OT:Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

A few points here:

1) You can obtain a PE license in any state that adheres to the NSPE guidelines without a degree if you have 20 years experience in the field. That invalidates your concern about ABET certification, since most engineering schools in the US have had the certification for the past 20 years.

2) Passing the test is only one of the wickets you need to pass through. At least as important as the test, is your references who ascribe to know your work and attest that it is worthy of a professional.

3) Finding the PE references is a little harder as an EE, but is not impossible. There's a good chance, for example, that a mechanical engineer in your firm has his PE and can truthfully sign off as being familiar with your work. If you have outside consultants doing work (not contractors, consultants) for your company, one or more of them will likely have a P.E. As a last resort, there is nothing stopping you from joining the local chapter of NSPE and getting friendly with the members. Many would be very interested in hearing about your work. They really are a likeable lot. :-)

4) Most states in the US DO REQUIRE someone on staff with a PE license if you are offering engineering services in any form to the public. If, as you signature suggests, you are a consultant offering design services, you DO NEED to have someone with a PE license on your staff in most of the 50 states. Some states prosecute that more aggressively than others. My state took all of about 6 months to find me after I hung my shingle out. In most cases, the state has the authority to issue a cease and desist order against you if you cannot prove you have a PE on staff.

5) Having a PE license doesn't give you carte blanche to go out and do stuff outside of your area of expertise. In fact, the code of ethics specifically states that you won't sign off on stuff that is not in your area of expertise.

6) Some of the medical firms I've dealt with specifically do require a PE on a project involving medical equipment that could potentially endanger a patient. I'm not sure if it is a regulatory requirement or not, but it was a requirement from somewhere. If you are working for a medical firm, ask around. I'll bet there is a PE involved somewhere in the project. Every medical project I've been involved with has had a PE directly involved with the project.

7) PE licensing is intended to protect the public by certifying that you have demonstrated competency as an engineer in your field. You needn't have the PE to do engineering work, but if the engineering services are offered to the public, someone with a PE has to be accountable for the work.
Reply to
Ray Andraka
Loading thread data ...

Thanks. I dig around at flea markets when I can get there to look for early engineering texts. I wish I still had all the ones I collected when i was in my early teens. I was reading EE textbooks at 14, and had a nice collection, but most of my collection was gone when I got home from serving in the US Army.

There is a "Friends of" the local branch of the county library system, and most donated books end up being sold in their used book store. I always miss he old electronics books, for some reason. This is the land of the retirees, and a lot of old engineering books are in the homes. Some get thrown out, while others end up in thrift stores. If they don't sell quickly they are thrown away. I'm not well enough to check with all of them, and it would probably take 60 hours a week to dig through the unsorted bookshelves to find anything.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Did you ever use those paper "Slide rules" that were made to calculate values for tuned circuits, or to design single layer coils? I still have the Electrovoice L/C calaculator, and may have the old Allied Electronics Coil calculator.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I see a lot of fat kids, but precious few skinny ones.

I'm not aware of losing anything of value.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Don't argue with me - argue with

formatting link

Former Yugoslavia is cleaning up after a nasty series of civil wars, so it isn't surprising that your welfare system is in worse shape than the U.S.A., but we can hope that you will be back up to the European norm - no juvenile malnutrition (bar a few vicitims of lunatic parents) - in a few more years. Romania is stll recovering from Ceausescu and we can hope that they will do as well. The Czech Republic and Hungary are a bit more puzzling. I'm worndering how much of their malnutrition is confined to the Gypsy minority.

formatting link

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
Reply to
bill.sloman

BMI of 23.5. I hope it doesn't go over 24 before I get back to the Netherlands - having dinner with old friends is very nice, but it isn't any way to get slimmer.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
Reply to
bill.sloman

formatting link

0.6 moderately wasted kids per 100,000 isn't all that many, and such kids aren't all that active, so I'm not surprised that you haven't seen them.

Until you start looking for smart engineers, and find that minority groups are under-represented. Persistent under-feeding makes kids slow long before it makes them clinically wasted.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
Reply to
bill.sloman

The worst engineer I knew was an EE - PE. Never designed a damn thing. Knew how to dress, though.

But then, he "was" an EE in a field where PE mattered - building systems, plant stuff, etc. Certainly not eletronic design. What can I add to what Paul Carpenter wrote? Certain companies needs PEs as window dressing, the same way some rich heiresses need poodles.

Reply to
Bryan Hackney

With such wit and surgical analysis, what is the need for trained seals?

Reply to
Bryan Hackney

You are misreading the table. It is in percent, not in per 1e5. So 6 per thousand, according to the table.

But then you read the footnote, and see that 'moderately wasted' means:

  • Below minus two standard deviations from median weight for height of reference population

If you had a 'normal distribution' (Gaussian) of weights, then you would expect 2.2% (22 per thousand) to be below the median (which would also be the mean) by more than two standard deviations.

It doesn't mean that those 0.6% are or are not malnourished.

Elsewhere in this thread

But the table you cite in trying to bolster your argument has the US as having the SMALLEST reported percentage of wasting. (European countries tend to have no data listed.) Which is support for calling Americans lard-asses (which everyone does) but not for your contention that malnutrition is worse in the US than in most Euro countries.

