My bragging rights for the day...
Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 11:06 pm
The freshman class of the school I attend has an average incoming GPA of 4.0.
As a matter of fact, in order to get into this school as a graduating high school senior, you've typically got to have a 4.0 plus extracurricular achievements on your transcripts to have a shot at getting in.
That means that I'm surrounded by really smart people all day long, who are, on average, twelve years younger than I am.
That means that most of these people (at least in the engineering department) have never ever had a life, and just bookworm out, all damned day long, because that's all they know how to do. It makes for very stiff competition, and the feeling of being a clueless, retarded dinosaur a lot of the time.
Well today a group of students (myself included) was able to take a tour of the campus heating and cooling plant for our thermodynamics class.
All through the tour, I'm popping off question after question, and observation after observation, and getting nerd boners over the giant flame thrower unit in the boiler, while (for the most part) the kids just stood around silently observing.
At one point, I asked about the air/fuel ratio of the boiler system. Engineer guy told me he didn't know exactly, but he said they had to run it lean for emissions requirements.
I said "It makes sense to run it lean anyway, because you'd get more heat out of it."
He says "Yeah, but not TOO lean."
I reply "Yeah, you wouldn't want a blowback on THIS thing!"
Blowback is when your rate of combustion is faster than your rate of fuel output, and the flame gets inside of your fuel nozzle and/or fuel lines.
Blowback makes things go KABOOM! It happens under very lean conditions. Most (if not all) of the time, there are check valves in place to keep serious explosions from happening, but I still can't imagine a giant fucking flamethrower, big enough to heat a large portion of a college campus, blowing back without causing some major, expensive damage.
At any rate, after I make the blowback comment, engineer guy looks at me kind of funny and asks me if I'm a plant operator.
Nope.
"Then how do you know about fuel ratios and blowback?"
Motorcycles, cars, welding, life...
Afterward he told the group that the people who make the best engineers are the ones who have worked as contractors, because they know how stuff ACTUALLY works.
Experience 1, Youth 0.
I wanted to look around at all the kids, throw up the double middles and yell "Take that, ya little bastards!"
When you're competing with midget geniuses all damned day, every damned day, little victories like this feel gooooood.
As a matter of fact, in order to get into this school as a graduating high school senior, you've typically got to have a 4.0 plus extracurricular achievements on your transcripts to have a shot at getting in.
That means that I'm surrounded by really smart people all day long, who are, on average, twelve years younger than I am.
That means that most of these people (at least in the engineering department) have never ever had a life, and just bookworm out, all damned day long, because that's all they know how to do. It makes for very stiff competition, and the feeling of being a clueless, retarded dinosaur a lot of the time.
Well today a group of students (myself included) was able to take a tour of the campus heating and cooling plant for our thermodynamics class.
All through the tour, I'm popping off question after question, and observation after observation, and getting nerd boners over the giant flame thrower unit in the boiler, while (for the most part) the kids just stood around silently observing.
At one point, I asked about the air/fuel ratio of the boiler system. Engineer guy told me he didn't know exactly, but he said they had to run it lean for emissions requirements.
I said "It makes sense to run it lean anyway, because you'd get more heat out of it."
He says "Yeah, but not TOO lean."
I reply "Yeah, you wouldn't want a blowback on THIS thing!"
Blowback is when your rate of combustion is faster than your rate of fuel output, and the flame gets inside of your fuel nozzle and/or fuel lines.
Blowback makes things go KABOOM! It happens under very lean conditions. Most (if not all) of the time, there are check valves in place to keep serious explosions from happening, but I still can't imagine a giant fucking flamethrower, big enough to heat a large portion of a college campus, blowing back without causing some major, expensive damage.
At any rate, after I make the blowback comment, engineer guy looks at me kind of funny and asks me if I'm a plant operator.
Nope.
"Then how do you know about fuel ratios and blowback?"
Motorcycles, cars, welding, life...
Afterward he told the group that the people who make the best engineers are the ones who have worked as contractors, because they know how stuff ACTUALLY works.
Experience 1, Youth 0.
I wanted to look around at all the kids, throw up the double middles and yell "Take that, ya little bastards!"
When you're competing with midget geniuses all damned day, every damned day, little victories like this feel gooooood.
