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1 - Four engineers found friendship in college and, years later, were reunited and taking a road trip together. Unfortunately, the car broke down.

The mechanical engineer from Boeing said "The wheels. I'll bet it's the wheels."

The chemical engineer from Dow argued "No, it's the gas, didn't you hear how the engine died?"

The electrical engineer from NASA said "My bet is on the wiring."

The computer science engineer from Microsoft suggested "Hey guys, how about we all just get out and back in and see if that fixes it?"

2 - An engineer, a mathematician, and a physicist are staying for the night in a hotel.

In the middle of the night, the physicist wakes up and smells smoke. He goes out into the hall and sees that there's a fire. He makes some careful observations and does some careful calculations. Grabbing the fire extinguisher, he puts out the fire with one, short, well placed burst, and ten goes back into bed and goes back to sleep.

An hour later, the engineer wakes up and he smells smoke. He looks out into the hall and sees the fire, which has restarted. He makes some careful observations and does some quick calculations, being sure to err on the high side at every step in order to assure that his solution exceeds requirements. Grabbing the fire extinguisher, he puts out the fire by hosing down the entire hallway several times over, and then goes back into his room and goes back to sleep.

Another hour later the mathematician wakes up and smells smoke. He looks out into the hall and sees the fire, which despite the engineer's efforts has restarted again. He makes some careful observations, and does some calculations. Looking puzzled, he does more calculations, and more. Suddenly, a smile comes to his face and exclaims "A solution exists!", and he goes back to bed.

3 - How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? It burned out? You must be using a non-standard socket.

How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they merely change the standard to darkness and then they upgrade the customers.

4 - Three Engineers were carpooling to work: an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a computer engineer. Suddenly, the car stalled. The electrical engineer said "It's gotta be the starter..or the battery..we should check the wiring." The mechanical engineer said "No. I think it's the carburator. It might need to be rebuilt." The computer engineer said "Well, why don't we all get out, get back in, and try starting it up again?"

5 - Sadly, one of these is wrong.

To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the Engineer, the glass has excess capacity which should be labelled as fault tolerance, as behaviour and usability when the glass approaches a full state may not be predictable or acceptable for some usage cases (e.g. running).

And finally...
To the IBM Mainframe Engineer, the glass is running at full capacity. However, if you pay for an upgrade, he'll allow you to use the currently invisible additional capacity and swear blind the he enlarged the glass, despite nothing obvious having changed on it physically.

6 - { Link }

---* Bill

7 - Paul,

I keep a framed copy of the golfer's story on my office wall.
It is totally dumbfounding to all but engineers!

Bob
Electrical Engineer by training