You know you're a "real" engineer when ......

Pommie said:

I tend to do the breadboard first and then the schematic.

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Sort of a legos method? Would work well for quantity 1 small circuit.

When I build something for around the house. I do the schematic, layout, etch/drill/stuff, find all the problems and fix them, draw in red on the schematic, go fix schematic (most of the time). Rarely seem to do a second board, as the first one works.

License plate numbers stand out because they remind you of chips and assembler mnemonics.

You pull a an old circuit board you never saw before out of a junk pile and you can tell right away what it was for and how it worked and how you would do it different today.

You identify curves on foreign spec sheets just by the shapes. You get a foreign schematic and your biggest problem with it is you wish they would stop using circles for ground symbols.

Someone tries to sell you a thousand dollar industrial controller and you start to grin. He points out that it uses key-codes for relay ladder logic symbols and you can't help but laugh.

When you carefully touch that hot component, you can estimate its heat dissipation. You hold a cooler board up to your lips to find out if anything is even slightly warm and everybody looks at you funny.

duffy said:

You hold a cooler board up to your lips to find out if anything is even slightly warm and everybody looks at you funny.

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I's even more fun when you do that and then hand the board to the technician and tell him exactly what circuit area has a problem!

You know your an engineer when: Someone farts and you try to compute the decibel level... Worst, you try to predict the time it takes for the fart to clear the room.

And what about "The Knack"?

YouTube - Dilbert - The Knack full

The Knack can be good and bad. Everyone will want you to fix their stuff and for free. Somehow they know you have it. Good part, $8 in caps got a $450 monitor for my son a couple months ago.

The knack can eat up your time too. A neighbor saw me out last night, said my AC will not go over 32. I said you probably flipped the thermostat to centigrade. After a blank stare, I went in his house, flipped a switch and hit the reset button. No idea who opened it and flipped the switch but he has teenage kids.

I can't remember where but I saw a t-shirt that read: