The perfect libtard poster child; never wanna grow up, not me.
December 22, 2015 at 7:34 am
OpenTheDoor
Says Don Quixote De la Mancha, look him up in one of your movies or magazines, or should that be a clip, because everybody says it.
You can use a clip on a revolver, does that make it a pistol?
Sam Colt would crack you across your forehead with a revolver if you told him he made pistols.
Thought you were gonna direct future whining to Sam and his “revolving pistol”, W. Shakespeare and his (way pre-revolver) pistols, and Guns & Ammo’s gunnies for dummies dictionary?
I know your widdle feewings are hurt and you are crushingly embarrassed and disappointed, but you’re compounding it with your adolescence (hey you ‘n Skye should be bff’s!). Takes a man to admit being wrong, dude…stop tilting at windmills, grow a pair and try it.
Sorry again, Chris…I deal with goofs like this all the time across my gun counter, but this ain’t there so I’m done.
December 22, 2015 at 11:07 am
Chris Muir
careful, guys, none of that here.
December 22, 2015 at 11:38 am
Lurker
You guys forced me out of lurker mode. Please see the patent application for Samuel Colt’s Revolving Gun dated February 25, 1836. In it, he calls it a pistol no less than 4 times. Here it is for your perusal.
Sam Colt called it a revolving gun and also a pistol. Good enough for Sam Colt it’s good enough for me.
December 22, 2015 at 12:07 am
B Woodman
Been there, done that. Hell, been there, AM that. Hell, still there, doing that.
December 22, 2015 at 12:11 am
interventor
Engineers translate the dreamers of physicists into reality.
December 22, 2015 at 12:20 am
Kafiroon
Something about a long enough lever could be under dreamers.
December 22, 2015 at 7:26 am
Polly Cy
They can only translate those dreams into reality if the bean counters let them. Mostly you get truly dysfunctional bodies like NASA where none of the three groups can understand what the other is talking about.
December 22, 2015 at 11:46 am
interventor
Not the bean counters fault. Congress mandated most of NASA’s problems.
December 22, 2015 at 9:44 pm
Polly Cy
Yes and no. It’s more of a communication problem; none of the three speak the other two’s languages. Some colleagues and I are working on a grant proposal to develop strategies to overcome the problem. It’s not just the US and the Brits who are separated by a common language!
December 22, 2015 at 12:19 am
RayNAiken
Engineers should have to push a tool box and work on things for three years before they are turned out onto the world. I heard the whole front end has to come off a Caddy to change a head lamp. $230 for the lamp and $2400 for the labor to change it. I don’t know if it is true or not but……..damn!
December 22, 2015 at 12:28 am
B Woodman
I am a technician, not an engineer. SO I fully sympathize. But I have just enough “engineering” knowledge to look at some of the things I work on and wonder if I can someday throat punch the engineer who designed and built this crap.
December 22, 2015 at 3:07 am
the_frumious_bandersnatch
You must be a marine engineer, like me.
December 22, 2015 at 1:37 am
Malatrope
I am a physicist who made a living as a design engineer, and whose father was a race driver and mechanic. My systems worked, and could be worked on. I would encourage any company that builds anything to have at least one guy who can do the whole thing from top to bottom – they are so freaking happy with their jobs that it can be felt in the bottom line even without a seismometer!
And they can train the new guys with the doctorates in such a manner that it keeps their drooling under control.
December 22, 2015 at 8:25 am
OpenTheDoor
Yep, gone are the days of mockups and masters. Computers are the scourge of the creative mind, monkeys and typewriters come to mind. The old guys are going fast, then who are the computer jockeys going to learn from.
I retired from aerospace and boy were the CATIA boys glad to see me go.
They never even held a slip stick or a trig table, much less know how to use them. I will admit, when we started modeling the old data, the errors were amazing, then again a computer model of an old HD motor won’t run.
December 22, 2015 at 3:12 am
Calvin
Built casino boats at one time. The “engineers” designed things that sailors such as myself knew were wrong. In the end, we were right and the engineers were wrong, very badly wrong in a couple of cases. So if you’re in NOLA and you find yourself going up a stairwell with a very low overhead, thank a sailor who pointed out that the center beam can not be only six feet off the deck.
