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Thoughts on Engineering. And Coffee. Posts

What Do You Call A Group Of Engineers?
Published 2021/10/24

What Do You Call A Group Of Engineers?

There are gaggles of geese.

A group of bears is referred to as a sloth of bears.

There are the well-known teams of oxen, hives of bees, and packs of wolves.

We even collectively group people together.

There are companies of actors. Bands of musicians. Regiments of soldiers.

Yet there are no generally well-known listings for Engineers.

Go ahead, look it up. After spending more than a few minutes of research here there is shockingly little in the way of generally agreed upon group nomenclature for some of the finest groups of humans to ever walk this earth.

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Your Idea Of A Dream Job Is Wrong – Here Is How To Adjust Your Thinking
Published 2021/10/21

Your Idea Of A Dream Job Is Wrong – Here Is How To Adjust Your Thinking

Have you ever sat back and considered how strange, weird, and often times dumb humans are?

This isn’t about looking up whatever craziness Florida Man has gotten into lately.

What I am referring to is how hard it is for the human brain to recognize and understand the current world around us each and every day.

Think about it using that big, wrinkly brain of yours.

We build and create some amazing and wonderful things. We hope for the future. We even have a word, nostalgia, that defines looking back at the positives in our past.

Yet, if you were to ask any random human what they would call their dream job, how would they respond?

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Oh, How Your Goals Will Change
Published 2021/09/26

Oh, How Your Goals Will Change

There are a few things that have become rote at certain events in our lives.

These events are not guaranteed for every person. However, they have become so embedded in our culture to have becomes almost cliched caricatures of the original meaning and intent. They are as embedded as decorating a tree at Christmas and finding candy-filled eggs at Easter.

Yet when it comes to jobs, making money, and being a professional there are also some tried and true customs.

These aren’t your familial holiday traditions.

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Your Salary And Title At Work Do Not Define You
Published 2021/08/19

Your Salary And Title At Work Do Not Define You

Think back to the last time you met someone new.

The circumstances may end up dictating the conversation – if you are on a sinking boat you probably won’t stop to chat with the person next to you while you are both trying to stay afloat.

However, in many social situations, meeting a new person often goes something like this:

“Hey, Kevin, I would like you to meet my [insert one of the following: friend/co-worker/teammate/acquaintance/random person I just met], so-and-so.”

“Hi, so-and-so! How are you?”

“I’m good. Thanks for asking. So…. what do you do for a living?”

It may not always happen that quickly and it may be asked in different forms, but thinking back over meeting new humans in my lifetime that question comes up a lot.

Which begs an even greater question: why do we insist on defining new people that we meet by their jobs?

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Don’t Buy The BS Reason Companies Aren’t Giving Out Phone Chargers Anymore
Published 2021/08/19

Don’t Buy The BS Reason Companies Aren’t Giving Out Phone Chargers Anymore

The rumor mill churned out another doozie this week as it came out that the Pixel 6 is not going to come supplied with a charger.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

As soon as Apple led the way, Samsung soon followed and it only made sense for Google to fall in line.

There are a couple of reasons from a sales standpoint to do this.

First – it saves money.

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H[ARC]! A New Challenger [Intel] Enters The Arena
Published 2021/08/17

H[ARC]! A New Challenger [Intel] Enters The Arena

Today Intel took the wraps off its long-awaited GPU platform. Arc. Technology is great, wonderful, and amazing, and all of that jazz. The best news here is that there is more competition in the gaming space. Once we get beyond that aspect of this announcement, I find myself just shrugging my shoulders and moving on with my day. Don’t get me wrong – I have spent more than my fair share of time reading articles about transistor counts and CUDA cores and ray tracing. Even having done more research and reading than most, what stands out here is watching a younger gamer turn on ray tracing on a brand new Nvidia 2060 expecting something absolutely amazing. The telling comment came not too long afterward. “Is it working?“ Then I had to explain to a 14-year-old what ray tracing actually is and then point out the small reflections in a few…

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We’ve Got Talent, Yes We Do, We’ve Got Talent, What About You?
Published 2021/08/16

We’ve Got Talent, Yes We Do, We’ve Got Talent, What About You?

No, this isn’t a high school football game. Yes, this was channeled in the spirit of cheering everyone on.

However, instead of spirit, we need to talk about talent.

Inspiration comes from many places and will strike when you least expect it. Today, it came in the form of scrolling through one of my daily read websites.

This one was The Verge. While looking over the daily tech news they had a Vox Media careers blub nestled among the regular news about crypto-this and Apple that.

It simply read: “We’re building great things, and we need your talent“

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The Cringe Is Strong With The Zoom Wave
Published 2021/08/10

The Cringe Is Strong With The Zoom Wave

That strange, awkward feeling that one gets when you do something that everyone else is doing, but it feels really weird when actually performing the action.

This specific action is one that was never performed in a pre-pandemic world. Walking out of someone’s office or out of the meeting was the final action in the workplace play.

Now, we all awkwardly stare at each other while surreptitiously trying to blindly click the ‘Leave’ button without breaking eye contact. That or we all end up committing the most cringy action of all to end a pandemic video conference.

I am talking about waving.

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Boring, Bland Resumes: 3 Simple Ways To Stand Out
Published 2021/07/24

Boring, Bland Resumes: 3 Simple Ways To Stand Out

Resumes are one of the worst inventions ever.

Not only do you have to look up what special keyboard keys are needed if you want to type the word resumé correctly (stupid accented é!) but there is also that tiny little detail of boiling down who you are as a professional and a person into one or two pages of formatted text.

Ugh.

Could we have come up with a worse system to try and fill a job?

Even online dating profiles are (just barely) better than this. At least there the goal is to sell yourself as a person.

With resumes, you aren’t supposed to include fun pictures of you and your dog, your likes and dislikes, or really much of anything personal.

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Published 2021/07/21

Remote Work Haiku

As the pandemic has changed our life- and work-styles, unfortunately some things got dropped like the creation of calm-inducing workplace haiku. No longer! The wonderful world of workplace haiku is back. Please enjoy these remote work moments of zen.

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