outside their boundaries and force all development inside their boundaries and that way keep all the taxes from such developments for themselves. So they just said, "Hell, why should we bother to annex land? We'll just keep all development in our boundaries." Now California has the densest urban areas in America. The top three densest of the urban areas are in California and 11 of the 20 densest are in California. On average, California urban areas are 80 percent denser than those in the rest of the country. Los Angeles is the densest urban area -- it's 25 percent denser than New York ("urban area" only includes a city's urbanized land and not rural land or parks).

Q: Are you optimistic or pessimistic cities will ever see the light or learn from their mistakes and end planning as we know it?

A: I'm optimistic that they will learn from Smart Growth and Smart Growth planning. It's a generational thing.... Planners will never admit they were wrong, but they will admit their predecessors were wrong. So today, urban planners will say, "Oh, we don't believe in that urban renewal, high-density housing-project stuff. That was the mistakes of bad urban planners of the past." But then they make other mistakes. Whether cities are actually going to give up on planning, that's a tougher nut. I'm hoping that we can persuade people that Smart Growth is so bad that we'll just never try planning again.


Bill Steigerwald is the Trib's associate editor. Call him at 412-320-7983. E-mail him at: bsteigerwald@tribweb.com.

Really? What do Finnish Ice Bitches know about strength of materials? Would they be able to contribute to a discussion on the best way to take something apart? If not a real engineer wouldn't even notice her...

If she had really nice breasts I would;)

Nikelodeon, I agree it CAN suck. Engineers these days have a huge amount of responsibility, impossible to meet deadlines, terrible management (because they were all engineers originally), and unless you are very lucky, no job security because your work will be off-shored any day. And the pay is quite mediocre, especially considering how much of your life energy is getting sucked away on a daily basis.

In every generation, certain empire supports the engineers and they build great civilizations. Then the bean counters, priests and politicians take over and that civilization dies, never to get up. This happened to the Greeks, the Romans and so on...

Since 1935 through 1995, engineers did pretty well in USA, but not in China or India. Now the tide is turning....they go up, we go down....

In every generation, certain empire supports the engineers and they build great civilizations. Then the bean counters, priests and politicians take over and that civilization dies, never to get up. This happened to the Greeks, the Romans and so on...

Since 1935 through 1995, engineers did pretty well in USA, but not in China or India. Now the tide is turning....they go up, we go down....

Yes I'm afraid that's true, it seems to be a repeatable phenomena. Actually here in USA we started to see the decline in the late 1970's after the energy crisis. In 1980 the change of administration ushered in the steady move toward globalization, which benefited certain large corporations and set the stage for the off-shoring of engineering, which is now in full swing and affects me on a daily basis. Can't imagine ever telling my kids to pursue a career in engineering.

I have seen recently though that the rate of off-shoring is starting to slow a bit as the labor costs in India are starting to rise (still a fraction of the cost to do that work in US or Europe though).

In seventies and early eighties, we built a lot of basic industries such as Petrochemical plants, Pulp and paper plants, mining, metals such as aluminium, magnesium, TiO2, steel mills etc etc. After 1990, it slowed down to a crawl because China and India expanded and we stopped, saying they pollute the environment. We still have tons of chemical plants on the Mississippi river banks from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, but they are old.

However I have not seen very many grassroot plants being built and old ones are closing down. I used to be a control engineer, one of the bset in the world. When Information Technology paid more money, I switched career. Once in a while I get calls for Control Engineering at the same rate as 1992.

The companies never spent any more money developing new technologies in the heavy industries. They just moved it to China and India with pollutions and all. At one time, we had the most sophisticated Faultproof control system for nuclear power plants in mid 80s. But because there was no new nuclear power plants being built, that company went bankrupt.

We lost a lot of good sensor and control technologies. That is why NASA is stuck with the old stuff and the Chinese and Indians are using early 80s technology.

The only thing we are doing well is in Personal Computers and by extension the microprocessors. But That technology will be stagnant since Bill Gates is stepping down. Dell, Lenovo and HP will be like the old big three auto makers...start pumping out same stuff with different colors.

The military which used to develop cutting edge technology is now buying COTS (Commercial Of The Self) products only from established companies that are old technologies. So, the government which spends Billions buys 5 year old technologies - in Internet age, like buying World War II tanks.

No wonder people feel Engineering Sucks - Like Rodney Dangerfield says - Get no respect!

Mechanical.

The very worst kind. They are usually drop-outs from real engineering.

The very worst kind. They are usually drop-outs from real engineering.

Is that right?

