How Engineers Look at Love

An Engineer's Life

February / March 06 By: Jeff Taylor Volume 4 Number 1

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LOVE, FOR SOME, IS CLOSELY AKIN TO A TECHNOLOGICAL MARVEL. GO FIGURE.

I'm an engineer. Based on my calculations, it's February and love is in the air. One would think our national laboratories could come up with a way to filter that out. But alas, we are driven to search for a suitable mate. The courting rituals of the common engineer are a complex and intricate dance involving pocket protectors, acronyms and math. Lots of math.

Some engineers look at love as a research and development opportunity. They look for something interesting or intriguing to work on for a while, put together a proposal, and wait for authorization for activities to begin. Of course, if they can get someone else to pay for it, all the better. However, one must always be careful to avoid the number one pitfall in R&D—€”the tangent. Losing one's focus and giving in to the desire to investigate another with more interesting properties, higher performance, or a harder hard drive can only mean trouble. It can cause funding to dry up, prompt an order to cease all activities and return all GFE (girlfriend furnished equipment) to the sponsor. Yikes!

Other engineers consider the courting ritual as they would a cost/benefit analysis, i.e.: Is the cost of dating offset by the value of benefits received? Let's examine this further. The costs categories associated with dating generally are meals, entertainment, transportation, additional grooming supplies and services. The cost of meals varies from the "dollar menu" range to high-priced luxury items like soup and salad. And don't forget the Twinkies. It doesn't take much to entertain an engineer. A sack full of quarters and a video arcade usually suffice. A screwdriver and a rotary-dial telephone will do in a pinch. Unfortunately, the engineer's date may not always agree and so the cost of things like horse-drawn carriages and body piercings must be considered.
Transportation is really a non-issue. Any engineer worth his calculator has already modified his vehicle to use a fusion reactor and flux capacitor.

Grooming is a wide open topic and far too involved to fully discuss in the paltry 700 words I'm allowed here. So let's consider the benefits side of the equation. Benefits can be hard to quantify and vary among engineers. While things like conversation and companionship might be considered a plus to some, those same attributes fall into the "avoid at all costs" category to our less than adequately socialized members. And what about dating as a means for perpetuation of the species? Who wouldn't want a little Engineer-2.0 running around? Of course, to some the prospect of a little Engineer-2.0 might lead them to consider another analysis: the cost of dating versus the benefits of not dating.

Still, other engineers approach dating as if it were a word problem. They attempt to mitigate risk by developing a series of equations to describe the relationship. For example: A train leaves Chicago traveling west at a rate of 60 miles per hour. On that train is a potential mate with a 67 percent compatibility index. At the same time, an engineer leaves a popular free-internet-access-espresso-bar traveling northbound on a highly modified Segway scooter with a voided factory warranty. The engineer has bathed recently, is wearing casual-Friday attire but at the moment has a Total SCC (system caffeine content) of 0.06 mg/kg. The train just happens to be a magnetic levitation train, which multiplies the compatibility index by a factor inversely proportional to the time ridden. (This is because the fantasy of "doin' it" on a mag-lev loses its appeal over time.) If the train continues on its course, and the scooter doesn't fry another accelerometer (as it did on the way to the last Star Trek convention), and the mean time between failure (MTBF) of standard technical/non-technical relationships is the lesser of 57 hours or 4.3 dates, and the rate at which the engineer's geek-factor is revealed is 3.7 nerd-isms per solar hour, how long would it take a grasshopper with a wooden leg to kick all the seeds out of a multi-screen-Cineplex-sized dill pickle?

You're probably wondering about my philosophy on love. I just keep my head down and try to stay out of trouble. And wait patiently for that filter—€¦

Jeff Taylor, who says he's an engineer, is at Applied Technology Associates in Albuquerque.