Self-Engineering

     I have been reading a book on Engineering.  It is called Foundations of Engineering by Holtzapple and Reece.  It is the second book on engineering that I have read.  The first one was maybe 10 years ago.  I started studying engineering because I wanted to know about trouble shooting and problem solving.   There were no really good books about those things.  But there were engineering books.
     The authors of this book define an engineer as an individual who uses math, science, and economics to solve technical problems that confront society.  An engineer is a problem solver.  Now math, science, and economics were the three subjects I disliked the most in school.  Yet these are the disciplines that solve problems.
     The main tool of engineering is something called the design method.  It has ten steps.  1.  Identify and define the problem.  2.  Assemble a design team.  3.  Identify constraints and criteria for success.  4.  Search for solutions. 5.  Analyze each potential solution.  6.  Choose the best solution.  7.  Document the solution.  8.  Communicate the solution to management.  9.  Construct the solution.  10.   Verify and evaluate the performance of the solution.  Sounds like a recipe for life and it is. These are the steps some of us take to fashion a life worth having.
     Then the authors talk about the traits of a successful engineer.  There are 16 and these are listed on pages 24 and 25.  They sound like the trait of a successful anything- a successful person.
     All of us are building lives.  So all of us should engage in a process of self-engineering.  We have to apply engineering to ourselves.  And if we don't, we get a life that someone else has engineered or we get a nothing life.  It isn't easy.  I read this book and so much of I just have to kind of gloss over.  I don't understand some of the concepts and formulas.  Like moments of torque and what have you.  I could not have passed a course in engineering in a quarter,  a semester or a year.  But now I don't have to.  I have a lifetime to study and apply the principles of engineering.  And so do you.
    Or as Captain James T. Kirk may have said "Scotty, how soon can you get us to warp factor nine?"