A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a man below.

He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The man below replied, "You are in a hot balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude." "You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help so far." The man below responded, "You must be a manager." "I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."

The Bridge
A man walking along a California beach was deep in prayer. All of a sudden, he said out loud, "Lord, grant me one wish." Suddenly the sky clouded above his head and in a booming voice the Lord said, "Because you have TRIED to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish." The man said, "Build a bridge to Hawaii, so I can drive over any time I want to." The Lord said, "Your request is very materialistic. Think of the logistics of that kind of undertaking. The supports required to reach the bottom of the Pacific! The concrete and steel it would take! I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time and think of another wish, a wish you think would honor and glorify me." The man thought about it for a long time. Finally, he said, "Lord, I wish that I could understand women. I want to know how they feel inside, what they are thinking when they give me the silent treatment, why they cry, what they mean when they say 'nothing', and how I can make a woman truly happy." After a few minutes, the Lord said, "You want two lanes or four on that bridge?"

Captain Bravo Long ago lived a seaman named Captain Bravo. He was a manly man's man, who showed no fear in facing his enemies. One day, while sailing the seven seas, a look-out spotted a pirate ship and the crew became frantic. Captain Bravo bellowed, "Bring me my Red Shirt!" The First Mate quickly retrieved the captain's red shirt and while wearing the bright frock he led his mates into battle and defeated the pirates. That evening, all the men sat around on the deck recounting the day's triumphs and one of them asked the captain, "Sir, why did you call for your red shirt before battle?" The captain replied, "If I am wounded in the attack, the shirt will not show my blood and thus, you men will continue to resist, unafraid." All of the men sat in silence and marveled at the courage of such a manly man. As dawn came the next morning, the look-out once again spotted not one, not two, but TEN pirate ships approaching. The rank and file all stared in worshipful silence at the captain and waited for his usual reply. Captain Bravo gazed with steely eyes upon the vast armada arrayed against his mighty sailing ship and without fear, turned and calmly shouted:

"Bring me my brown pants!"

Last Rites & the Mule

Father O'Malley rose from his bed. It was a fine spring day and he walked to the window of his bedroom to get a deep breath of the beautiful day outside. He then noticed there was a jackass lying dead in the middle of the rectory's front lawn. Father promptly called the local police station. The conversation went like this: "Top o' the day to ye. This is Sergeant Flaherty. How might I help ye?" "And the best of the day te yerself. This is Father O'Malley at St. Brigid's. There's a jackass lying dead in me front lawn. Would ye be so kind as to send a couple o' yer lads to take care of the matter?" Sergeant Flaherty, considering himself to be quite a wit, replied with a smirk, "Well now Father, it was always my impression that you people took care of last rites!" There was dead silence on the line for a brief moment. Father O'Malley then replied: "Aye, that's certainly true, but we be first obliged to notify the deceased's next of kin."

O-T-S Closing Remarks Thank you for attending this O-T-S presentation.

O-T-S may not have succeeded in answering all your questions. In fact, the answers O-T-S has provided may have only served to raise a whole set of new questions. In some way you may feel you are as confused as ever, but O-T-S believes you are now confused on a higher level and about more important things.

Understanding Engineers:
Understanding Engineers #1 Two engineering students were biking across a university campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?" The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want." The first engineer nodded approvingly and said, "Good choice, the clothes probably wouldn't have fit you anyway." _________________________ Understanding Engineers #2

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. _________________________ Understanding Engineers #3 A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, "What's with those guys? We must have been waiting for fifteen minutes!" The doctor chimed in. "I don't know, but I've never seen such inept golf!" The priest said, "Here comes the green-keeper. Let's have a word with him." He said, "Hello George. What's wrong with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?" The green-keeper replied, "Oh, yes. That's a group of blind firemen. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year so we always let them play for free anytime." The group fell silent for a moment. The priest said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." The doctor said, "Good idea. I'm going to contact my opthalmologist colleague and see if there's anything he can do for them." The engineer said, "Why can't they play at night?" _________________________ Understanding Engineers #4 What is the difference between mechanical engineers and civil engineers? Mechanical engineers build weapons ~ civil engineers build targets. _________________________ Understanding Engineers #5 The graduate with a science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The graduate with an engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The graduate with an accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?" The graduate with an arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?" _________________________ Understanding Engineers #6 Three engineering students were gathered together discussing who must have designed the human body. One said, "It was a mechanical engineer ~ just look at all the joints." Another said, "No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical connections." The last one said, "No, actually it had to have been a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?" _________________________ Understanding Engineers #7

Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.

Corporate policy
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the monkeys with cold water. After awhile, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result -- all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, replace another one of the original monkeys with a new one, then a fourth, then a fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they are not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beatings of the newest monkey. After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have every been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as he knows that's the way it's always been done around here..... And that's how company policy begins.

