I am an Engineering supervisor for a mid-sized Civil Engineering Firm. I have 4 junior engineers working for me. Three of them have BS, and one has a Master degree.
I can honestly say that most engineers that come out of schools today are pretty poorly prepared for the work environment. Of the 4 engineers I have working for me now, all of them came out of school not knowing how to write a report, or do autocad. It generally takes me at least one year for me and the office manager to take some one raw out of school, and make them billable.
During that first year I have to be an autocad instructor, an English teacher, and hope they don't move on during the year.
Right now at work I am dealing with an engineer whom has a master's degree specializing in water resources, and yet I took 2 hours trying to explain to her how to do basic rational method hydrology.
If I had one request for engineering school, it would be make the students take at least 2 autocad courses. The first course should be a basic course for all engineering disciplines, and then an advanced course dealing with the software that each discipline typically has to use. Teach civils Autodesk land development desktop, teach mechanicals autodesk inventor, ect... I hate the fact that most took a basic course their freshman year, and never even touched autocad during the rest of their time at school.
I know a couple of registered Civil Engineers whom don't have degrees. In California, all you have to do is pass the EIT exam, and work in the industry 6 years in the industry. Then if you can pass the PE exam, then you can become a registered Engineer.
I will have to second this this post. My grammer was very poor until I took 2 years of french. I made me go back and learn proper english.
I am an Engineering Supervisor, and I have had to teach more than one engineer to write. The best method I have found is to present the Engineers with a writing system. We write a lot of feasibilty studies in my office, and I try to have each engineer follow the same basic format: Introduction and project description, report purpose, methodology, and results. I also try to stress that the engineer keep in mind who the intended audence is. A report intended for a City Engineer will look a lot different that one that we know only the local planners are going to review.
My parents and I took a grand tour of europe in the summer of 1992. Being from the United States, we rented a car in Paris, and drove down the highway of the Sun down to Barcalona Spain to catch the olympics. On the way, we spent one night at a Grand Prix Inn.
Grand Prix Inn seem to be the french equivelent of a Motel 6, only it look like it was built out of Lego. All the building were plastic, and modular. Like most french hotels, the rooms did not have bathrooms, and the bathrooms were located just off the lobby area.
One of the first things you noticed about these bathrooms were the lights over the door as you went in. There was a red light and a green light. You could only enter the bathroom when the light was green. After using the bathroom, as soon as you closed the door upon exit, the light would turn red and you could hear the bathroom starting to clean itself. It took about 5 minutes, and then the light would turn green again, and the bathroom door would unlock.
The bathrooms themselves were quite small, and each one had only a shower, toilet, and a sink. The entire bathroom appearted to have been made from one large plastic casting, as the only seams you could find in the entire room was the door.
I graduated from a State School in 1998 with my BS in Civil Engineering. I know, Civil engineers are often among the lowest paid engineers, but that is if you don't know how to work the system. After being in the field for 7 years, I have my PE, I am working towards getting my LS (land Surveying License), and I own my own small company and am loving it.
I did not get the best grades in college. My Technical GPA was just a tad over 2.5. The only way I survived was to band together with my fellow students and study with them.
The best piece of advise I can give you is to look around your math and physics classes and find out who is also an engineering major. Try to get together and do your homework together. If you have a big enough group, chances are if you don't understand a concept, some one else will. On the flip side, there is no better way to understand a concept yourself by trying to explain it to some one who does not. This was the only way I got through structural engineering, and some of the advanced math courses.
don't worry if you don't get a 4.0 gpa in engineering. I have worked with a lot of engineers over the last 7 years, and I can tell you that I would rather hire the guy who got a 2.0 and learned to work well with people than the 4.0 guy who doesn't even think to bring his calculator to work!
My last peice of unread advise. Don't try to do it in 4 years. If you are a mechanincal or civil, learn CAD, and get a part time job in an engineering office and take 6 years to finish your course work. It may take longer, but you will be light years ahead of everyone else who finished in 4 years.
C. Alan,
CA RCE 63332
Netrek has been around for nearly 15 years, and it is still one of the best online games out there.
Long live ModemJoe! king of the BB's...
I guessed Slashdot, how sad is that...
on
The Onion in 2056
·
· Score: 1
I came into work this morning, and though, "Hey, its been a while since I looked at the Onion." I cruised on over, and took a look, and man...It was running slow. I got to thinking, the page is acting like it has been slashdotted.... And sure enough, here is the article.