I can also say some choice things about the early nuclear subs and that they were not designed to be taken back apart for repairs.
Engineers don’t make mistakes. They make revisions. Most engineers were born wise, some otherwise. I’ve done primary steel making (have patents), done nuclear and power generation, Done aerospace. I’ve spent a lot of time mentoring some young aerospace types. The “lessons learned” have both been forgotten and are not being recorded now. There are now a lot of simple mistakes being repeated that are going to do a lot of ass biting.
Referring to RaynAiken: did you know you had to disassemble the front of a 1980 Ford F150 to change the thermostat. I had a frozen thermostat in a brand new truck in KC. Took it in to the dealer on Saturday morning. Thank goodness they stayed and worked on it – all day. They did not blame me, but I learned a few new cuss words about those Ford engineers. They got it out by Saturday night. The book had 1/2 hour labor!
December 22, 2015 at 10:24 am
Grape
Similar problem with changing timing chain on ’70 Cadillac Eldorado = pull tranmission, remove hood, lift motor.
Bah – I could do it in under 1 hour w/o following the engineer’s instruction/repair manual.
Thermostat on tri-power GTOs was almost as bad – easiest way was to pull the intake manifold. Forget the manual that had you disassembling the entire front end of the engine bay and motor.
Did both easily and gave the finger to the non-believers.
December 22, 2015 at 6:19 pm
John Egbert
I understand that one of the first Toyotas sold in the USA required unbolting the engine and raising it in order to change the oil filter. This is apparently an international affliction . . .
December 22, 2015 at 11:29 pm
Otto Didact
Reminds me of one edition of Camaro that you had to pull the engine to change 2 sparkplugs on the driver’s side. Or the aluminium block V8 GM put out that required pulling the engine to replace head gaskets. Ford had its share of foibles, too. When I was considering which minivan to get, I looked under the hood of the Aerostar. I also pulled the engine cover in the pax compartment. I couldn’t even SEE the plugs on one bank of the V6 much less figure out how to change them.
1973? Skye has already been born and talking? Uhhhh…..That would make her in her mid 40s. Thought she was in her early 30s. A bit old for her brand of stupidity.
Stupidity usually kills before 40
December 22, 2015 at 1:11 am
PaulS
Zed saved her life a few years ago if l recall correctly.
December 22, 2015 at 9:56 am
eon
We live in the safest culture human history has ever seen. To die before your time, generally you or somebody else has to do something outstandingly stupid, crazy, or evil, pretty much on purpose.
Which tends to explain street crime, ISIS, progressive-run cities, O-Care, reality TV, and Jackass- The Movie.
clear ether
eon
December 22, 2015 at 11:32 pm
Otto Didact
And yet leftists define conservatives as “risk avoidant” (because we’re not all gung ho for change).
December 22, 2015 at 1:34 am
Spin Drift
As a BSME ’90 and the son of BSME ’51 and the future father of a BSME ’17, I can say Engineers are born not made.
Spin
War Damn Eagle
December 22, 2015 at 7:50 am
OpenTheDoor
Agreed, my wife is MEng. Ramblin’ Wreak and a heck of an engineer, only woman engineer ever met who I felt was born that way.
She keeps me in check with eye rolls around NETs, mansplaining can get tedious to the mechanically disadvantaged.
December 22, 2015 at 5:47 am
NotYetInACamp
Truth has been bothersome to many throughout history.
Most can live quite a while without ever really concerning themselves with it.
Others usually deal with it unbeknownst to those blissfully wandering through life.
December 22, 2015 at 6:14 am
Bill G
It was during my time in the Navy that I first heard the description I still use for those blissful wanderers; they were deemed to have a high drift factor.
Other terms were used, but not ones new to me and I try to avoid such language at this time.
December 22, 2015 at 8:45 am
JSStryker
I have to agree most Navy nukes have a high drift factor. As a regular Navy ET I could tell the Navy nuke ET’s and Weapons Dept ET’s almost on sight.
