For The Love Of Engineering-->

As an engineer I think my main purpose it to solve problems. Of course engineer has little to do with engines any more but the concept is the same. The word 'engineer' is originated in the eleventh century from the Latin ingeniator, meaning one with ingenium, the ingenious one. I serve many roles but engineer is a core one that I claim. I'm as much an engineer as I am a human or male. It's embedded in my make-up. I've been a tinkerer since I was very young and at some point I would assume that I graduated to become an engineer. I guess I'm kinda just rambling in this article but more or less I want to describe what it's like to be an engineer. This may serve to assist people who are considering a path in engineering - whether it be software engineer as I selected or some other type of engineering. 

One of the core elements of being an engineer is having a deep desire to understand how things operate and why they operate the way they do. Have you ever disassembled the TV in your mind or thought about how your phone works and if you could alter it to use it for something else? Well, if you want to rip things apart and put them back together and it's no big deal for you to do so then you might be on the path to be an engineer. I know personally I even disassemble people and relationships to better understand how people operate and why (I'm being figurative of course). 

Another element of being a good engineer is questioning standards. I think this goes hand in hand with the above element but questioning the norm is a big part of being an engineer. I guess this is because the norm or status quo rarely makes perfect sense to an engineer. Many of the things we consider social standards are open for investigation to the mind of an engineer and have a deep potential to be ignored or changed in their life. Though many engineers will follow social standards begrudgingly. This is why engineers tend to gravitate to the more geeky and seemingly odd tendencies that are edge culture in most people's opinion. But geeky has been popular and more welcome as the norm for a while now. This is because of the power and position that geeks hold in an increasingly technological society.

There are many more elements but these are the ones I chose to describe. So, I'll talk about one more. An engineer is rarely happy with good enough. This is a drawback as much as it's a motivational force for good. It can tie a good engineer in to all sorts of pursuits that suck the time and life out of them because nothing is good enough. Being that I serve the role of businessman and engineer I'm constantly pushing between the two roles because being an engineer is sometimes not cost effective and being a businessman is sometimes willing to accept good enough on a cost to benefit analysis. 

I'm very proud to be an engineer and I love the insight on life that it gives me. I even love it when it doesn't serve me because it keeps me in balance. I guess this was my "I love engineeering" article. Here's a cool link to a very brief history of engineering.