I have direcway, it was either that or dial-up because I live in the boonies of the tehachapi mountains in California. The lags are terrible, on the order to 2 seconds or more. Plus, when it snows, I have to clear the dish of snow to get online. Download rates are OK, but uploads are on the order of a 56k modem.
Somewhere, deep in my brain, there are two brain cell that have registered and stored those images.... and I will never get those brain cell back.
Damm you Slashdot!
Pacman is a hard one go get right
on
Back to the Classics
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
If you have done any dabbling in emulation at all, you by now have noticed that there were LOTS of versions of pacman around. The first version out of Japan was known as "Puck-Man" Legend has it that the games name was chaned after some arcades began complaning that the "P" was often scratched out to an "F".
The orginal game logic made the game very predicatable. All you had to do was learn a few patterns, and you could play all day on just one quarter. Not long after Pacman came out, arcade owners started clammering for changes in the game that would keep the games productive. This lead to changes like th speed chip, and pacman plus. I wonder how the developers of the commercial emulators choose what version of the game to remake.
I have purchased on of those 'emulators in a box' that had pacman on it, and it appears that they used the pacman plus code for the game logic. I still keep mame around so I can play the original game. --C. Alan
Man, jtshaw hit the nail on the head with this one. I got my Civil Engineering degree from Fresno State back in 1998. It was a pretty small engineering deparmtent, and I got to know some of the prof's pretty well.
My Transportation and concrete prof was doing research into using kevlar as a concrete reinforment agent. I got interested in his research and helped him write a couple of papers. It was a lot of fun, and I got to present one of the papers. I am now a registered Civil Engineer, and in the next year or two, I will be opening my own firm. My education turned out to be very valuable.
Im sorry, but those of us who were engineering and computer majors had to take technical electives to finish our degree. 'Basket weaving' 401 was not an option.
I saw an add for this radio over on the tower hobbies website, and almost choked on the price (around $2k).
I have been flying for a few years, and I am wonder who on earth has a 14 channel RC aircraft. Most Planes I fly at the most use 6 channels (ailerons, elevator, throttle, rudder, retracts, and flaps). Perhaps some one building a scale model B-52 (it has been done btw) would need this many channels. I imagine that they will sell a lot more of these on ground frequencies than air frequencies. Most of the guys who buy these high end radios for thier 4 channel planes are not much more than posers (see me with my pretty plane?) anyway.
Futaba sometimes introduces these nice features on their high end radios, and after a few years, the features start showing up on the low-end stuff. Personally, I can't wait for the touch screen technology to get down to their regular 6 channel radios.
A lot of people like to take this view because it is convenient, and they have not studied both subjects at depth.
I have an Engineering degree, and I attended a mixture of private religious schools, and public school during my time. In high school, I took religion (it was a requirement) and I also had teachers and nuns who helped me cultivate my belief in God.
Science is wonderful to me BECAUSE it strengthens my belief in God. I have learned how the universe is structured, and I have seen how the 'rules' of the universe are set up so perfectly. It didn't take me long to realize that Science is a window into how God works. It all works to well for me for it to be some big cosmic accident.
...and if they are not treated right, they will vent or explode. The little cell phone lipo battery is nothing compared to a high discharge 2100ma three cell lipo that go off like a cherry bomb if you overcharge it, or punchure it during a crash. But then again, model airplane fuel is very volitle, and has a hight nitro content. So either way, you have to be careful. Batteries are like any other power sources, they can be dangerous if not treated right.
I have read quite a few horry stories about guys burning up model planes that took hundreds of hours to build, and automobiles and workshops because they did not take the proper safey precautions when dealing with these batteries.
I have said it once, and I will keep repeating it. Linux will not get any more popular until the Apps are as easy to load and setup as in Windows. RPM's are a nice step forward, but Linux is not there yet.
I have just one App that is keeping me in XP, it is Autocad 2004, soon to be 2005. Sure, I could run it under wine, but I need it to work 100% of the time, with all of its functions. I don't have time to deal with Wine in it current form.
Local and state governments have deadlines just like in the private sector. The only real difference is that we have to deal with a lot more buricratic cr*p.
If any of my projects were 7 years over due, I would expect to get canned, or demoted.
Slashdot Mirror
I am an Engineering supervisor for a mid-sized Civil Engineering Firm. I have 4 junior engineers working for me. Three of them have BS, and one has a Master degree.
I can honestly say that most engineers that come out of schools today are pretty poorly prepared for the work environment. Of the 4 engineers I have working for me now, all of them came out of school not knowing how to write a report, or do autocad. It generally takes me at least one year for me and the office manager to take some one raw out of school, and make them billable.
