A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts, "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"
The man below said, "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."
"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.
"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," said the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's of absolutely no use to anyone."
The man below said, "You must be in management."
"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."
Top Engineering Terms and Expressions - Part I
(What engineers say versus what they mean)
1. A number of different approaches are being tried.
(We are still guessing at this point.)
2. Close project coordination. (We sat down and had coffee together.)
3. An extensive report is being prepared on a fresh approach.
(We just hired three punk kids out of school.)
4. Major technological breakthrough! (It works OK, but looks very hi-tech!)
5. Customer satisfaction is believed assured.
(We are so far behind schedule, that the customer will take anything.)
6. Preliminary operational tests were inconclusive.
(The darn thing blew up when we threw the switch.)
7. Test results were extremely gratifying! (Unbelievable, it actually worked!)
8. The entire concept will have to be abandoned.
(The only guy who understood the thing quit.)
9. It is in process.
(It is so wrapped in red tape that the situation is completely hopeless.)
10. We will look into it. (Forget it! We have enough problems already.)
11. Please note and initial. (Let's spread the responsibility for this.)
12. Give us the benefit of your thinking.
(We'll listen to what you have to say as long as it doesn't interfere with what we have already done or with what we are going to do.)
Three engineers were in the bathroom standing at the urinals. The first engineer finished and walked over to the sink to wash his hands. He then proceeded to dry his hands very carefully. He used paper towel after paper towel and ensured that every single spot of water on his hands was dried. Turning to the other two engineers, he said, "At Hewlett Packard, we are trained to be extremely thorough."
The second engineer finished his task at the urinal and he proceeded to wash his hands. He used a single paper towel and made sure that he dried his hands using every available portion of the paper towel. He turned and said, "At Lockheed-Martin, not only are we trained to be extremely thorough, but we are also trained to be extremely efficient."
The third engineer finished and walked straight for the door, shouting over his shoulder, "At Apple Computer, Inc. we don't pee on our hands."
and for good measure, a computer joke
Software Revision Guide
Once you start playing with software you quickly become aware that each software package has a revision code attached to it. It is obvious that this revision code gives the sequence of changes to the product, but in reality there's substantially more information available through the rev-code than that. This article provides a guide for interpreting the meaning of the revision codes and what they actually signify.
1.0: Also known as 'one point uh-oh', or 'barely out of beta'. We had to release because the lab guys had reached a point of exhaustion and the marketing guys were in a cold sweat of terror. We're praying that you'll find it more functional than, say, a computer virus and that its operation has some resemblance to that specified in the marketing copy.
1.1: We fixed all of the killer bugs.
1.2: Uh, we introduced a few new bugs fixing the killer bugs and so we had to fix them, too.
2.0: We did the product we really wanted to do to begin with. Mind you, it's really not what the customer needs yet, but we're working on it.
2.1: Well, not surprisingly, we broke some things in making major changes so we had to fix them. But we did a really good job of testing this time, so we don't think we introduced any new bugs while we were fixing these bugs.
2.2: Uh, sorry, one slipped through. One lousy typo error and you won't believe how much trouble it caused!
2.3: Some jerk found a deep-seated bug that's been there since 1.0 and wouldn't stop nagging until we fixed it!
3.0: Hey, we finally think we've got it right! Most of the customers are really happy with this.
3.1: Of course, we did break a few little things.
4.0: More features. It's doubled in size now, by the way, and you'll need to get more memory and a faster processor.
4.1: Just one or two bugs this time - Honest!
5.0: We really need to go on to a new product, but we have an installed base out there to protect. We're cutting the staffing after this.
6.0: We had to fix a few things we broke in 5.0. Not very many, but it's been so long since we looked at this thing we might as well call it a major upgrade. Oh, yeah, we added a few flashy cosmetic features so we could justify the major upgrade number.
6.1: Since I'm leaving the company and I'm the last guy left in the lab who works on the product, I wanted to make sure that all the changes I've made are incorporated before I go. I added some cute demos, too, since I was getting pretty bored back here in my dark little corner (I kept complaining about the lighting but they wouldn't do anything). They're talking about obsolescence planning but they'll try to keep selling it for as long as there's a buck or two to be made. I'm leaving the bits in as good a shape as I can in case somebody has to tweak them, but it'll be sheer luck if no one loses them.
