[red-beard]

When we had interns, I'd say 50% of them were worth the effort. Several of those good ones were eventually asked back to be full time employees.

But we had some DUMB and some quirky ones.

One ran out of disk space on his computer (30MB, around 1994). So he deleted the Windows directory since he didn't use any of those files.

Another would freak out anytime we gave him work. ("That's way too much pressure, man!").

One of the excellent ones was using an older PC with an older 12" monitor. He went to my desk and said his computer was acting up. I look at it and the screen was losing sync every 10-15 seconds and buzzing when it did. Slowly, it happened more. And finally, it went continuous and smoke started coming out of the monitor! First time I had a computer actually catch on fire!

As a field engineer, I had two interns (full engineers, but interns as FE's). One was nuts. He would start off like: "Dude, have you ever made monster bikes? Like take a little wheel and put it on a 10 speed?" And then he demonstrated rolling around on the short wheel. I knew he was going to be a GREAT field engineer.

The other intern? He came to me one day and said he has a flat tire. Except he was from Rhode Island and it was more like "I gotta a flat tie-ah". So I said he should take it down to Sears and have them path it. And then I thought for a second, he had a rental car. I said to call the rental company and have them switch out the vehicle.

"No man! It's my bicycle!"

"Uh. Go down to K-Mart and get a new tube?"

"OK. I've never changed a tie-ah. Is it hard?"

This is a man, 22 years old with a Degree in Mechanical Engineering, working on Gas Turbines, Steam Turbines and generator sets.