<p>kelsmom</p>
<p>re:#26</p>
<p>Are we married to the same man? Same story here, except that H and his engineer dad BUILT the boat when H was a boy. And it’s wood, not fiberglass, so it weighs a ton.</p>
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You mean there are people who don’t?</p>
<p>Re post #54… did someone mention ‘optimization’ ?</p>
<p>dad is retired engineer:</p>
<p>installed buzzer to sound whenever door to upright freezer was open, got tired of the wife not closing the door all the way (not a frost free unit).</p>
<p>Installed buzzer to sound when the water level got above a certain level in the laundry tub, got tired of the wife not seeing the sock in the drain and getting basement floor flooded.</p>
<p>Installed buzzer on the spot the cat would sit when he was outside and wanted to come in again.</p>
<p>seeing a pattern here…</p>
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<p>A wooden boat should weigh less than a comparable fiberglass boat, not more. So there. My sons and I have built three boats in the last five years, all of which are almost done. Do you think this means something?</p>
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<p>Ah…and you probably save the family a ton of money because you never buy anything (at least MY husband never does the buying).</p>
<p>TheDad, you can’t sell YOUR 8 track. DH’s is better. It’s a reel to reel (no kidding) with an 8 track built into the side. A real collector’s item. Teac.</p>
<p>OK…maybe we should do classifieds here (to help us unload some of the “collections”). I’ll start…anyone interested in about 1000 (no kidding) science fiction paper pack books…with some being duplicates (because you keep the books in case you want to reread them…but when you DO want to read a book, you just buy it)? I’ll throw in (at no cost) the Rubbermaid bins they are packed in (no, the engineer didn’t pack them…<em>I</em> did that).</p>
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<p>Heh. My brother-in-law has what must be that exact same model. He recorded years of Christmas mornings on that reel-to-reel.</p>
<p>Oh, and I’ll take those SF books. Just drop them by. I have a library (the ultimate indulgence) including four bookcases I built just for SF paperbacks. The shelves are fixed and shallow – they only hold paperbacks. Unlike some others (<em>cough</em>) I actually file them by author names and read and re-read them. My sons are now working their way through my collection. Just so you don’t think I’m too strange, the library also contains 10 other bookcases (six I built), and a few thousand other books that are not SF.</p>
<p>EDITED: Only 1,000 books? The man is either young or simply not trying very hard.</p>
<p>EDITED AGAIN: I have a complete set of O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin novels in paperback. And hardback. Is that a bad thing?</p>
<p>LOL – I’m loving this thread! DH is a “half-breed engineer” (his terminology) – went to an engineering school but majored in business. Yes, he researched the new TV almost to death, but we actually have it – and we bought it at the absolute best price! We have all the manuals because I save them – to use when he can’t figure out how to use/set/reset something, but refuses, under any circumstances, to read the instructions. And thank goodness for GPS in our cars, since he’ll also never, ever ask for directions – but, to his credit, we never got lost all that often (even before GPS) since he has an amazing sense of direction. We recently moved and I threw out piles of stuff I knew he’d never miss. The trick is to not ask – just toss. Oh, and packing the car is all up to him, which suits me just fine!</p>
<p>I guess I better come clean here. I’ve worked in the computer business for a long time – for 10 years in IT and for <em>cough</em> in the software trade. I don’t have an engineering degree, but I am frequently mistaken for one of them. I am truly an extroverted adult child of an engineer.</p>
<p>So. Televisions. In late 1988 I decided to buy my first new television. I drove the sales people at the local stores crazy, eventually settling into a Circuit City where I spent three or four hours looking at sets. The sales guy was carrying them around so I could see them next to each other. I ended up with a 26-inch Mitsubishi (with S-Video inputs!) that cost nearly $1,000. The problem with this was that the d<em>mn</em>d thing lasted forever.</p>
<p>About four years ago, it just went black. No fading picture, no fuzzy edges, no other signs – just blackness. This was great! I had an excuse to buy a new TV! Even WashMom was saying, “just go get a new one.” License to buy!</p>
<p>But that little nagging pseudo-engineer voice in my head started whispering. “You know,” it said, “televisions don’t fail like that. The screens just don’t go black for no reason.” “Shut up,” I said, “Don’t you know that I can go buy a new one?” It kept yammering until I unscrewed the back, vacuumed the half-inch of dust off the circuit board, and found what I expected – a blown fuse clipped in next to the power supply. A quick trip to Radio Shack, a 79-cent investment, and the stupid television fired right back up.</p>
<p>No new television for WashDad.</p>
<p>I finally had to wait for November, 2006, when I told WashMom, “You know, if we take the old televisions into the recycling center this Saturday, we can unload your Dad’s old set and the one in the basement.”</p>
<p>I didn’t fool her. “And the Mitsubishi, too, I suppose,” she said.
“Maybe.”
<em>sigh</em> “Go ahead. I suppose you have a new one picked out already.”
“I ordered it from Newegg yesterday.”
