On 8/15/2020 at 10:24 PM, FlGatorwood said:

Another IT saying was "the problem is head space."

I once, as a practical joke, put a small program in the start up function of a co-workers computer. When you atarted it up  the screen turned blut and in big block letters it said "PRESS ANY KEY TO DELETE ALL OF YOUR FILES!"

8 hours ago, Larry Buskirk said:

Who usually doesn't understand how it works at all. 

I resemble that remark!

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by junglejohn

A good engineer on his own generally does a pretty efficient job.

 

 I worked with many fine engineers in my 40 years at a power plant. Most were good, some excelled, other wore an artificial engineers hat. My last 10/15 years we had lady engineers. My first thought was "Oh boy, here we go again" Much to my delight, those ladies were good engineers and possessed a trait I wish all of them had.......They would ask for advice and listen. Half of the male engineers were good at that also. The other half already knew everything and wouldn't listen if you did try to help.

11 hours ago, Ron Altier said:

A good engineer on his own generally does a pretty efficient job.

 

...those ladies were good engineers and possessed a trait I wish all of them had.......They would ask for advice and listen. Half of the male engineers were good at that also. The other half already knew everything and wouldn't listen if you did try to help.

 

 We had our share of both where I worked as well. Maybe we had more of our share of the ones who knew everything.....plus they were never concerned with doing a job correctly; only the impact it may have on their career.

15 hours ago, junglejohn said:

 It is the most overlooked aspect of design. 

I had to (try to) repair a table once.   It was a round table that on one side had a handle crank.  You pulled out the crank and turned it, then cranked in the other direction.  The function was to add "leaves."   The smaller top split apart into pie-piece shaped wedges, the leaves, hiding underneath, rose, clicked into place then reverse of the crank closed the gaps.   Problem was it didn't go together tightly.  Major problem was with the myriad rack and pinions, gears, levers, etc. inside, there was no way to adjust it so that it worked.   

 

Too smart by half.

 

One engineering principle we adhered to (in another discipline where I worked previously)
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Another was

Build it so it can be repaired and modified in the future.

 

The Welsh Wanker I mentioned earlier was doing some work and decided to set a flag to indicate that it was the "new" version of the thing.  He turned on one "bit" (a binary digit, i.e., 1)   Rather that set a constant that he could use everywhere and would show up in the index, he got creative.  Sometimes he checked for hexadecimal 40,  X'40' (a value with that bit on), other times C' ' (character blank that has a hex value of 40) and other times 64, the decimal value of hex 40.  So there was no one place to look to see everywhere that he was checking or setting the "new" value.

14 minutes ago, kmealy said:

I had to (try to) repair a table once.   It was a round table that on one side had a handle crank.  You pulled out the crank and turned it, then cranked in the other direction.  The function was to add "leaves."   The smaller top split apart into pie-piece shaped wedges, the leaves, hiding underneath, rose, clicked into place then reverse of the crank closed the gaps.   Problem was it didn't go together tightly.  Major problem was with the myriad rack and pinions, gears, levers, etc. inside, there was no way to adjust it so that it worked.   

 

I remember those tables.

No fun to move up multiple flights of stairs. 

1 hour ago, kmealy said:

I had to (try to) repair a table once.   It was a round table that on one side had a handle crank.  You pulled out the crank and turned it, then cranked in the other direction.  The function was to add "leaves."   The smaller top split apart into pie-piece shaped wedges, the leaves, hiding underneath, rose, clicked into place then reverse of the crank closed the gaps.   Problem was it didn't go together tightly.  Major problem was with the myriad rack and pinions, gears, levers, etc. inside, there was no way to adjust it so that it worked.   

 

Too smart by half.

 

One engineering principle we adhered to (in another discipline where I worked previously)
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Another was

Build it so it can be repaired and modified in the future.

 

The Welsh Wanker I mentioned earlier was doing some work and decided to set a flag to indicate that it was the "new" version of the thing.  He turned on one "bit" (a binary digit, i.e., 1)   Rather that set a constant that he could use everywhere and would show up in the index, he got creative.  Sometimes he checked for hexadecimal 40,  X'40' (a value with that bit on), other times C' ' (character blank that has a hex value of 40) and other times 64, the decimal value of hex 40.  So there was no one place to look to see everywhere that he was checking or setting the "new" value.

I have seen this type of table and was fascinated by it. Being a design engineer I have mulled over ways to do it. But I don't want to re=design the wheel. If someone else has already done it why not just use their design? Are there plans put there or do you think this may be beyond my ability as a wood worker at this point.

22 hours ago, Ron Altier said:

A good engineer on his own generally does a pretty efficient job.

 

 I worked with many fine engineers in my 40 years at a power plant. Most were good, some excelled, other wore an artificial engineers hat. My last 10/15 years we had lady engineers. My first thought was "Oh boy, here we go again" Much to my delight, those ladies were good engineers and possessed a trait I wish all of them had.......They would ask for advice and listen. Half of the male engineers were good at that also. The other half already knew everything and wouldn't listen if you did try to help.

My eldest daughter has a degree in industrial engineering and a master's degree in engineering management.  She's probably my most intelligent child.

5 hours ago, junglejohn said:

I have seen this type of table and was fascinated by it. Being a design engineer I have mulled over ways to do it. But I don't want to re=design the wheel. If someone else has already done it why not just use their design? Are there plans put there or do you think this may be beyond my ability as a wood worker at this point.

Oh, the underneath was full of metal gears and bearings.  I have seen others with just wooden supports that hold wooden leaves on the perimeter.

 

Things should be as complex as needed but no more so -- Einstein.

On 8/13/2020 at 6:29 PM, kmealy said:

Only problem is Dunning-Kruger effect   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect#:~:text=In the field of psychology,recognize their lack of ability.

 

Idiots don't realize how stupid they are.

They say when you are dead, you don't realize you're dead, well, because you've died.

 

The same is true when you are stupid