Stupid comments by an engineer

Sorry DimBulb, I'm here just for you.

Nothing you've ever taken, clearly.

Currently working in the Ku band, as well as many others. You?

Clearly, you have spent years making shit up.

You're currently working in the water closet with a mop, Dimmie.

Making things, yes, while you're mopping shit up.

OOOOHHH!!! Dimmie has learned a new word!

--
The movie \'Deliverance\' isn\'t a documentary!

As it relates to this forum, you are absolutely correct.

None of it is mine, however. I guess that you are immune to the stench.

You know I don't take sides :-), but I agree, multidisciplinary skills are very usefull and are in decline as everything gets more specialised. I think it's partly a generational thing as the immediate post ww2 generation had to make do and mend everything. I still do all the electrical, radio, tv, carpentry and even building work around the house and that's besides interests in mechanical engineering and a core skill set of software engineering coming from an electronics background. It's surprising how usefull it can be in all sorts of ways.

I don't think you can generalise about phd's either. I've met some who knew nothing outside their specialist field, head in the clouds and others who were some of the most switched on people i've ever met. Some of the EE graduates i've worked with in the past could hardly solder two wires together and had no interest at all in the job outside work. I find that depressing, as to be really good at anything, you need to have a passion for the subject and have a very inquisitive mind. The lack of scientific curiosity and the general dumbing down of everything will be the undoing of our civilisation. Nearly everything we come into contact with on a daily basis depends on science or engineering in some way...

Regards,

Chris

Right, Dimmie. I'm not AlwaysWrong. You are.

You are shit, DimBulb. Unfortunately, there isn't a mop big enough.

Well, twenty years ago (Wow! how time flies!) when I decided to go back to school and get my EE degree, I learned a lot of interesting lessons.

While I had been a hobbiest since I was a kid, my bachelors degree was in psychology. I know that I didn't know a lot of the math and such, so went back to get a second bachelors in EE. I moved from California to New Mexico just to get into a program, and in my first class learned my first lesson.

You don't need a bachelors in EE to get a Masters in EE.

Because of that lesson, I inquired back in California, and a year later started at UC Santa Barbara in the Masters program.

I started taking a lot of the basic circuits and control theory classes, and found myself on academic probation. In the masters program, you need to keep a 3.0 gpa, but in those basic theory classes, they graded to a 2.0 average. These were also the 'weed' classes, where they TRIED to get students to fail, by heaping so much make work on them that they would be overwhelmed. My problem - I didn't do all the homework and make it look spiffy and nice, I just did what I needed to learn the subject. I had A's and B's on all the tests. In my second semester, the T.A.s taught me the second lesson:

When there is a bachelor level course, and a master's level course, take the Master's level course.

In the BS course, they go into excruciating detail on the basics, as well as heaping loads of meaningless homework on the poor students. In the Master's class, they mention the important aspects of the basics in teh first couple of weeks, and then get right to business. The Master's courses also tended to be more real world, with actual applications and circuits. If you could keep up, they were a lot more fun. they also graded to a B curve, not a C curve!

The final lesson was, choose your professors carefully. I took classes from many professors, but learned after almost flunking the second class in a row from one professor, that we were not on the same page. I had the same material from two different professors, and from him it always sounded like greek, while I grok'd the material instantly from the other. Sometimes, the learning chemistry is just not there.

Charlie

Make that thirty-five. ;-)

Nope. You should have shot your advisor.

All of our "flunk out" courses were in the other disciplines. In particular, the years I was there it was Chemistry, Math, and the third semester of Physics (where they even admitted they wanted 20% to fail). In previous years the "flunk out" courses were Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (YOY do EEs need to learn how to crush concrete?), Thermodynamics, Statics, and Dynamics, all of which had been dropped as requirements by the time I graduated.

Not having been in the graduate college, I couldn't take them but that was well known by all, at the time. Actually, our EE department pretty much graded on the 'B' (4.0 in our case) curve. By the time the Junior year rolled around they'd gotten rid of enough.

I never turned in homework.

I knew all about that from day one. I worked for the EE department as a lab technician (the only bene of being an EE prof's kid) so was able to be first in line for the EE sections I wanted. The first time I took the semiconductor physics course I dropped it before I could fail it. My advisor (Ben Streetman, who wrote the book) wasn't pleased because it was a required course, but I forced him to sign the paperwork. The next semester I took it again from him and had no trouble with the course, at all. He was known as a tougher grader too, but it's far easier to get a grade if you have a clue what's going on, too. ;-) The first prof was an old geezer (one of my father's buds, in fact) just waiting to retire. What a total loss.

Does the General still include 13 WPM Morse code? That was the stopper for me.

Thanks, Rich

There is no longer any Morse code requirement, for any amateur radio license class. It was 5 WPM (for both General and Extra) up until around 18 months ago, and was entirely eliminated at that time.

--
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There is no longer a (CW) code requirement.

But with practice, it don't take me long to get back to 30 WPM.. :)

How would you like working with an entire cadre (over 100) of EEs about that smart? That is why i have a love/hate relationship with my job.

=20

However, raping your practitioner members (academic members are normally paid for by the institution they work for) with excessive fees is way counterproductive in perpetuating them selves as a practice oriented organization. Oops my bad, the IEEE is not such any more.

You think you're smarter than a cadre of over 100 EE's?

You also think you're modest, right?

y

Well, maybe smarter than half. :^)

BTW, is the smartness comparison relative to each individual in the group, or the group as a whole? 'Cuz if it's the latter case, then you should really talk to management instead...

Tim

[snip worthless joke]

Hovnanian thinks the world revolves around his kind of "cadre". It doesn't... his "cadre" are the losers of this world... Hovnanian is the leader of the band ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
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  Obama says, "I AM NOT a cry baby, Fox REALLY IS out to get me!"

If he works for a company* that figures it can get the same quality work out of 100 people with IQs of 75 as 50 people with IQs of 150, maybe he is.

*Old joke at Boeing: Someone told a manager it took 9 women-months to produce a baby. So he asked 9 women to get the job done in one month.

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Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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