Robert, this has nothing to do with Y2K, but I know you love humor and that you attended Texas A & M. With all of the "arguing" on this forum lately, I thought you might enjoy something funny. (Or anyone else who was an Aggie. It was sent to me by my niece at A & M)

"These three guys go down to Mexico one night and get drunk and wake up in jail. They found out that they are to be executed for their crimes but none of them can remember what they have done. The first one is strapped in the electric chair and is asked if he has any last words. He says, "I am from the Baylor School of Divinity and I believe in the almighty power of God to intervene on behalf of the innocent." They throw the switch and nothing happens, so they figure God must not want this guy to die, so they let him go. The second one is strapped in and gives his last words. "I am from the University of Texas School of Law and I believe in the eternal power of Justice to intervene on the part of the innocent." The switch is thrown and again nothing happens. They figure that the law is on this guy's side, so they let him go. The last one is strapped in and say's "Well, I'm a fighting Texas Aggie Electrical Engineer, and I'll tell you right now you'll never electrocute anybody if you don't connect those two wires."

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), October 30, 1998

Answers

Even a Hockey Puck Techer can appreciate that one!!

10Q 10Q 10Q!!

chuck from Clarkson Technocratic U

-- Chuck a Night Driver (rienzoo@en.com), October 31, 1998.

Thanks for the thought, I think....

I am humbled by your praise .... but if he'd been a computer engineer, they'd still be debugging the d**m thing.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), October 31, 1998.

A mathmatician, an engineer and a physicist are attending a convention of the American Physical Society, and they all stay in the same hotel. During the night a fire breaks out that strikes the corner where the rooms adjoin. The engineer wakes up, sees what is happening, grabs the room fire extinguisher and puts out his part of the fire, hoses down everything in the room to make sure, and then sits on the wet bed to wait and see if the fire will start up again. The physicist wakes up, sees the fire, does a few calculations on the back of a handy napkin (all real physicists do their math on the back of napkins or envelopes), uses the exact minimium amount of water to put out the fire, and crawls back into bed and goes to sleep. The mathmatician wakes up, sees the fire, examines it closely, turns on the sink in the room and dabbles in the water with his fingers, then says 'AHA - a solution exists'. And goes back to bed.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), November 02, 1998.

Texas A&M provides more commissioned officers to America's armed forces than all the service academies combined. Aggies are everywhere, not just in Texas. At one point in a previous life, I found myself in the cockpit of a military aircraft with two Naval Aviators who were both Texas Aggies. It was a long, mostly uneventful flight but I was presented with the following tale, which both guys swore to me was true. Here is the story, as best as I remember it.

"Originally, Texas A&M was a land grant college and it had built a rather shabby reputation, to the effect that town folk sent their delinquent kids there to get rid of them and rural folk sent those of their kids who were too dumb to farm there, to get rid of them.

The situation had become so poor that the Texas Legislature had decided to cease funding the institution and simply let it die.

The then Governor of Texas, whose statue now stands on the A & M Campus, went before the legislature with the request that they fund the school for the remainder of his term. He also promised them that if they did, he would not seek re-election but would instead take over and turn around A & M. They did and he did.

This is when A&M became a military school. The Cadet Corps consisted of an Artillery component, horse mounted Cavalry and an Infantry component.

A&M built a reputation that steadily increased in prestige and grew into the role it enjoys today. (Certainly A&M is vital to our military, but in Texas, it is a cultural icon with a standing equaled only by such as the Texas Rangers, and its campus is revered nearly to the same degree as The Alamo, but those are other stories. Pound for pound, Aggies take more good natured "guff" than anyone I've ever encountered.)

Things went well, the story continues, until the early part of the 20th century when A&M sent its football team to the Baylor campus in Waco. Neither of the Aggies telling me this tale remembered who won the game, but afterwards a number of the A&M team had dates with Baylor coeds. They were accosted by "Baylorites" on the campus quadrangle and severely beaten. One Aggie was killed outright and at least one other spent a long time in the hospital before he recovered.

