<p>We just got an invite today for a get together one of H’s coworkers is planning. Guess what? It’s a Pinball Party!!!</p>
<p>I want an asteroids machine!</p>
<p>My H and S and currently playing with a fancy volt meter one of them got for xmas.
Oh boy, what fun!</p>
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<p>With really nice oak veneer that exactly matched our then-current wall unit? You bet. I think it was something like a CS-2655 (branding me indelibly as completely hopeless, I suppose). Great TV, we had it for 18 years and then sent it to the knackers, still working fine.</p>
<p>thumper - H decided this year to take a week AFTER New Years as vacation, in order to get stuff done around the house. Instead, he spent the entire week fixing my mother’s computer. UPS’d it back to her; she just got it today. My H would never be a regular at a computer recycling place - we keep everything. Ya never know when you might need it.</p>
<p>One of my brother-in-laws is a builder. He handles all the home repair stuff for her. My other brother-in-law is also an engineer (as is his wife, my sister), so he and H take turns fixing her stuff. She says she needs my 3rd sister to marry a veterinarian, and she’ll be all set.</p>
<p>H’s father and brother are both also engineers. So mainly when they’re together they spend all their time bickering about the best way to do things, and one-upping each other. But at least H doesn’t have to fix stuff there. (He just critiques what others have fixed. 
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<p>None, but having met dh through pinball, I’d kind of like one. :)</p>
<p>Wait, it’s weird to alphabetize your books by author? What about organizing the clothes in the closet by color? (Because I do that, and I’m a scientist, not an engineer. ;))</p>
<p>I own a Mitsubishi tv from 1987- purchased at a Silo store (long since gone)</p>
<p>All the bells and whistles, stereo input/outputs.</p>
<p>The thing won’t die.</p>
<p>Oscilloscope. Voltmeter. Of course. Plus all manner of obscure tools & devices. My kids have never had to buy a thing for science projects. They just poke around in his shop for inspiration.</p>
<p>H must be an odd engineer (wait, that’s redundant) because he’s only anal about certain things – like spending crazy amounts of time polishing his hupcaps & wheels. He has an MG from the 1940s that he dusts. (They actually sell big dusters for cars. Probably only purchased by engineers.) Yes, the neighbors tease him.</p>
<p>I met him at an engineering school and we did spend tons of time playing pinball. Our favorite game was ElDorado, and he actually hunted one down & purchased it years ago. It is now disassembled & taking up much needed space in the laundry room. As is the BMW engine in the shed which he plans to use to teach son about internal combustion engines.</p>
<p>Loved the Diblert video!</p>
<p>momneedsadvice: Great advice at the bottom of your last thread about need for liberal arts kids to make sure they rub elbows with engineers during undergrad, if possible. This became a factor in college selection this year. My D is NOT an engineer, but has the gene, and we value this thinking style.</p>
<p>DH & sons all varied sorts of engineers, mostly related to computers:</p>
<p>Tech support for family & friends–check.</p>
<p>Basement full of old computers & parts–check. They build perfectly good new ones from the parts, giving them to friends or charities!</p>
<p>H spent many a quarter on pinball games while in college. I understand now they are FREE in some campus rec centers. Sigh.</p>
<p>I recently decided I must be the D of an engineer, as well. My father, a child of the depression, farm boy who never got to go to college, learned aircraft maintenance during WWII. He is FAMOUS for never buying anything new if he can fix or create something with baling wire, tape, & an odd piece of wood. I’m sure he would have been a mechanical engineer. Great head for numbers too. He could rattle off parts numbers for cars after working years at a dealership. And you should hear him pinpointing the year something happened…let’s see, that was in 1956, no, '57, cause it was the year that blah blah yada yada yada… :D</p>
<p>Mommusic, my dear friend’s dad was also a WWII aircraft mechanic. LIke your dad, he didn’t have the opportunity for an education, but always tinkered & even ran a small machine shop out of his basement. He served in Italy & kept all his aircraft manuals & notes. My H got a kick out of looking those over when he died. His widow called all the engineer friends to help go through his shop & sort things out. H was amazed at his organization & some of the truly inventive ideas he had developed.</p>
<p>H is a Rose-Hulman grad, FIL is a Stevens grad…I can relate to just about all of this, it is like a support group!! Nice to know I am not the only one out there…</p>
<p>My husband is an engineer but sounds like he’s a little different then many on this board. He’s also a musician and and extrovert. I like how he finds solutions to problems, and actually follows through with his designs. He took an old golf bag and turned it into a holder for my brooms and mops. He invented a blocker/timer for the internet. One of the things that we’ve talked about inventing is a sort of plexi-glass screen thing to put in front of the tv so when the Eagles or West Virginia football teams screw up we can throw things at the tv without actually damaging it. We envision a trough at the bottom to collect liquids. Remember, you heard it here first!</p>
<p>He does have a very strong focus and is almost impossible to interrupt if he’s concentrating on something. If he’s practicing his trumpet, we’ve all learned that unless someone is seriously injured, we have to wait until the end of the piece to get his attention.</p>
<p>We have family fights about “types” of engineering. My dad was chemE, deferred during WW2, but enlisted anyway. One son wants to be PetroleumE, one undecided between Nuclear and Aero. One bro was nuclear, one mechanical, one sis is civil (our family makes fun of her), and one is EE. I think the last is still mourning the cancellation of the X-Files and spin-off, The Lone Gunmen, since she worshipped them.</p>
<p>When my dad died, we cleaned out his 2 car garage which was filled with the paperwork, blueprints, project data, etc. from a lifetime (no car, just his files, books, etc. in that garage). I found 19,000 pages of blue prints and other documents from the World Trade Center, on which he worked when I was in high school. What a find!</p>
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Oh gosh — this would sell! (Although H’s grandfather played on the Eagles, so we tolerate them in this household.) Get cracking & make the frame adaptable to your favorite sports team colors. You could pay for the kids’ college.</p>
<p>Stickershock, we are huge Eagles fans - husband has season tickets - so when they mess up we are quite unhappy. :(</p>
<p>I read this thread this morning, then went shopping. At Target I saw a display for the Super Bowl, including “bricks” made out of foam (basically, a big sponge) for $5, made for expressing your opinion of on-screen antics.</p>
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<p>Nah, he was just waiting for prices to fall. ;)</p>
<p>Oh, how did I just now notice this thread??? My DH is the consumate engineer in every way…can’t stand for things to be out of place, gets extremely annoyed when the rest of us misplace something because he puts all his things in the same place every time and never loses anything. Our garage is so organized, it looks like a tool museum. He still has engineering textbooks from college 30 years ago, like he’s gonna really reread them someday,hah! The clincher is some evenings when he comes in from work he’ll go in the family room and rearrange my tab top curtains because I didn’t evenly space the tabs as I pulled them shut!</p>
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<p>Haha! Hopefully you got one with HDMI inputs…</p>