20 Jul
2005
20 Jul
'05
10:36 p.m.
By now, most of you are aware that Jimmy Doohan (Scotty from Star Trek) died this morning. Most of us in the engineering profession can trace some amount of inspiration to his over-the-top character. Of course, the reality of engineering is a bit different. Scotty would insist that a problem required a day to solve. Kirk would give him five minutes and Scotty would always come through. In real engineering, we tell management that a project will take 6 months. Management insists that we complete it in three weeks. But it still takes us 6 months. You gotta hope that Jimmy Doohan's last words were "Beam me up". Michael Carnes MichaelCarnes@earthlink.net home.earthlink.net/~MichaelCarnes