December 22, 2015 at 6:25 pm
John Egbert
Their officers aren’t much better; id.est LT James Earl Carter . . .
December 22, 2015 at 6:29 am
Bill G
I have read that on the night before he took off on his final, fatal mission Joe Kennedy Jr. was told by a technician not to go because the systems were way over designed and were untrustworthy.
December 22, 2015 at 7:57 am
GWB
As an engineer and an AF guy, I can tell you that Santa’s sleigh can fly. The F-4 is proof that if you put enough thrust on it, you can make anything fly. 😉
December 22, 2015 at 8:45 am
OpenTheDoor
Yeah, you have to admit, the Flying Brick worked and brought men home when lesser planes splashed. One of my favorite photographs is of F-4s flying under the cameras of a Bear on our way to V/Nam.
December 22, 2015 at 10:02 am
eon
One reason our present generation of AAMs and SAMs have such highly-lethal warheads is that until this year, the most common drones used as live-fire targets during R&D were old F-4s.
It takes a lot of “bang” to actually bring down a Rhino with one shot.
Now that they’ve pretty much run out of Phantoms to blow up, they’re going to use old F-16s. I’m wondering if they’ll conclude the next generation of missiles don’t need as much kaboom at the business end.
cheers
eon
December 22, 2015 at 12:17 pm
S'aaruuk
Ah yes, the McDonnell/Douglas F4 Phantom; Uncle Sam’s declaration to the world that given sufficient horsepower a BRICK will fly. 😉
December 22, 2015 at 6:30 pm
John Egbert
In my mind the Phantom II will always be the F4H-(insert appropriate number/letter here). And may Robert Strange McNamara burn in hell eternally for ruining the USN and USAF designation systems, because he and his “Whiz Kids” couldn’t understand them.
December 22, 2015 at 8:58 pm
Mike Monts
A true triple threat aircraft, able to bomb you, strafe you and fall on you.
December 22, 2015 at 8:19 pm
Pamela
My Dad (God bless his soul) had to make repairs at sea during the early 60s. The Ship’s shakedown cruise about two weeks out after a stint in dry dock, shook some things majorly loose with a nasty explosion is the engine room. Turns out the guys who were supposed to repair and replace did the spit, bubblegum and bailing wire repairs where you could not see.
Dad was not happy and saw to it they were also not happy when the ship got back into port.
December 22, 2015 at 11:25 pm
armedandsafe
Old saying from my time as a comm tech in R&D in the 60s:
“What’s an Engineer?”
“The waste of a good technician.”
50 Comments
engineers are engineers, nothing can be done
Agreed but where would we be without them?
Sitting around in caves, trying to decide if rocks are edible.
We have learned that some “rocks” are edible – salt, sugar.
Others make us more beautiful – talcum.
I can think of other uses for salt with wonderful results = rubbing in wounds of antis and preserving dead meat.
Yep, best video ever to explain it………….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60P1xG32Feo
Dilbert as a ‘Ute.
Toolmakers and Pastry Chefs are actually worse, I speak from experience
So, Skye’s in her 40’s?
The perfect libtard poster child; never wanna grow up, not me.
Says Don Quixote De la Mancha, look him up in one of your movies or magazines, or should that be a clip, because everybody says it.
You can use a clip on a revolver, does that make it a pistol?
Sam Colt would crack you across your forehead with a revolver if you told him he made pistols.
Aw, who’s a sad puppy?
Thought you were gonna direct future whining to Sam and his “revolving pistol”, W. Shakespeare and his (way pre-revolver) pistols, and Guns & Ammo’s gunnies for dummies dictionary?
I know your widdle feewings are hurt and you are crushingly embarrassed and disappointed, but you’re compounding it with your adolescence (hey you ‘n Skye should be bff’s!). Takes a man to admit being wrong, dude…stop tilting at windmills, grow a pair and try it.
Sorry again, Chris…I deal with goofs like this all the time across my gun counter, but this ain’t there so I’m done.
careful, guys, none of that here.
