Engineering soap opera

You got Dilbert ....

What ever did become of MacGyver anyway?

That could make it too.

"The new adventures of MacGyver"

We could use a girl. The daughter of Mac and Penny.

How about MacGyver's Survival Island?

MacGyver meets Survivor meets Gilligans Island?

There was a pilot for a new MacGyver show in 2003. It was about his nephew.

From what I saw I would say it was as crappy as The Young James Bond.

The TV show that made me want to be an engineer was in the 1960's - Batman.

But in China there are lots of relative program show on TV.

many event among project and engineer outspread. family, colleagues, love, frineds, humor, jok, struggle against difficult etc....

lots of cd, if you like to see, buy some.

as well as in america and europe and other asia countries there are lots.

evry year, china goverment import many such soap show. some of them are good, others not.

Have any ed2k links?

Im sorry I can tell nothing, because I havnt ever seen movies on line.

My vote is for a character like Dilbert. He's smart, he's funny, and his love life sucks, just like a real engineer.

I gave up on McIver when I saw him trying to arc weld with 2 pieces of coat-hanger stuck into a 110v socket. Somebody's kid would try it and get electrocuted.

Who the hell is Dilbert?

A very popular comic strip character in North America, developed by Scott Adams. Dilbert is an engineer who works in a cubicle for clueless management with a few induhviduals in a large company. Google "dilbert" to check it out.

Popular with engineers; not so popular with marketing, sales, or managers either because it usually hits too close to home or they don't understand it.

Most people who read it are convinced that Adams must have worked for their company.

Hi Bluestone, I checked "Dilbert" out, cool man!

I find Dilbert's work disturbingly similar to the daily life of anyone in Engineering Management.

By the way, who else thinks The Apprentice *****? None of those guys and girls has ever worked in a real company? I know that people get lost in corporations, but most of what they do seems plain silly to me. And Trump is worse than the candidates! I remeber one show where the winner designed a new bottle for Sprite that had a hole in the middle. That would be several times more expensive than the spherical design the other team proposed, however they won, because the twisted bottle with the hole looked sooo nice.

Who the hell told them that management is all about bad marketing?

Hi gussosa: Yes, I agree with you about Dilbert. As for the Apprentice....... we have the same here in the UK....... I also agree with you. One of the major problems we have always had here in the UK is Middle-Management. These people a usually university drop-outs, they know nothing about management, and even less about engineering, they seem to think that everyone should jump when they say so. I worked for one engineering company that employed an ex-carpenter as the workshop manager, he seemed to think that working with steel and bronze was the same as working with oak or pine. Needless to say, he didn't last long, but it took many hours and a lot of money to right his mistakes. Spencer.

V funny cartoon guy works in I.T has stupid boss and v clever dog...highly recommended. Many truisms...

EG boss complaining that 40% of all absenteeism is on Monday and Friday....

(2/5 ths ..geddit ?)

I wasn't electrocuted, but I did see stars for a while.

Whats your point, Gary?

Soaps and serials inspiring career choices? Hmm . . think that's a tad unlikely for many. It was cold war tech in the 60s that inspired many of my generation. Governments exist to maintain the status quo and they will only invest in engineers when they need a better bomb etc.

Hi Guest, We engineers are a dying breed.

War might stimulate technological advances but it hardly inspires one to be an engineer does it?

My Great grandfather and other descendants were all engineers, I wanted to be an engineer by wondering why an alarm clock I'd taken apart wouldn't work and my dad (mech. engineer ex- REME) just repeated the mantra:

"If it can be built it can be put together again, how easy or difficult is the engineer's challenge"

After that I just had to find out how to take apart and rebuild things, much to my parents concern!!

The cold war was exactly that - a technology race to intimidate the other side into not turning it into a "hot war". Engineers were "fighting" this "war". This is what made it a fairly interesting time to be in engineering.

Maybe in the USA and Soviet Union but I don't remember it being of any concern to me in the UK except to survive if the idiots went ahead with their threats and counter threats etc...

It never made me thing I must be an engineer to help / stop / win this dangerous political nonsense!