--
David M. Palmer  dmpalmer@email.com (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)
Reply to
David M. Palmer
[...]

P.S. I've seen you use PE in your title. I did not mean to insult. Your assertions seem to be contrary to many engineers' experiences.

Reply to
Bryan Hackney

Malnourishment can simply mean having a poor *quality* diet missing important nutrients. There isn't necessarily any correlation with 'wasting' i.e. low weight.

Interestingly, the poor quality diet may result in the person feeling underfed and this can then lead to overeating and obesity. So you can end up with overweight malnourished ppl.

Graham

Reply to
Pooh Bear

[...]

Most MEs know a little about high speed digital circuit design. NOT!

My degree is ME, and I can attest that our academic electrical exposure was little and bad.

His signature does not indicate he offers engineering services. Consultant could mean financial consultant. That's where the term consultant is most often used.

From what I remember, using the unqualifed term "engineer" in business may get one in trouble. Using the term "software engineer" is harmless as well as meaningless.

A rarified world. I vaguely remember a 3.95 GPA requirement for getting into "medical engineering", a program I'm not sure even exists anymore.

Reply to
Bryan Hackney

Shit. You seem to be right. My apologies to the group, and my thanks to David M. Palmer. I've been reading too many medical statistics where they do quote per

100,000.

The distribution is the big if. Children's weights will obviously not lie on a Gaussian distribution - there will be a lot more very fat children than very skinny children, because gross obesity takes a long time to kill you, while starvation can do for a kid in a few weeks.

As John Larkin has point out, most of the variability in the U.S. population is going to be concentrated in the fat kids.

Seems very likely that they are. Children starve a lot fasster than adults.

There is other evidence that suggests that juvenile malnutrition is vanishingly rare in most Western European countries, and appreciably less common than in the U.S.A.

formatting link

Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Reply to
bill.sloman

There's nothing to argue about, slovenia is not listed and neither is most of EU?!?!

I always thought you checked your sources very well, but apparently not so. I find that very dissapointing since you're always fiercely defending your views.

Slovenia is the only country from the Ex-Yugoslavia inside EU at the moment and as such the only one you can use in your comparisons, we were talking about EU. The only war that took place here lasted 10 days, yet you can hardly call that a war.

I assure you, no malnutrition of children resulted from this 10-day incident which took place 15 years ago. Our BDP, if this has any bearing at all for malnutrition, is comparable to the other, admittedly among the less wealthy EU members I listed, such as Portugal. Besides, the culture of eating is very high here. There are far less McDonalds style chains here than in the NetherLands since they're not popular with people, for example Dairy Queen went belly up years ago.

Here is the full "War" story:

formatting link

--
Siol
------------------------------------------------
Rather than a heartless beep
Or a rude error message,
See these simple words: "File not found."
Reply to
SioL

Sorry to hear it. Good luck.

Steve

formatting link

Reply to
Steve at fivetrees

It is not window dressing. As Ray said you opperate in your area of expertise. If his area was building systems and plant systems designing the low level HW or Sw may not be his area. Know how to design a safe system, the interlocks and legal/safety requirements etc. Therefor he could design a system and give the requirements spec to some one else to actually implement.

On the other hand some EE PE's could design the HW but not the system or the software.

PE or C.Eng etc does not mean qualified to do it al but it means qualified in certain areas and professional enough not to try and do other stuff. SO a HW PE will not attempt any critical Sw

BTW Bryan could you design those systems and be sure the were safe and up to al the legal requirements?

--
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org      www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Reply to
Chris Hills

I'm unaware of digital design and software being areas of expertise where a PE can be registered in Texas. Maybe that's changed, but I doubt it. So that point is probably moot.

Maybe. I've never worked in those areas, but I'm more familiar with processes where designs and implementaions are verified, not those processes where the designer is certified and the product is not.

Sometimes this makes sense. It's hard to non-destructively test a bridge's strength - it must be right the first time. A complicatated system is never right the first time.

Reply to
Bryan Hackney

about EU.

a war.

Easy for you to say since you weren't in it...

Heheh- typical revision by a Slovenian military historian. The few pictures suggest that the terrain was absolutely *perfect* to stop any and all YPA tank and armored vehicle advances and kill the occupants, but I guess the TD was shy on explosives so barricades and indirect 82mm mortar fire had to be it. I am not all that familiar with the geography and situation there. Were the YPA already stationed in barracks throughout the country? The RS strategy does seem to have been a brilliantly conceived and executed design, that always helps to make the a war short and sweet.

Reply to
Fred Bloggs

about EU.

that a war.

I haven't been fighting, that much is true. 19 died on slovenian side. That many die in road accidents in a similar period of time. Traffic was mostly suspended during these 10-days.

suggest that the terrain was absolutely *perfect* to

but I guess the TD was shy on explosives so

familiar with the geography and situation there. Were the

seem to have been a brilliantly conceived and

Ah, yeah, it was written by a military man, it sounds a bit overly dramatized. The reality was the YPA had no idea what to do. Most of YPA forces were scared young boys from obligatory 1-year service, from different parts of the country, including Slovenia. Most had no idea what the hell was going on and many fled the first chance they got. They were stationed in barracks around the country.

We got out easy.

SioL

Reply to
SioL

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.