Monday, March 6, 2006

How many engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Well apparently you need at least 4 PhDs. Two of whom are honest to God rocket scientists. One of em even teaches the shit. And by my rough estimation, at least 6 M.S. degrees and 10 B.S. degrees spread amongst 7 people. Thanks, in no small part to me, the village idiot, contributing my one mighty bs cs degree. Although to be fair, i should note that hubert and i are pretty much honorary professors at sjsu.

Admittedly, these were no ordinary filament-burning yellow lightbulbs. Oh no. You can't have normal lightbulbs and work for NASA. You can't work under normal lighting conditions when billions of dollars and people's lives are on the line. When one slight miscalculations means a shuttle blows up. Or you drill to 795 feet instead of 800 and life as we know it comes to and end. No sir.

These were state of the art fluorescent tubes. Filled with argon and gases and plasmas and complicated shit like that. Which I could delve into in more detail but I won't because it would probably be way over your heads. Trust me, I took physics 60 for 4 weeks- I know what I'm talking about.

I just wish I had a video camera with me so that I could have properly documented this engineering marvel. You think stonehenge was amazing? The pyramids? Improving search? Please. We just changed 8 lightbulbs in just under an hour.

Gyeah.