Season's Greetings!

Half Fast

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Half Fast
Joy and good cheer to all as we celebrate that happiest time of the year, National Engineers Week! I hope you’ll all be able to enjoy this special time with your families and friends.

I always love this special season, and it’s wonderful to see our home all decorated for the holiday with old slide rules, drafting instruments, and T-squares. And of course the wreath on the door made from old PC parts and 3.5 inch floppy discs.

I do miss the days when our kids were little. I used to take them around the neighborhood singing engineering carols (at least prior to the restraining order). Afterward I’d tuck them in bed and read Kipling’s poem “The Sons of Martha” to them. Heartwarming.

So find an engineer to hug and celebrate this special week!
 
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...I always love this special season, and it’s wonderful to see our home all decorated for the holiday with old slide rules, drafting instruments, and T-squares. And of course the wreath on the door made from old PC parts and 3.5 inch floppy discs.

I do miss the days when our kids were little. I used to take them around the neighborhood singing engineering carols (at least prior to the restraining order). Afterward I’d tuck them in bed and read Kipling’s poem “The Sons of Martha” to them. Heartwarming.

So find an engineer to hug and celebrate this special week!

Don't forget the ornaments made from ruled grid paper, and the always special folded vellum star at the top.

And if this week is not sufficient celebration, head north. Next week (always the first Saturday in March) the newly graduating Canadian engineers will be reciting Kipling's Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer in their sinister sounding annual Iron Ring ceremony. All in pursuit of a tiny bit of ornamentation that rusts in the shower. ;)

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... Kipling's Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer in their sinister sounding annual Iron Ring ceremony. All in pursuit of a tiny bit of ornamentation that rusts in the shower. ;)


Of course, the US engineers have improved upon that technology. Our rings are made of stainless steel. :)
 


The other day I was calculating some illumination loads for a building design I’m helping with. Just for grins, I grabbed one of the slide rules from my collection and did a few number crunches on it. I’d forgotten just how slow it is to use one compared to my HP-15C. The time to get the numbers lined up, squinting at the small graduations, is significant.

Granted one can become proficient and be much quicker than I am, but a slide rule will always be painfully slow.
 
The other day I was calculating some illumination loads for a building design I’m helping with. Just for grins, I grabbed one of the slide rules from my collection and did a few number crunches on it. I’d forgotten just how slow it is to use one compared to my HP-15C. The time to get the numbers lined up, squinting at the small graduations, is significant.

Granted one can become proficient and be much quicker than I am, but a slide rule will always be painfully slow.

Alas, we're the ones getting painfully slow, not the slipstick. :D
 
Got my degree BSME from the University of Illinois Chicago in 1987. Tried for some time to find work. Entry level engineering jobs were hard to come by at the time.

Obtained a job with a Finnish company designing and building construction drilling equipment, 3 years later they closed the department I worked with. Ha, Ha 4 workers including myself in the manufacturing of the equipment. They offered me a position as a service rep for their mining division. Worked another 13 years teaching mechanics and operators how to work on and operated underground drilling equipment.

After being transferred to NV I left the company, got my A&P and started working for a part 135 operation out of Ketchikan, AK. Money was not real good as an A&P so I went back to work in the mines, maintaining underground equipment.

Wish I could have stayed in engineering but one has to pay the bills. Mining has been good but very hard work...
 
I've been an engineer for 40 years and have never owned a pocket protector.

My current boss always uses one, though... maybe that's why he's the boss and I'm not?
 
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