Re: Brit Engineering kaput!

It's "QANTAS", actually, an acronym:

Queensland And Northern Territories Air Services.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence 
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
                                       (Richard Feynman)

AND, when they're serving an Australian wine, and you inquire about the label, they'll give you the whole bottle ;-)

And this was in coach, which I'll never do again... that's a killer of a long flight (from LA). ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Actually, not for quite a while, according to their web site.

Their name was changed to Qantas Empire Airways in 1934, then to the current name (Qantas Airways Limited) in 1967.

I do nonstops to Asia in coach fairly regularly (~15 hours), but the time change to Europe seems to hit harder, though it's only a 7 or 8 hour overnight flight. Probably popping over to Baden-Württemberg and east before Xmas, and I'll try for biz class.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

I handle Europe by leaving here late afternoon. Get to Frankfurt at

8AM... go straight to work... resist the urge to nap... have dinner... then go to bed.

Likewise, coming back... Leave Frankfurt at 8:30AM, arrive here about

3PM, have dinner, go to bed.

(Connecting via Dallas... Business Class.) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Dunno about that (my wife never drinks, I rarely do and not while on a plane) but we found the friendliness and service of our Qantas flights between LAX and Australia to be the best of any plane flight we've taken in years.

We did fly coach (even the first-level upgrade would have cost thousands of dollars each, per way) but found it surprisingly survivable. We were on one of the new Airbus 380 planes (fortunately, no engines ripped apart on our flights) and got lucky... the flights were only around half full, and both of us were sitting next to unoccupied seats both ways and could stretch out a bit. The amount of legroom on these planes, in coach, seems to be an inch or two better than on most U.S. airlines, and this was *very* welcome!

--
Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page:  http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
  I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
     boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

:

My last trip to Australia - and back - was A380 to Dubai, in economy. Noticeably more comfortable than the Boeing from Dubia to Amsterdam, or from Dusseldorf to Dubai. Emirates service is better than Qantas, and they happened to be offering the cheapest tickets - as they often do.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

While we're joking about names....

Ken S Tucker.

Does

S = Stupid

Tucker = (rhyming slang)

?

Nial.

fake British accent --

in a bad (American)

someone is going to

reflex kicking in.

Inferiority complex kicking in?

:-)

Speaking of human-relations, another hurdle many British firms have to face is their own 'human-resources' departments.

These seem to be filled with overpaid, arrogant ****ers who seem to think their role is more important than those who are creating the products the company relies upon.

I know of one case in Nortel Harlow (the research labs) where they wanted to take a guy on to do some specific groundbreaking research, more or less on his own. He was _very_ bright but odd as some are. HR blocked his recruitment three times beacuse he wasn't a team player until someone high up on the engineering side shouted a lot and got him in.

Although to be fair this might not just be a British problem.

Nial.

Do you have some secret make of car you haven't told the rest of us about yet?

Nial

t a fake British accent -- =A0

lking in a bad (American)

that someone is going to

l reflex kicking in.

ce

to

n

ment

engineering

It did seem to be pretty bad in the U.K., but I've certainly run into some comparable idiocies in the Netehrlands and in Australia.

After a few unfortunately experiences, my father refused to let the personnel department even talk to graduate employees until they'd signed a contract of employment. Once the guys had been hired, personnel was allowed to tell them about the fine details of the employee perks - cheap home loans, moving expenses and so forth - but that was it.

I got to understand his position during the milk round interviews at university. One of the personnel officers I talked to - or tried to talk to - insisted on reading out to me the conents of the printed flyer that had been posted to me before the interview. After a few minutes of this I pointed out that I had already read the flyer, and would prefer to talk about what specific opening they had at the moment, which he found to be a hostile reaction.

We terminated the interview at that point.

Ironically, his firm was the one that hired me, six months later, when I'd pretty much completed the first draft of my Ph.D. thesis.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Alt least calling them the 'Personnel Department' gives some allusion that they might have some interest in the personnel.

Human Resources says "managing the sheep" to me.

:-(

As I said "overpaid, arrogant ****ers". I forgot stupid.

I remember one house party with a crowd of fellow engineers when I was in my late 20's and one of the new grads who'd just been employed in HR for six months or so let slip she was earning more than all of us.

But then perhaps she wasn't the stupid one.

Nial

If you want to make machines, be an engineer. If you want to make money be something else.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onetribe - Occult Talk Show

fake British accent --

in a bad (American)

someone is going to

reflex kicking in.

engineering

My best engineer was rejected by a big US aerospace company because some silly HR exercize proved him to "not be a team player." Of course, the real problem was that he was about six times smarter than the rest of the applicants in the group. Smarter than the HR people as well, apparently. He really gives me a hard time!

John

fake British accent --

in a bad (American)

someone is going to

reflex kicking in.

engineering

no, it isn't limited to the British shores...

We have arrogant management and HR people here as well..