John.

The UK was in the thick of it. You don't know of the Washington Bomber? The V bombers? The Philby betrayal that lead to China sending troops to Korea leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of US and UN troops. Etc. Etc.

What me worry?

You must be very young and/or never talked to your elders. Take a moment and read about WWII and how close you came to speaking German. While your at it check out the high level German technology and the Spitfire aeronautical and Enigma code breaking technology and general British engineering brains empoyed to beat those bastards that wanted flatten your grandparents in the UK. I'm surprised to hear your comments.

I don't think you have read any of the above posts vibes...

I was referring to the cold war and NOT WWII.

However I have long come to expect your sort of answer to come from an American, who probably still thinks that WWII started in 1941, 2 years after everyone else was fighting!!

John.

Easy now, for fear of offending.

Granddad - Charles R Rummel Sr. - lost both his legs in that war. Served in POW camp. Texas T's, 36th infantry 1st division.

http://www.texasmilitaryforcesmuseum.org/texas.htm

That was not the Americans but the French who thought the war was starting in 1941. Which is why the best they could put up against the German Messerschmits was the obsolete American made Hawk 75 (P-36). (I know they had a handful of DE-540's) The French had top notch pilots though, taking down 230 Axis planes with the Hawk.

Maybe if they had spent a little more attention on their engineering and did not nationalize the aero industry when Germany was mobilizing...

Usual. But I have seen that many DISASSEMBLERS later turn out to bew technicians and not engineers. Makes more sense for someone who wants to get dirty and not just sign forms.

When you were 5 years old didn't you want to find out how things worked?

Disassembly is a skilled art if you have to repair and then re-assemble an intricate instrument.

Give it a try it may well improve your learning as an engineer as it did mine when I was 5.

John.

Hi Electroman, I agree with you, disassembly was the way I learned my trade. I was a marine engineer, and you cannot find machine workshops bang in the middle of the ocean. I learned to disassemble and fix the problem, then reassemble a marine diesel, a steam turbine or a steam reciprocating engine, and they had to be in good working order when I was finished with them, ready to run. I even had to turn, mill or otherwise make a new part. No university trained engineer gets anywhere near to that type of training, maybe it's about time they did? Spencer.

you guys see the thread for the guy looking for advice re: working/education in engineering field?

Engineering as a career 07/26/2007 by Guest
Hello All! I'm currently heading in to my 3rd year of studying engineering. I'm going through a phase where I question everything. The life d...

100% agree! While I do not have an engineering degree, a lot of what I do for my customers is engineering and design. I find it very disappointing when I discover how much is not taught to engineers in school. Many times I have had to teach guys who have a much better formal education than I such things as BASIC dimensioning and tolerencing. At one place I worked I had 2 young engineers working under my supervision. One had a masters in MFG engineering. Neither could tell aluminum from stainless steel. The schools teach theory in school and expect their employers to teach them practical engineering. Of course you could build lots of show plots around this reality. Better on TV than on the job.

My brother who spent most of his aerospace career in configuration management has a saying/question. "Do you have 10 years of experience or one year of experience 10 times?"

Neither could tell aluminum from stainless steel.

Yeh...made me laugh!

I always say the first thing you have to teach the Electronics graduates is which end of the soldering iron to pick up! I had one guy who couldn't connect 2 bech Dc power supplies to give a + ,- and 0v supply...simple 'cos he'd never done it. He's now a University lecturer (shudder)...

Hey Scapolie, great to find a fellow mariner in the forum! I stopped sailing some 23 years ago (found the right girl) but have stayed in the industry shoreside. There are few people who know what a well rounded marine engineer is capable of. I have my dad to thank for that. He was an Australian mining engineer of the old school (would be 96 if he were alive today) and raised me with the precept that an engineer should be able to design, build, operate and repair. Sounds awfully broad in definition, but it is something I will ever strive for. And that's the best part, it never ends! (Great to have someone pay you to learn, eh?)