During that first year I have to be an autocad instructor, an English teacher, and hope they don't move on during the year.
Right now at work I am dealing with an engineer whom has a master's degree specializing in water resources, and yet I took 2 hours trying to explain to her how to do basic rational method hydrology.
If I had one request for engineering school, it would be make the students take at least 2 autocad courses. The first course should be a basic course for all engineering disciplines, and then an advanced course dealing with the software that each discipline typically has to use. Teach civils Autodesk land development desktop, teach mechanicals autodesk inventor, ect... I hate the fact that most took a basic course their freshman year, and never even touched autocad during the rest of their time at school.
--C. Alan Whitten
California RCE 63332
I know a couple of registered Civil Engineers whom don't have degrees. In California, all you have to do is pass the EIT exam, and work in the industry 6 years in the industry. Then if you can pass the PE exam, then you can become a registered Engineer.
I will have to second this this post. My grammer was very poor until I took 2 years of french. I made me go back and learn proper english.
I am an Engineering Supervisor, and I have had to teach more than one engineer to write. The best method I have found is to present the Engineers with a writing system. We write a lot of feasibilty studies in my office, and I try to have each engineer follow the same basic format: Introduction and project description, report purpose, methodology, and results. I also try to stress that the engineer keep in mind who the intended audence is. A report intended for a City Engineer will look a lot different that one that we know only the local planners are going to review.
My parents and I took a grand tour of europe in the summer of 1992. Being from the United States, we rented a car in Paris, and drove down the highway of the Sun down to Barcalona Spain to catch the olympics. On the way, we spent one night at a Grand Prix Inn.
Grand Prix Inn seem to be the french equivelent of a Motel 6, only it look like it was built out of Lego. All the building were plastic, and modular. Like most french hotels, the rooms did not have bathrooms, and the bathrooms were located just off the lobby area.
One of the first things you noticed about these bathrooms were the lights over the door as you went in. There was a red light and a green light. You could only enter the bathroom when the light was green. After using the bathroom, as soon as you closed the door upon exit, the light would turn red and you could hear the bathroom starting to clean itself. It took about 5 minutes, and then the light would turn green again, and the bathroom door would unlock.
The bathrooms themselves were quite small, and each one had only a shower, toilet, and a sink. The entire bathroom appearted to have been made from one large plastic casting, as the only seams you could find in the entire room was the door.
I graduated from a State School in 1998 with my BS in Civil Engineering. I know, Civil engineers are often among the lowest paid engineers, but that is if you don't know how to work the system. After being in the field for 7 years, I have my PE, I am working towards getting my LS (land Surveying License), and I own my own small company and am loving it. I did not get the best grades in college. My Technical GPA was just a tad over 2.5. The only way I survived was to band together with my fellow students and study with them. The best piece of advise I can give you is to look around your math and physics classes and find out who is also an engineering major. Try to get together and do your homework together. If you have a big enough group, chances are if you don't understand a concept, some one else will. On the flip side, there is no better way to understand a concept yourself by trying to explain it to some one who does not. This was the only way I got through structural engineering, and some of the advanced math courses. don't worry if you don't get a 4.0 gpa in engineering. I have worked with a lot of engineers over the last 7 years, and I can tell you that I would rather hire the guy who got a 2.0 and learned to work well with people than the 4.0 guy who doesn't even think to bring his calculator to work! My last peice of unread advise. Don't try to do it in 4 years. If you are a mechanincal or civil, learn CAD, and get a part time job in an engineering office and take 6 years to finish your course work. It may take longer, but you will be light years ahead of everyone else who finished in 4 years. C. Alan, CA RCE 63332
Netrek has been around for nearly 15 years, and it is still one of the best online games out there.
Long live ModemJoe! king of the BB's...
I came into work this morning, and though, "Hey, its been a while since I looked at the Onion." I cruised on over, and took a look, and man...It was running slow. I got to thinking, the page is acting like it has been slashdotted.... And sure enough, here is the article.
Oh I love this guy. He actually thinks he owns software. Some one is not reading their user agreements again.
My favorite quote:
I will say this for being a tyrannical dark overlord: you get great service at restaurants.
Somewhere, deep inside my brian are two cell screaming, because they have to remember that image...
...Sucks.
I have direcway, it was either that or dial-up because I live in the boonies of the tehachapi mountains in California. The lags are terrible, on the order to 2 seconds or more. Plus, when it snows, I have to clear the dish of snow to get online. Download rates are OK, but uploads are on the order of a 56k modem.