When word of this reached College Station (A&M's hometown), the Cadet Corps went ballistic. Plans were laid and they stormed the armory and obtained weapons and ammunition. The artillery and Infantry comandeered a train and headed for Waco while the Cavalry headed cross country on horseback. The plan was for the Artillery to ring the campus and after the Infantry and Cavalry had evacuated the people, the buildings of Baylor would be leveled by artillery barrage.

The situation became so critical that the Governor activated the Texas National Guard to intervene. They finally stopped the train less than a mile from the Baylor campus but it took them weeks to round up the Cavalry who had spread out all over the Texas Hill Country.

They've never given Aggies live ammunition since and that's where the intense rivalry between A&M and Baylor started."

Robert, I've always wondered how much smoke those two were blowing, if any. Would you care to comment?

-- Hardliner (searcher@internet.com), November 02, 1998.

The rivalry is equally, if not more intense between A&M and the university of texas (no capitals, please) - dating back to the 1880's when both faced (as you noted) funding limits (this was slightly before oil was discovered on the ut grant lands.)

To tell the truth, I'm aware of no actual fights ("road trips") off-campus like that - but the school and students were far from cultured. It started and continued as teaching agricultural and mechanical (engineering - the A&M), and didn't associate with the "liberal" and religious being taught at Baylor (the Baptists), SMU (the Methodists) or ut (what were considered city-slickers).

But there were scattered incidences during many Corps trips (where parades and march-ins actually occurred.) The story may have stemmed from that.

Most of the hell-raising was done cadet-cadet on campus - between equal members of different outfits, or from junior to senior. For example, two seniors left over three dozen chickens in another seniors room "to roost" over Christmas vacation. (This was in late thirties - when chickens were readily available to those those who wanted to graduate in "chicken" rather than "cow").

You can only imagine what the room looked like when they returned 4 weeks later.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 02, 1998.

Robert, when I went to University of Evansville I had a deal with the Computer and Electrical Engineering Seniors - I would debug their programs for their Senior projects, and they would do any soldering and patch work I needed done on my projects. (College of Engineering - Computer Science got tacked on as an afterthought.) Worked out pretty well all around actually as I could debug their code for their PLC projects in about a tenth the time they could, and they could handle a hot iron without blistering their fingers. But I must agree - the Computer Engineers could not debug worth a d**m.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), November 02, 1998.

I hope my faulty memory does these justice:

A chemical engineer works with pipes holding high pressure/high temperature/highly exposive chemicals - you really don't want to know what's in them, and she can't tell what's in them because the chemists keep changing things, assuming it ever was what they thought it was in the first place, and you really don't want to be anywhere close by when the pipe leaks.

A mechanical engineer works with pipes and hot water - you can tell what's leaking and where it leaks, and you can see his tools, but you can't tell him how to fix it because he thinks he has a better idea and wants to redesign it first.

An Electrical engineer works with wires carrying electricity - you can't see anything at all when its running correctly, and you can only see the explosion and fire when its shorted out and broken, but you can at least see where it's supposed to it to be. At least where the wires used to be before the explosion. And you can't fix an electrical leak until everything is shut off - at which time it isn't leaking anymore, so you don't have to fix it.

An electronics engineer is like an electrical engineer, but even worse: you can't see what he is designing, you can't see his tools, you can't see his wires, and neither can he. You can't see whether it's operating at all, and you can't tell if anything is leaking. But that's okay, neither can the electronics engineer - they have to wait for a programmer to tell them to start it up, shut if off, and it never runs correctly in the middle anyway. And half the time its loaded with zero's; and half the time with one's. Except when they change things. Then the other half is loaded with zero's.

The rest of the time - electronics = pure f***g magic. The only difference between magic and suitably advanced software is that magic works more often, is usually available on-time, and power and technical service aren't needed.

I haven't figured out a nuclear equivalent to those - probably as good as any was my comment before about "a nuke couldn't see the forest for the trees because he was too busy inspecting the pine needles."

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), November 02, 1998.