“How did I know?”</p>
<p>So, that’s how I bought the second new television we ever owned since our wedding in 1978.</p>
<p>OMG, my whole life I thought it was just my dad who packed the car just so, started projects and never finished them, and knew infinite details about minute things! Of COURSE he is an Engineer! I can’t even begin to remember the details of the unfinished projects that went on for YEARS… except the third garage that eventually moved around the back of the house and evolved into a 2-story greenhouse and kitchen addition. It was beautiful. It was mostly built except for the greenhouse, and my dad’s best friend, an engineer who had moved to another state, came back to visit for 3 days to help him put it up. A whole day went by and dad was still fiddling with putting up the SCAFFOLDING. Even his engineer friend went ballistic.</p>
<p>My mom’s favorite saying? “Either ***** or get off the pot.” We used to go buy appliances when dad was out of town on business. He’d come home and we’d have a new refrigerator. End of story. When she wants to get rid of something, it has to go to the basement for 6 months - 2 years to “cool off.” Then it can vanish when the AmVets do a pick-up in the neighborhood.</p>
<p>Dad has finally admitted that he prefers planning projects to actually DOING them.</p>
<p>But boy I really missed him when I moved away from home. If I call home and ask to talk to dad, he gets on the phone and says, “Is it the car that’s broken, or an appliance?”</p>
<p>When DS, a liberal-arts major thru and thru, was looking at colleges, I encouraged him to look at schools that also taught engineering. My reasoning: engineers think differently than the rest of us, and it’s good to have different perspectives when you’re learning.</p>
<p>Wife of a petroleum engineer here. Carpacking, big dollar purchases, etc…all I can say is ‘yep, yep yep’. But the REAL obsessive planning behavior emerged when it was time to build the Pinewood Derby car every year. O. M. G.</p>
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Our fiction is alphabetized too. I’d never find anything otherwise. One year one of my son’s hw assignment was to count the number of books in the house. He told the teacher he didn’t think he could do it. She let him do just the books in his room. There were still hundreds.</p>
<p>I only have the complete set of Maturin books in softcover. OTOH I do have multiple copies of Lois McMasters Bujold. I just can’t bear to toss them, I love them so much. </p>
<p>We’ve got a reel to reel tape deck in the basement - full of Yes albums. (DH’s taste not mine.)</p>
<p>Dad has 2 reel-to-reels. And a 1967 Mercury Cougar that hasn’t run since 1986, but he was planning to rebuild it. </p>
<p>Dad is a “car-packer.” FIL (marketing, not engineering) is a “throw it in there and put a bungee cord around it.” When we moved to our new house, I was afraid they would come to blows over packing the truck.</p>
<p>Actually, when I think about it, the way to appreciate the engineer is to live with an anti-engineer. FIL once tried to help DH by “adjusting” his windshield wipers. DH turned the knob, and discovered his windshield wipers were now hood-wipers. Then there was the time FIL was helping my brother-in-law install a new chandelier, and insisted that they didn’t need to shut off the circuit breaker, just turn off the wall socket. One large spark and puff of black smoke later, he changed his mind.</p>
<p>In FIL’s defense, he didn’t come from engineering genes. When his dad’s car’s headlight came loose and was hanging by a wire, grandpa’s solution was, “Oh, just clip the d*** wire and throw the light in the back seat.” “But Dad, all we need is a screwdriver!” “Just clip the d*** wire!”</p>
<p>So how many pinball machines do you all own?</p>
<p>D came home from college for the holidays and found 3 pinball machines in her room, one in pieces. Fine with her, she’s planning to major in EE. She threw all her clothes and other stuff around the floor, adding to the occilloscope, voltmeter, and piles of hand tools, circuit drawings, paints, extra parts, etc. that were already there. You couldn’t walk into the room. Now she and her stuff are gone, but I noticed that the backglass is off again and the tools are still in a pile. H had it working, but not well enough I guess. There is some problem with the sound chip…</p>
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<p>ARGH!! My daughter…the engineer wannabee…has all of her books in her bedroom aphabetized by author. THEN if they are collections by the same author, they are further alphabetized by the title of the book. Who has time for that??? When she did that, I knew she would declare as an engineering major someday…and she did. </p>
<p>But even my daughter glazes over when her engineering dad tries to explain math or anything else. As she puts it “Doesn’t dad EVER have a short answer to anything?” NO!!</p>
<p>H’s alphabetized collection is not books … it’s vinyl record albums, thousands of them. They are neatly arranged in boxes (MANY boxes, all the same, perfect size, allow spines to be easily viewed). We got him the perfect Christmas present … a turntable that will allow him to put his collection on computer. Of course, if he starts that project, it probably won’t ever get done!</p>
<p>And the dock at the family cottage was designed & made by FIL & his engineer brother. It’s older than H, and it’s in great shape (repaired as needed by H). It is HEAVY!! The kids wanted to know why we don’t get a lightweight dock that is easier to put in/take out. I about fell off my chair laughing at the idea that this family would actually BUY a dock! :)</p>
<p>OK…I have two questions to add to the pot here…
- Does EVERYONE in your family think that the engineer that lives with you is the “family tech support person”? We get calls here from everyone who needs everything from computer tech support to fixing a faulty outlet.
- Does your family feel compelled to mail you ALL of their broken electronic “stuff”? DH is a regular at the computer recycling center (yes…he actually goes there) because he has to take all of the broken electronic “stuff” his family gives us to get rid of it. At one point we had SEVEN broken turntables in the basement (why??).</p>
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<p>But records are supposed to be shelved autobiographically ;-)</p>
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Great minds - around that timeframe I researched TVs to death and I ALSO ended up with a 26" Mitsubishi! I wonder if they were the same model (table model with a real wood cabinet??).</p>
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I don’t have one but always wanted one.</p>