My bragging rights for the day...

[WeAintFoundShit]

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.

[roadmissile]

Experience and guile will always beat youth and exuberance right?

/RM

[Rench]

I thought it was "age and treachery"? But yours sounds nicer...

-Rench

[stiles]

Awesome. Reminds me of when I took the hardhat tour of the Hoover Dam, back before 9/11. Fascinating. Talked at length with the oldhead retired plant engineer about the turbines, power matching, water depths etc. and learned a lot.

Life skills FTW!

[ninemileskid]

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.

Yup. I was on a jobsite where the contractor told the engineer "You can draw an asshole on paper but that doesn't mean you can make it shit."
Words of wisdom like that stick with me for a long time.

[Korpen]

Experience and guile will always beat youth and exuberance right?

I want to say something incredibly fantastic here, but I fit into the latter category and let's face it - exuberance is pretty much how I get by.

[Bestguess]

I always like to go by “old age and deceitfulness will be youth and speed every time”. I work with quite a few young kids at work. All of them intelligent and very competent but during certain circumstances you can see where their lack the experience leads them to make some interesting choices which of course makes for some good entertainment for myself.
Of course I do get the usual harassment about the equipment I used when I first entered the service is now in museums, little fucktards….

[FastCat]

Experience and guile will always beat youth and exuberance right?

/RM

Yeah, and the corollary to that is:

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted.".

[guitargeek]

I experienced something similar when I was studying for a Sound Technology degree: I'd played in bands almost as long as some of my fellow students had been alive, I'd done engineering work in recording studios, built and run PA systems, etc.

Believe it or not, it actually got me laid!

There was a very cute 18 year old girl (who could play circles around me on guitar) who actively pursued me.
I asked her, "What do you want with an old guy like me?"
She replied, "It's the things you know."

I let her catch me.