Tick,
Not all of the creative eng types were graduate engrs. Engineering schools came some time after key inventions were introduced to civilization.
ME, PE
I'm weary of the "can't learn that in college" loop. I've heard it plenty, but not as much as I've needed to explain conservation of energy or entropy or yield stress or linear algebra or mechanical advantage to people who like to spew that phrase.
I can do both, and I'm certainly not ashamed of the fact that I learned things in school that one isn't likely to learn on the shop floor (or courtroom or emergency clinic). Without my education, I would be just another hack with a chip on one shoulder and a sack of unused potential on the other.
Here's the apotheosis of seat-of-the-pants engineering:
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The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. - [small]Hunter S. Thompson[/small]
I ought to say "Au Pair" but I am far too late discovering the real benefits of an Au Pair, so it is GPS.
The obvious benefits of Au Pairs is that they do what you tell them, they can be changed at regular intervals and don't spend all your money. But the real benefit has just occurred to me that they could solve all those navigating problems.
It's like this.
When I was young and single I navigated my self around Europe and even the USA (where sensible maps seem not to have existed until Google and those maps hire car companies hand out always end just when it gets interesting).
Then I got married.
Now any journey further than to the supermarket assumes the dimensions of some Homeric odyssey (and sometimes even the supermarket journeys have their exciting moments for spectators).
OK so any journey in the UK is bad enough with the significant other as navigator but try a trip to Europe.
This last week, I went from Dover to Dunkirk and on to Antwerp. From Antwerp, a couple of days later, to Dusseldorf and then today, home again.
The car has one of those computers that tell you mpg, distance to go before you run out of gas, it will nag you about taking breaks every two hours and so on.
But it doesn't keep score on the number of arguments, wrong turns that are the driver's fault, not the navigator's (don't ask me how that can be) and I would guess if it did it could suitably be record arguments per 100 mile with a factor for the severity of the argument and a factor for the number of junctions at which decisions have to be made.
An exponential multiplier would be necessary for when the driver over-rules the navigator.... rightly or wrongly (rare) doesn't matter... the simple act of not doing as the navigator says carries a heavy penalty.
But then, so does not over-ruling the navigator, especially if it should turn out you knew better all the time.
Forget the WRC where the navigator is giving a running set of directions and has studied the route. Here getting each and every bit of information is like getting blood from a stone.
"All right. ALL RIGHT. I heard you. You want the A57."
"Yes, but which direction?"
"What do you mean?"
"The A57 goes in two directions, one of them the wrong one."
"Well how am I supposed to know?"
"Read the bl**dy map."
I have now slowed to the safest speed at which I can still move without over-running the next junction or being run over by a truck and still haven't got an answer.
Now this "it goes in two directions, one of them the wrong one." smart-arsed answer bites me. The road I am on suddenly thows up a junction for the A57 and I have to take the junction.
There now appears no choice as to direction, there is only one way to go which of course means I am in the doghouse because "she who must be obeyed" was right (???).
Now I am on the A57.
"What do I look for next?" This was not a good question since it appears that having lurched onto the A57 my alligator (sorry, navigator) has lost interest in the map she never opened and is now instead fiddling with the heater controls and the radio. She thinks I am being difficult.
I reckon I need at least 100km between turns just to get through the arguments and explanations as to why I need to know my next move in advance, grovel a good deal, slow down a bit to gain time and then I might get an answer.
Pulling onto the hard shoulder and snatching the map is very bad form, and earns you penalty points.
Four days ago I had explained why, having gone through the Kennedy tunnel the wrong way we now had to go back again. This earned me such a high level hostility with just a few hundreds or meters between junctions that I had to navigate myself through Antwerp Old Town. It was even worse that we eventually got to the hotel.
(I excuse the navigator wrong way round the ring road error. Belgium having renamed their ring road with R1 and R2 and introduced an R10 into an already heady mix of road naming where every country and the EU get to name/number every road, the R1 could variously be the A17, E34 and who knows what else except having started following the R1 it then transformed itself into the R2.
If road naming is a problem, what about the towns... Cologne is Koln, Liege is Luik or something and when the country you are in can't even decide what language to speak and then every couple of hundred kilometers they change the language as well. I guess we all know that Europe is no place to go for a drive with the wife.
So, it appears to me the sensible thing to have done would have been to stay single but get an au pair who would not expect to go everywhere with me and then I wouldn't have to a navigator - I could do it myself again (PS navigating yourself when the wife is in the car is also a very bad thing. I didn't realise this until I tried it. Then it was something about how I don't trust her even with simple tasks... etc.)
But since I am disqualified from having an Au Pair (an Au Pair would end my marriage and my life) and I already got married and thus too late to go for the Au Pair option, I guess it has to be GPS.
But, can you get an Au Pair if you are single? or is this navigational grief pre-ordained torment for all men?
(Unless they are gay and thus don't have a wife to bother them. Oh, well, yes, what if gay men can't navigate either? Who cares? I've problems enough)
So anyway, there you have it, GPS is the next best thing to an Au Pair.
You, know, I sense there is a flaw in this argument somewhere....
See what I mean. Ha! My girlfriend couldn't navigate her way out of a wet paper bag (she barely knows her left from her right, and seems to think that I can see her finger pointing out of my right peripheral vision when she does navigate), but at least she doesn't nag when I drive and navigate at the same time, she doesn't really nag when we're driving, she saves it for the house.
Biggest navigation argument in my (former) marriage.
Driver: "Which exit do I want at the roundabout"
Navigator: "360 degrees"
Driver: "What would be the point of that?"
Navigator: "360 degrees is a U-turn"
Driver: "Uh? Surely 180 is a U-turn?"
Then it went downhill. Even the nagging was done silently.
Tnboy82, I note your use of the term "girlfriend".
This is when the female is still in the predatory phase, making up her mind whether to keep you or look for someone better, and there are certain liberties you can take.
Once the status changes to that of a permanent significant other e.g. wife, common law wife, or "partner" then expect some changes.
Steve, that is being a "know it all"?
You and I might think these are trivial points and simple one off comments once spoken soon forgotten but experience suggests that these can be collected together and made into a great big case for mental cruelty.
By the way, I haven't been spoken too for the last 14hours since getting back.