Somewhere, deep in my brain, there are two brain cell that have registered and stored those images.... and I will never get those brain cell back.
Damm you Slashdot!
If you have done any dabbling in emulation at all, you by now have noticed that there were LOTS of versions of pacman around. The first version out of Japan was known as "Puck-Man" Legend has it that the games name was chaned after some arcades began complaning that the "P" was often scratched out to an "F".
The orginal game logic made the game very predicatable. All you had to do was learn a few patterns, and you could play all day on just one quarter. Not long after Pacman came out, arcade owners started clammering for changes in the game that would keep the games productive. This lead to changes like th speed chip, and pacman plus. I wonder how the developers of the commercial emulators choose what version of the game to remake.
I have purchased on of those 'emulators in a box' that had pacman on it, and it appears that they used the pacman plus code for the game logic. I still keep mame around so I can play the original game.
--C. Alan
Man, jtshaw hit the nail on the head with this one. I got my Civil Engineering degree from Fresno State back in 1998. It was a pretty small engineering deparmtent, and I got to know some of the prof's pretty well.
My Transportation and concrete prof was doing research into using kevlar as a concrete reinforment agent. I got interested in his research and helped him write a couple of papers. It was a lot of fun, and I got to present one of the papers. I am now a registered Civil Engineer, and in the next year or two, I will be opening my own firm. My education turned out to be very valuable.
Spoken like a true liberal arts major.
Im sorry, but those of us who were engineering and computer majors had to take technical electives to finish our degree. 'Basket weaving' 401 was not an option.
I have had lots of trouble with disk juggler in the past. So thanks for the Nero Utility!
If you are looking for good cheap on-board telemetry for your RC aircraft, check out
http://www.eagletreesystems.com/
For the price, you can't beat the data you get.
I saw an add for this radio over on the tower hobbies website, and almost choked on the price (around $2k).
I have been flying for a few years, and I am wonder who on earth has a 14 channel RC aircraft. Most Planes I fly at the most use 6 channels (ailerons, elevator, throttle, rudder, retracts, and flaps). Perhaps some one building a scale model B-52 (it has been done btw) would need this many channels. I imagine that they will sell a lot more of these on ground frequencies than air frequencies. Most of the guys who buy these high end radios for thier 4 channel planes are not much more than posers (see me with my pretty plane?) anyway.
Futaba sometimes introduces these nice features on their high end radios, and after a few years, the features start showing up on the low-end stuff. Personally, I can't wait for the touch screen technology to get down to their regular 6 channel radios.
I have to take issue with this statement.
A lot of people like to take this view because it is convenient, and they have not studied both subjects at depth.
I have an Engineering degree, and I attended a mixture of private religious schools, and public school during my time. In high school, I took religion (it was a requirement) and I also had teachers and nuns who helped me cultivate my belief in God.
Science is wonderful to me BECAUSE it strengthens my belief in God. I have learned how the universe is structured, and I have seen how the 'rules' of the universe are set up so perfectly. It didn't take me long to realize that Science is a window into how God works. It all works to well for me for it to be some big cosmic accident.
...and if they are not treated right, they will vent or explode. The little cell phone lipo battery is nothing compared to a high discharge 2100ma three cell lipo that go off like a cherry bomb if you overcharge it, or punchure it during a crash. But then again, model airplane fuel is very volitle, and has a hight nitro content. So either way, you have to be careful. Batteries are like any other power sources, they can be dangerous if not treated right.
I have read quite a few horry stories about guys burning up model planes that took hundreds of hours to build, and automobiles and workshops because they did not take the proper safey precautions when dealing with these batteries.
But is there a chapter on Hacking your dead badger linux box?
I know, I know, I brought it up again... So kill my karma.
How much you wanna bet that those night vision goggles spend most of their time glued to people making out in the back row of a really bad movie.
I have said it once, and I will keep repeating it. Linux will not get any more popular until the Apps are as easy to load and setup as in Windows. RPM's are a nice step forward, but Linux is not there yet.
I have just one App that is keeping me in XP, it is Autocad 2004, soon to be 2005. Sure, I could run it under wine, but I need it to work 100% of the time, with all of its functions. I don't have time to deal with Wine in it current form.
You obviously don't work in Government.
Local and state governments have deadlines just like in the private sector. The only real difference is that we have to deal with a lot more buricratic cr*p.
If any of my projects were 7 years over due, I would expect to get canned, or demoted.
Man, the april first articles are going from bad to worse!
What's next, Research showing Sco kill Mother Teresa?
Plese let it stop!