You guys forced me out of lurker mode. Please see the patent application for Samuel Colt’s Revolving Gun dated February 25, 1836. In it, he calls it a pistol no less than 4 times. Here it is for your perusal.
https://www.google.com/patents/USX9430
Debate settled?
Sam Colt called it a revolving gun and also a pistol. Good enough for Sam Colt it’s good enough for me.
Been there, done that. Hell, been there, AM that. Hell, still there, doing that.
Engineers translate the dreamers of physicists into reality.
Something about a long enough lever could be under dreamers.
They can only translate those dreams into reality if the bean counters let them. Mostly you get truly dysfunctional bodies like NASA where none of the three groups can understand what the other is talking about.
Not the bean counters fault. Congress mandated most of NASA’s problems.
Yes and no. It’s more of a communication problem; none of the three speak the other two’s languages. Some colleagues and I are working on a grant proposal to develop strategies to overcome the problem. It’s not just the US and the Brits who are separated by a common language!
Engineers should have to push a tool box and work on things for three years before they are turned out onto the world. I heard the whole front end has to come off a Caddy to change a head lamp. $230 for the lamp and $2400 for the labor to change it. I don’t know if it is true or not but……..damn!
I am a technician, not an engineer. SO I fully sympathize. But I have just enough “engineering” knowledge to look at some of the things I work on and wonder if I can someday throat punch the engineer who designed and built this crap.
You must be a marine engineer, like me.
I am a physicist who made a living as a design engineer, and whose father was a race driver and mechanic. My systems worked, and could be worked on. I would encourage any company that builds anything to have at least one guy who can do the whole thing from top to bottom – they are so freaking happy with their jobs that it can be felt in the bottom line even without a seismometer!
And they can train the new guys with the doctorates in such a manner that it keeps their drooling under control.
Yep, gone are the days of mockups and masters. Computers are the scourge of the creative mind, monkeys and typewriters come to mind. The old guys are going fast, then who are the computer jockeys going to learn from.
I retired from aerospace and boy were the CATIA boys glad to see me go.
They never even held a slip stick or a trig table, much less know how to use them. I will admit, when we started modeling the old data, the errors were amazing, then again a computer model of an old HD motor won’t run.
Built casino boats at one time. The “engineers” designed things that sailors such as myself knew were wrong. In the end, we were right and the engineers were wrong, very badly wrong in a couple of cases. So if you’re in NOLA and you find yourself going up a stairwell with a very low overhead, thank a sailor who pointed out that the center beam can not be only six feet off the deck.
I can also say some choice things about the early nuclear subs and that they were not designed to be taken back apart for repairs.
Engineers don’t make mistakes. They make revisions. Most engineers were born wise, some otherwise. I’ve done primary steel making (have patents), done nuclear and power generation, Done aerospace. I’ve spent a lot of time mentoring some young aerospace types. The “lessons learned” have both been forgotten and are not being recorded now. There are now a lot of simple mistakes being repeated that are going to do a lot of ass biting.
Referring to RaynAiken: did you know you had to disassemble the front of a 1980 Ford F150 to change the thermostat. I had a frozen thermostat in a brand new truck in KC. Took it in to the dealer on Saturday morning. Thank goodness they stayed and worked on it – all day. They did not blame me, but I learned a few new cuss words about those Ford engineers. They got it out by Saturday night. The book had 1/2 hour labor!
Similar problem with changing timing chain on ’70 Cadillac Eldorado = pull tranmission, remove hood, lift motor.
Bah – I could do it in under 1 hour w/o following the engineer’s instruction/repair manual.
Thermostat on tri-power GTOs was almost as bad – easiest way was to pull the intake manifold. Forget the manual that had you disassembling the entire front end of the engine bay and motor.
Did both easily and gave the finger to the non-believers.
I understand that one of the first Toyotas sold in the USA required unbolting the engine and raising it in order to change the oil filter. This is apparently an international affliction . . .
Reminds me of one edition of Camaro that you had to pull the engine to change 2 sparkplugs on the driver’s side. Or the aluminium block V8 GM put out that required pulling the engine to replace head gaskets. Ford had its share of foibles, too. When I was considering which minivan to get, I looked under the hood of the Aerostar. I also pulled the engine cover in the pax compartment. I couldn’t even SEE the plugs on one bank of the V6 much less figure out how to change them.