Hi mareng. Welcome to the family. I am retired now, but I kept up my marine engineering skill when I went ashore just like you. I too got married, but the firm I worked for shoreside sent me around the world as their head maintainance engineer on ships equipment and marine engines. They used to fly me to some very strange places indeed. I also done a lot of work for them shoreside too, like overhauling diesel engines in remote electricity generating plants. My father too, was chief engineer for a large engineering company all his life, he died on the job in Santos, Brazil. Like your father his precept was that a good engineer should be capable of design, build, operate and repair, to this end he taught me how to design, build, operate and run a model steam engine when I was 12 years old. Until recently I was doing the same thing, designing, building and running Stirling Engines, I still have two of my old stirling engines at home. Yes, you are right, getting paid while one is learning is the ultimate! As you said, it is nice to hear from a fellow mariner, best of luck to you. Spencer.

Without those skills however would we have managed to undo that vital first bra strap in the dark left handed?

Ah..the lost innocence of youth....sigh

TV heroes have their place, no doubt. But I think engineers are born, not made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySpOuaYwLQU

Bonus question - in later life, what profession did the doctor choose?

I agree - something to do with the mother's hormones influencing the way the unborn child's brain is initially wired . . . apparently! Maybe all the hormone disrupting chemicals we've put into our environment inhibits development of an "engineer's brain" and instead the unborn are now programmed in readiness to watch junk tv in a cocoon of apathy.

Hi FlyBlue. My mother had nothing at all to do with me being an engineer. But, My father, grandfather, great grandfather and great-great grandfather were all engineers. Neither my brother or my four sisters followed my mothers profession, she was a midwife. Spencer. ps, my brother is also an engineer.

I got it from both sides. My grandfather was a boilermaker for the railroad. Not exactly a machinist but close. My father went into the navy as machnist mate and then changed to utilitiesman. He was part of the first crew of the USS Intrepid, the aircraft carrier that is now a museum in NYC. One of his brothers is a machinist. My mom worked in a machine shop during part of WWII. I have been in mchining and toolmaking for 34 years.

In my family, almost all men are farmers and almost all women are teachers.

Engineers are not born, this is a disease just like vampirism.

There are some dissimilarities...but I do love a nice brunette with some cleavage...married her too!

My father is an engineer (mechanical), I followed in his footsteps, my older brother and younger sister did not, however my sister's three year old son is destined for engineering. The stories my grandparents told me about my father's childhood and the stories of my own childhood are very similar to the current childhood of my nephew. To him (and Dad and I) the importance is not that it works, but how it works. Often the most informative way of discovering how something works is to disassemble and then rebuild it.

Here's a twist to a reality show on engineering. Find the engineer who stuck the car battery in the fender well of a Dodge, the guy who needs four oxygen sensors on a Ford product when other autos get the job done with one, the Navistar engine that mysteressly keeps looses engine oil between changes and so on... It's apparent that some people have never work on mechanical or are mechanical but allowed to design and engineer. the theme of the show can have these people explain themselves.

Jajajajaja. Could be a good idea for Discovery Channel.

How about the ongoing saga between Paul Teutel Sr. and son junior in American Chopper?

-John²

Not techie enough. My mother is my boss so I identify myself with Jr. and follow the show as much as I can, but there's very little of engineering there. I think the most technical I saw there once was a brief explanation on how a 3d machining center works.

Has anybody read The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough?

It would make a great engineering soap opera miniseries.

I think the Discovery, maybe the History channel does a great program which is 'Faction'. The latest I saw was something like 'Future City:2057' Very fun stuff.

Its similar to the stuff they do with dinosaurs only now they can intro the human character.

I believe 'English Rose' is writing one, among others.

The way this is going I would say the ideas are:

1. Biographies of engineers.
2. Engineers at war.
3. Family of engineers: How grandpa and dad busted the little girl's life by encouraging her to become an engineer, and they all work together later.
4. The making of an engineer: How the kid started disassemblying toy cars and ended being a PhD in Design.
   
5. Dilbert: A live action version. There already is a british show called "The IT crowd".
   
6. The daughter of MacGyver: Please, make her hot, not like the most of our few female schoolmates.
7. The engineers: My first idea. It is something like ER but with engineers and with a little more comedy.

