Being an engineer is both easy and tough. Easy because the whole world is black and white and everything is clear but tough because the rest of the world is too fucking stupid to see that you’re right or they don’t care about really cool stuff. (That was just a joke, people, take it as such). I’ll illustrate this concept with a couple of examples.
Incident #1. I’m at a bbq with Mrs. H and a few other couples at the home of one of Mrs. H’s friends. They had just gotten a brand new CD player. It had a feature that was novel at the time. You could put in five CD’s and the player would randomly pick a song from one of them to play next instead of going through the whole thing sequentially.
At one point the player played a song that was the very next song on the album of the song that was played previously. Someone remarks, “Well that wasn’t very random.” I explained to the group about how it was, indeed, a random event and why that was the case. I’m about half way through postulating on the algorithm that they probably used when I realize that everyone is getting kind of glassy eyed. Oops. That would have been a lively half hour conversation with my engineer buddies. Sorry, assbaskets, you can go back to discussing who’s the biggest hottie on Real World now. I’ll shut up.
Incident #2 Happy hour with a group of people from Mrs. H’s work. Someone comments that they hate how the commercials on TV are louder than the TV program. I explain that that is not the case and that they just widen the dynamic range so that it seems louder. Some cockswab who had had a couple of beers decides that he was going to try to make me look like a stupid asshole and wants to argue about it. I got really pissed off. I have a master’s degree in engineering and I’m not about to be schooled by a fucking stockbroker about matters of scientific fact. The whole way home Mrs. H lectured me about what a jerk I was.
Almost Incident #3 A friend of Mrs. H just got back from three months in Tasmania. She was going to make a big presentation with slides wanted to rehearse in front of a group of us. Someone made the obligatory joke about the Coriolis Effect and if the toilets ran backwards. It was just a joke, no biggie.
Then it happened. This total dickbiscuit pipes up and says, “The Coriolis Effect is why the British lost the Falklands War. They programmed all of their missiles incorrectly.” This was a statement that was so incorrect and stupid on so many levels that I thought my brain would burst. As soon as he said it, Mrs. H looked over at me expecting the inevitable and I sat there and let it go. I can’t say that I became more mature as a result because I spent the next twelve hours playing over in my mind exactly how I would have explained the truth to him. It was worth it though. I managed to get through an entire social occasion without Mrs. H getting mad at me.
Haj
Note: The above incidents were slightly exaggerated in an attempt to make them more humorous. I don’t take any of it seriously. I am well aware that I am fortunate to have the sense of hearing so that I could listen to those turdbirds in the first place.