And in other engineering news, the Eagle has landed!
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spacex-successfully-lands-rocket-after-launch-of-satellites-into-orbit/ar-BBnO1iX?li=BBnb7Kz
USA! USA! USA! (private enterprise, private enterprise, private enterprise)
And a beautiful arc of fire it was, clearly visible here, 100 miles away.
The *FALCON* has landed…
Sorry, Armstrong on the brain lately.
Very nice! Leave it to the dude in it to win it!
1973? Skye has already been born and talking? Uhhhh…..That would make her in her mid 40s. Thought she was in her early 30s. A bit old for her brand of stupidity.
Stupidity usually kills before 40
Zed saved her life a few years ago if l recall correctly.
We live in the safest culture human history has ever seen. To die before your time, generally you or somebody else has to do something outstandingly stupid, crazy, or evil, pretty much on purpose.
Which tends to explain street crime, ISIS, progressive-run cities, O-Care, reality TV, and Jackass- The Movie.
clear ether
eon
And yet leftists define conservatives as “risk avoidant” (because we’re not all gung ho for change).
As a BSME ’90 and the son of BSME ’51 and the future father of a BSME ’17, I can say Engineers are born not made.
Spin
War Damn Eagle
Agreed, my wife is MEng. Ramblin’ Wreak and a heck of an engineer, only woman engineer ever met who I felt was born that way.
She keeps me in check with eye rolls around NETs, mansplaining can get tedious to the mechanically disadvantaged.
Truth has been bothersome to many throughout history.
Most can live quite a while without ever really concerning themselves with it.
Others usually deal with it unbeknownst to those blissfully wandering through life.
It was during my time in the Navy that I first heard the description I still use for those blissful wanderers; they were deemed to have a high drift factor.
Other terms were used, but not ones new to me and I try to avoid such language at this time.
I have to agree most Navy nukes have a high drift factor. As a regular Navy ET I could tell the Navy nuke ET’s and Weapons Dept ET’s almost on sight.
Their officers aren’t much better; id.est LT James Earl Carter . . .
I have read that on the night before he took off on his final, fatal mission Joe Kennedy Jr. was told by a technician not to go because the systems were way over designed and were untrustworthy.
As an engineer and an AF guy, I can tell you that Santa’s sleigh can fly. The F-4 is proof that if you put enough thrust on it, you can make anything fly. 😉
Yeah, you have to admit, the Flying Brick worked and brought men home when lesser planes splashed. One of my favorite photographs is of F-4s flying under the cameras of a Bear on our way to V/Nam.
One reason our present generation of AAMs and SAMs have such highly-lethal warheads is that until this year, the most common drones used as live-fire targets during R&D were old F-4s.
It takes a lot of “bang” to actually bring down a Rhino with one shot.
Now that they’ve pretty much run out of Phantoms to blow up, they’re going to use old F-16s. I’m wondering if they’ll conclude the next generation of missiles don’t need as much kaboom at the business end.
cheers
eon
Ah yes, the McDonnell/Douglas F4 Phantom; Uncle Sam’s declaration to the world that given sufficient horsepower a BRICK will fly. 😉
In my mind the Phantom II will always be the F4H-(insert appropriate number/letter here). And may Robert Strange McNamara burn in hell eternally for ruining the USN and USAF designation systems, because he and his “Whiz Kids” couldn’t understand them.
A true triple threat aircraft, able to bomb you, strafe you and fall on you.
My Dad (God bless his soul) had to make repairs at sea during the early 60s. The Ship’s shakedown cruise about two weeks out after a stint in dry dock, shook some things majorly loose with a nasty explosion is the engine room. Turns out the guys who were supposed to repair and replace did the spit, bubblegum and bailing wire repairs where you could not see.
Dad was not happy and saw to it they were also not happy when the ship got back into port.
Old saying from my time as a comm tech in R&D in the 60s:
“What’s an Engineer?”
“The waste of a good technician.”