Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (0)

It's good to be an engineer
August 2, 2006

How many times have you fixed something in a way that's seems so simple, yet you leave non-engineers wondering how you knew what to do? Recently, my home alarm system (which I didn't install) stopped working. I called for service and the technician asked if I knew how to reseat a circuit board. "If course," I replied. The job was simple, just open the control box, remove and reseat the board, and the system restarted and worked perfectly. That saved me a $100 service visit. Could you imagine someone without an technical background doing that?

Other's that come to mind include repairing a baby monitor with just a soldering iron when the power-supply connected came loose and lowering the voltage on an unregulated "brick" power supply by inserting dioes into the positive output line.

Perhaps my favorite came in the early 1990s. I was in an apartment with a bunch of law students (you don't want to know why I was in such company), all of whom were smart people but none with technidcal backgrounds. The students were watching a VHS tape of a classmate of their's who had appeared on Jeopardy. The TV picture was garbled and I immediately knew to adjust the VCR tracking. But it wasn't my VCR, so I let the owner try first. After five minutes, he gave up. That was my cue. Without saying a word, I walked to the VCR and adjusted the tracking, which corrected the picture, then sat down. "That was so cool," remarked the VCR's owner.

I'm sure you have many instances of things you fixed or designed such as the burglar alarm described in "Midnight programming" below. Let's hear about them through your comments. Or you can e-mail me directly at m.rowe@tmworld.com.

Posted by Martin Rowe on August 2, 2006 | Comments (0)