I'm a mechanical engineer. Not sure what you consider "real" engineering, but I think I've accomplished a bit with my little degree. I have a number of patents; I work daily with multi-million element FE models running state of the art explicit analysis code on one of the largest dedicated CAE servers in North America; I helped develop engineering software that changed the way all engineers, mechanical, civil, nuclear, aerospace or electrical manage their data and analyze their designs for strength, fatigue and vibration; I've been on every continent in the world as a test engineer; I've put my mark on many different products that you probably use every day of your life. So, I feel pretty good about where I have gone with my mechanical engineering degree, although as I have said, I would not advise anyone to go into the field today.

What sort of advanced engineering degree do you hold, Myles? And what have you accomplished with it? Please share with us.

The very worst kind. They are usually drop-outs from real engineering.
What disciplines constitute "real engineering", in your opinion?

Is that right?

I'm a mechanical engineer. Not sure what you consider "real" engineering, but I think I've accomplished a bit with my little degree. I have a number of patents; I work daily with multi-million element FE models running state of the art explicit analysis code on one of the largest dedicated CAE servers in North America; I helped develop engineering software that changed the way all engineers, mechanical, civil, nuclear, aerospace or electrical manage their data and analyze their designs for strength, fatigue and vibration; I've been on every continent in the world as a test engineer; I've put my mark on many different products that you probably use every day of your life. So, I feel pretty good about where I have gone with my mechanical engineering degree, although as I have said, I would not advise anyone to go into the field today.


What sort of advanced engineering degree do you hold, Myles? And what have you accomplished with it? Please share with us.

What an impressive cv. You should be known to a wider audfience but I bet you get invited to lots of parties to tell jokes. My only distinction is that I have a patent on widgets, not bad for someone who was expelled from school at thirteen. God. what I could have done with a degree ! The mind boggles.

It seems you overlooked the fact that I was responding to Nickelodeon who said that engineering sucks and later that he was a mechanical engineer. You just couldn't resist.

What disciplines constitute "real engineering", in your opinion?

Another fish in the net !

Meet the anti-planner
Civil Engineers are so uncivilized.

Civil Engineers are so uncivilized.

May be because they work for the government, where corruption is rampant in public works projects.....

Today Bobby Jindal took over the Governorship of Louisiana. In his acceptance speech, he said to root out corruption. Like that is going to happen in his life time....

Our roads are the worst in the country...

kmguru, you're moderator of this forum?

What is an ice bitch?

Yeah, what is an ice bitch?

1. ice bitch
a soul stealing, hardcore bitch. a girl that uses people and acts like a fucking bitch all the time for no reason. usually not very attractive, but for some reason guys still go out with her. they probably just got tired of fucking pillows so they go out with her. basically a girl on her period 24/7.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ice+bitch

:D

Engineering indeed sucks. I dropped out of chemical in college. I hardly made it throuh intro to engineering i hated it so much.

The irony is I ended up being an "engineer" after all! Software development engineer, Quality assurance engineer, Business process engineer... :)

kmguru, you're moderator of this forum?

Not yet. I am working on it...we shall see what the verdict is from the powers be. :)

Engineering indeed sucks. I dropped out of chemical in college. I hardly made it throuh intro to engineering i hated it so much.

The irony is I ended up being an "engineer" after all! Software development engineer, Quality assurance engineer, Business process engineer... :)

Looks like you still have the critical thinking that is needed to be a good Software or Business Process Engineer. If you had Chemical Engineering, you would be doing Chemical Process Engineering like developing new ways to make Bio-diesel, Cellulosic Ethanol, New drugs or making wines cheaply that tastes like the most expensive brands.

Half the engineers I graduated with went on to become accountants. Financial sector pays great, but the work is boring as fuck.

Half the engineers I graduated with went on to become accountants. Financial sector pays great, but the work is boring as fuck.

One of my classmate got his masters in Industrial Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology and then got his CPA with one try. He now runs an investment fund and raking in dough.

Sigh.

Sigh.

You asked for it, you got it, now I am the Moderator for this forum. What next? We need some good discussions here. I get 30+ trade magazines per month from design engineering to storage to control engineering, chemical engineering, plant engineering etc.

USA is definitely losing engineering talent....we will be in serious trouble as economy tanks.....

Anyone interested in any specific area?

USA is definitely losing engineering talent....we will be in serious trouble as economy tanks.....

Yeah, especially as this thread was flushed to the cesspool. Engineering sucks, but I didnt realise it was this bad.

When great civilizations ignore and marginalize engineers, the society falls. The soul dies. It is a cycle that repeats itself over time.

I guess I'll just have to get used to the stink in here.