Subject: You Might be an Engineer... (fwd)

YOU MIGHT BE AN ENGINEER IF...

A team of you and your co-workers have set out to modify the antenna on the radio in your work area for better reception

All your sentences begin with "what if"

At Christmas, it goes without saying that you will be the one to find the burnt-out bulb in the string

Buying flowers for your girlfriend or spending the money to upgrade your RAM is a moral dilemma

Dilbert is your hero

Everyone else on the Alaskan cruise is on deck peering at the scenery, and you are still on a personal tour of the engine room

In college you thought Spring Break was a metal fatigue failure

On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the pages faster than someone else who is reading a John Grisham novel

People groan at the party when you pick out the music

The blinking 12:00 on someone's VCR draws you in like a tractor beam to fix it

The only jokes you receive are through e-mail

The salespeople at Circuit City can't answer any of your questions

The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music never enters your mind

When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson talking with customers and you butt in to correct him and spend next twenty minutes answering the customers' questions, while the salesperson stands by silently, nodding his head

You are able to argue persuasively that Ross Perot's phrase "electronic town hall" makes more sense than the term "information superhighway," but you don't because, after all, the man still uses hand-drawn pie charts

You are always late to meetings

You are at an air show and know how fast the skydivers are falling

You are aware that computers are actually only good for playing games, but are afraid to say so out loud

You are convinced you can build a phazer from your garage door opener and your camera's flash attachment

You are currently gathering the components to build your own nuclear reactor

You are next in line on death row in a French prison and you find that the guillotine is not working properly so you offer to fix it

You are still drinking Mr Pibb

You are wine tasting and find yourself paying more attention to the cork screws than the '84 Chardonnay

You bought your wife a new CD ROM for her birthday

You bought your wife's valentine gift at orchard supply

You can name at least six Star Trek episodes

You can quote scenes from any Monty Python movie

You can type 70 words a minute but can't read your own handwriting

You can understand anything Al Gore says

You can't fit any more colored pens in your shirt pocket

You can't remember where you parked your car for the 3rd time this week

You can't write unless the paper has both horizontal and vertical lines

You carry a list for everything except the groceries

You carry on a one-hour debate over the expected results of a test that actually takes five minutes to run

You comment to your wife that her straight hair is nice and parallel

You disdain people who use low baud rates

You do Darth Vader or Battlestar Gallactica impersonations by talking into a spinning fan

You drive a gremlin with a "Beam me up Scotty" bumper sticker

You ever burned down the gymnasium with your science fair project

You ever forgot to get a haircut ... for 6 months

You find yourself at the airport on your vacation studying the baggage handling equipment

You go on the rides at Disneyland and sit backwards in the chairs to see how they do the special effects

You have "Dilbert" comics displayed anywhere in your work area

You have a functioning home copier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal

You have a habit of destroying things in order to see how they work

You have ever debated who was a better captain: Kirk or Piccard

You have ever owned a calculator with no equals key and know what RPN stands for

You have ever purchased an electronic appliance "as-is"

You have ever saved the power cord from a broken appliance

You have ever taken the back off your TV just to see what's inside

You have introduced your kids by the wrong name

You have memorized the Discovery Channel program schedule but have seen most of the shows already

You have modified your can opener to be microprocessor driven

You have more friends on the Internet than in real life

You have never backed up your hard drive

You have never bought any new underwear or socks for yourself since you got married

You have used coat hangers and duct tape for something other than hanging coats and taping ducts

You introduce your wife/husband as "mylady@home.wife/husband"

You just don't have the heart to throw away the 100-in-1 electronics kit you got for your ninth birthday

You know how to take the cover off your computer, and what size screwdriver to use

You know the altitude limits for turning on and off electronic equipment on commercial flights

You know the direction the water swirls when you flush

You know what http:// stands for

You look forward to Christmas only to put together the kids' toys

You need a checklist to turn on the TV

You order pizza over the Internet and pay for it through your home banking software

You own "Official Star Trek" anything

You own one or more white short-sleeve dress shirts

You rearrange the dishwasher to maximize the packing factor

You remember half a dozen passwords and your ten-digit Compuserve address, but you have to call your niece "kiddo"

You rooted for HAL, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey

You rotate your screen savers more frequently than your automobile tires

You see a good design and still have to change it

You spend more time on your home computer than in your car

You spent more on your calculator than on your wedding ring

You still own a slide rule and you know how to work it

You talk about the high resolution and picture-in-picture capability of your big screen TV while everybody is watching the Superbowl

You talk about trellis code modulation at parties

You think a pocket protector is a fashion accessory

You think of the gadgets in your office as "friends," but you forget to send your father a birthday card

You think Sales and Marketing are Satan's children

You think that when people around you yawn, it's because they didn't get enough sleep

You think your computer looks better without the cover

You thought the contraption ET used to phone home was stupid

You thought the real heroes of "Apollo 13" were the mission controllers

You use a CAD package to design your son's Pine Wood Derby car

You walk around with your hands in your two front pockets 99% of the time

You want an 24X CD ROM for Christmas

You wear black socks with white tennis shoes (or vice versa)

You window shop at Radio Shack

You would rather get more dots per inch than miles per gallon

You're in the back seat of your car, she's looking wistfully at the moon, and you're trying to locate a geosynchronous satellite

You've already calculated how much you make per second

You've ever tried to repair a $5 radio

Your four basic food groups are: 1. Caffeine, 2. Fat, 3. Sugar, 4. Chocolate

Your checkbook always balances

Your dress clothes come from Sears

Your father sat 2 inches in front of your family's first color TV with a magnifying lens to see how they made the colors, and you grew up thinking that was normal

Your favorite actor is R2D2

Your favorite character on Gilligan's Island was "The Professor"

Your favorite James Bond character is "Q," the guy who makes the gadgets

Your favorite place in San Francisco is the Exploratorium

Your favorite television show is New Yankee Workshop

Your girlfriend says the way you dress is no reflection on her

Your idea of a "good read" is the Edmund Scientific catalog

Your idea of good interpersonal communication means getting the decimal point in the right place

Your ideal evening consists of fast-forwarding through the latest sci-fi movie looking for technical inaccuracies

Your Internet bill is higher than your long distance charges

Your IQ is a higher number than your weight

Your kids refer to you as The Man Who Sleeps with Mommy

Your laptop computer costs more than your car

Your spouse sends you an email instead of calling you to dinner

Your three-year-old son asks why the sky is blue and you try to explain atmospheric absorption theory

Your wardrobe looks like you shop at Goodwill Industries

Your wife hasn't the foggiest idea what you do at work

Your wife thinks your taste in ties is bizarre

Your wrist watch has more computing power than a 300Mhz Pentium

Your wristwatch has more buttons than a telephone