Any TV producer here?

I am giving priority to female characters because we also need to encourage women to get into engineering. Just take a look at the thread, not a single woman wrote.

Dilbert was done as an animated series and failed. Anyway it was more about office politics than engineering. "The Office" does that concept better.

Patricia (?) Arquette's drama "Medium" has an interesting engineer (the Husband of the psychic) who has to reconcile his wife and daughter's paranormal abilities with his scientific and technical background.

"Numbers" lead character is a mathematician, and although it is basically a police drama, I think engineers can connect with the character.

Personally I just wish various TV and Movie producers would hire engineers as technical advisers. That way they could avoid ruining otherwise good story lines by defying the laws of physics or perhaps having the hero open a pneumatic temperature control panel to override the building's "electrical lock-out system".

Yep. I am tired of seeing misconceptions on TV. Sometimes they are very stupid. I remember an episode of "Boy meets world" where the teacher gave a problem that nobody could solve. At the end he said the problem had no solution and that held a moral lesson for the students.

Well, it took me five minutes to solve it.

Hi Gussosa, if you are serious about the need to raise the profile of engineering, how about considering giving up a little of your time to participate in, for example, a university outreach programme to visit a local school and enthuse about engineering to students before they make critical subject choices. I have spent a little time in an inner city school doing just this and yes it can be a little scary at times but surely it is worthwhile - "no, I don't think 'leisure & tourism' would be helpful if you want to design bridges in far off lands" etc. The kids have lots of enthusiasm, but they need a lot of support and guidance especially if no-one in their family has been in higher education before. On a lighter note - you also get to meet some very nice lady teachers (please don't tell my wife).

I already have been a teacher at the Introduction to the University course. It was good for my spirit having the chance to tell those hopeful and dreamy teenagers how the school sucks.

The most valuable advices I gave:

• Don't get into into university before you have some basic technical studies, like masonry, networking, plumbing or car mechanics, depending om your career of choice. It gives a better foundation for the theoretical studies.
• If you can pay a private university, go there and don't waste ten years of your life in public university.
• None of you is going to graduate in 5 years. None of you. So quit your smiles and prepare for long, unrewarding, hard work.

By the way, after that I dated one of my fellow teachers and a student of the course.

Don't worry, your secret is safe on the internet.

Hi Gussosa. Theory without practice is like a car without an engine, usless! During my working years I met a lot of university trained engineers straight out of university. I have to admit, they were full of optimism, but most of them did not know one end of a spanner from the other, they use to try to tell me how to do my job, which I had been doing for many years with success. They would say stupid things like, we learned to do it the correct way at university, when I asked them if they had actually done it before they all said no! There is no substitute for learning while you work for at least 10 years, I went to college for 4 months every year while I was working as a trainee marine engineer, this I did for 5 years. Spencer.

That's what I meant. If you have some hands-on training on car mechanics, you will understand better the theory of valves, engines, transmissions, etc. People should take a course at a community college, then work for a while and only then get into university.

Yes, it will take you more time, but you will do better at the uni, and will be able to work to pay your studies and if you have to quit (if you find the right one too soon or something like that) and you will have the chance to know if you really like engineering or just like to do technical stuff. Why loosing years of life if in six months you can be ready to do what you like?

A common anecdote here is about a ME newly graduate who was told to check a pump that was giving trouble... he started disassemblying the motor. Why? He believed IT was the pump.

Gussosa your story reminds me of an line from a movie I saw long ago and it goes like this; "You can read all the books you want about playing the piano but you don't know doodley squat until you sit down at the keyboard".

What you and the other have said about the lack of hands on experience by recent graduates is so true.

I work in an industry which manufactures industrial high explosives, rocket propellants, munitions and other "reactive" materials. In no way would we ever let a recent grad develop, participate in formulating product or design product packaging without intense scrutiny and supervision.

There is a definite apprenticeship program which successfully washes their brains of all the nonsense they learned in school and fills them with information which will serve two purposes.

The first of those purposes is to make money for the company. The second purpose is to save their educated selves from becoming a molecular fog.