You may be an engineer if … you can type 70 words a minute but can't read your own handwriting, your lap-top computer costs more than your car, you window shop at Dick Smith Electronics, you don't even know where the cover to your personal computer is, you want an 8X CDROM for Christmas, you know what http:/ stands for, the only jokes you receive are through e-mail, your wrist watch has more computing power than a 486DX-50, at Christmas, it goes without saying that you will be the one to find the burnt-out bulb in the string, you are convinced you can build a phaser out of your garage door opener and your camera's flash attachment, you have modified your can-opener to be microprocessor driven, you have ever taken the back off your TV just to see what's inside, a team of you and your workmates have set out to modify the antenna on the radio in your work area for better reception, you ever burned down the science lab with your science experiments you are currently gathering the components to build your own nuclear reactor, you have never backed-up your hard drive, you are aware that computers are actually only good for playing games, but are afraid to say it out loud, you have ever saved the power cord from a broken appliance, you have ever purchased an electronic appliance "as-is", you see a good design and still have to change it, you have used coat hangers and duct tape for something other than hanging coats and taping ducts, you know how to take the cover off of your computer, and what size screw driver to use, the sales assistants at Dick Smith Electronics can't answer any of your questions, you still own a slide rule and you know how to work it, the thought that a CD could refer to music never enters your mind, you own a set of itty-bitty screw drivers, but you don't remember where they are, you rotate your screen savers more frequently than your car tyres, you have a functioning fax and home photocopier machine, but every toaster you own turns bread into charcoal, you need a checklist to turn on the TV, you have a habit of destroying things in order to see how they work, the microphone or visual aids at a meeting don't work and you rush up to the front to fix them, you have ever owned a calculator with no equal key and know what RPN stands for, your wristwatch has more buttons than a telephone, you spend more on your home computer than your car, you've ever tried to repair a $5.00 radio, you have a neatly sorted collection of old bolts and nuts in your garage, you carry on a one hour debate over the expected results of a test that actually takes five minutes to run, you thought the real heroes of "Apollo 13" were the mission controllers, your father sat two centimetres in front of your family's first colour TV with a magnifying glass to see how they made the colours, and you grew up thinking that was normal, you set up the sound system for your high school formal, your idea of good interpersonal communication means getting the decimal point in the right place, people groan at the party when you pick out the music, you think that when people around you yawn, it's because they didn't get enough sleep, you have more friends on the Internet than in real life, you introduce your wife as mylady@home.wife, your spouse sends you an e-mail instead of calling you to dinner, you can remember 7 computer passwords but not your anniversary, you have more toys than your kids, you have introduced your kids by the wrong name, your I.Q. number is bigger than your weight, you own one or more white short-sleeve dress shirts, you own a pocket protector to carry all your pens around with you all the time, your three year old son asks why the sky is blue and you try to explain atmospheric absorption theory, you look forward to Christmas only to put together the kids' toys, you use a CAD package to design your son's Pine Wood race car, you know the direction the water swirls when you flush, you truly believe aliens are living among us, you can name 6 Star Trek episodes, you can quote scenes from any Monty Python movie, you own "Official Star Trek" anything, you think you have experienced at least one of "The X Files", your ideal evening consists of fast-forwarding through the latest sci-fi movie looking for technical inaccuracies, you have memorised the program schedule for the Discovery channel and have seen most of the shows already, you can't remember where you parked your car for the third time this week, your chequebook always balances.
Dave Browne, From the Internet. Original © not known. This version ©2000 OFC