Long Flight
Two strangers were seated next to each other on the plane when the first guy turned to the second and said, "Let's talk. I've heard that flights will go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger." The second guy (a retired system operator), who had just opened his book, closed it slowly, took off his glasses and said to the first guy, "What would you like to discuss?" "Oh, I don't know," said the first guy. "How about nuclear power?"

"OK," said the second guy. "That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first." "A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat grass. The same stuff. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?" "Jeez," said the first guy. "I have no idea." "Well, then," said the second guy, "how is it that you feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don't know shit?"

George Carlin Quotes 1. Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things. 2. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

3. I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose. 4. If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation? 5. Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice"? 6. If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages? 7. Why don't sheep shrink when it rains? 8. Why do they put Braille on the drive-through bank machines? 9. How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign? 10. One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people. 11. Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery? 12. If you ate pasta and antipasta, would you still be hungry? 13. If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? 14. Whose cruel idea was it for the word "lisp" to have an "s" in it? 15. Why are hemorrhoids called "hemorrhoids" instead of "asteroids"? 16. Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them? 17. If the "black box" flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn't the whole airplane made out of that stuff? 18. Why is there an expiration date on sour cream?

Rocket Science
Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist!! Scientists at Rolls Royce built a gun specifically to launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners and military jets, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea was to stimulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields. American engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high-speed trains. Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the American engineers. When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest in two and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow. The horrified Yanks sent Rolls Royce the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the British scientists for suggestions. You're going to love this..... Rolls Royce responded with a one-line memo: "Defrost the chicken."

Introduction to Basic Electricity

Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity and where does it go after it leaves the toaster?

Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lesson. On a cool dry day scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson. This also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet on the carpet you picked up batches of electrons which are very small objects that the carpet manufacturers weave into the carpet so they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your fingertip where they form a spark. The spark then leaps to your friend's filling, then travels down his legs to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit. Electronic fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode. However, this is nothing to worry about unless you have extensive carpeting. Although we modern persons tend to take electric lights, radios, mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in. Then along came the first electrical pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite into a severe lightning storm and received a serious electrical shock. This proved that lightning is powered by the same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking in incomprehensible maxims such as "a penny saved is a penny earned". Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office. After Franklin came a herd of electrical pioneers whose names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to a frog's leg, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to the frog which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to many enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal into its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact that it sinks like a stone. But the greatest pioneer of all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and he lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention was the phonograph which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1927 when the record was invented. Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879 when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit. The electric company sends electricity to the customer through a wire, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (and this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again to repeat the process continually. This means that an electric company can sell the customer the same batch of electricity 60 times a second, virtually thousands of times a day, and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity very carefully. In fact, the last time any electricity was generated in the United States was 1937. The electric companies have been merely reselling the same energy ever since, which explains why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases. Today, thanks to men like Edison and Franklin, and frogs like Galvani's, we receive almost unlimited benefits from electricity. For example, in the last few decades, scientists have developed the laser, an electronic appliance so powerful that it can vaporize a bulldozer 2000 yards away, yet so precise that it can be used to perform delicate operations on the human eyeball, provided of course, that they remember to change the power setting from bulldozer to delicate.

Bubba and Earl Two rednecks, Bubba and Earl, were driving down the road drinking a couple of bottles of Bud. The passenger, Bubba, said, "Lookey thar up ahead Earl, it's a police roadblock!! We're gonna get busted fer drinkin' these here beers!" "Don't worry, Bubba," Earl said. "We'll just pull over and finish drinkin' these beers, then peel off the label and stick it on our foreheads and throw the bottles under the seat." "What fer?" asked Bubba. "Just let me do the talkin', OK?" said Earl. Well, they finished their beers, threw the empties out of sight and put the label on each of their foreheads. When they reached the roadblock, the sheriff said, "You boys been drinkin'?" "No sir," said Earl while pointing at the labels. "We're on the patch."

Alaska Party Mike had been in business for 25 years and was finally sick of the stress. He quit his job and bought 50 acres of land in Alaska as far from humanity as possible. He saw the postman once a week and got groceries once a month. Otherwise, it was total peace and quiet. After six months or so of total isolation, someone knocked on his door. He opened it and there was a huge, bearded man standing there. "Name's Lars, your neighbor from forty miles up the road. Having a Christmas party Friday night...thought you might like to come...about 5:00." "Great," says Mike, "after six months out here I'm ready to meet some local folks. Thank you!" As Lars is leaving he stops. "Gotta warn you...there's gonna be some drinkin'." "Not a problem," says Mike. "After 25 years in business, I can drink with the best of 'em." Again, as he starts to leave, Lars stops. "More 'n likely gonna be some fightin' too." Mike says, "Well, I get along with people, I'll be alright. I'll be there. Thanks again." Once again Lars turns from the door. "More 'n likely be some wild sex, too." "Now that's really not a problem." says Mike, warming to the idea. "I've been all alone for six months! I'll definitely be there. By the way, what should I wear?" Lars stops in the door again and says, "Whatever you want. Just gonna be the two of us."

Two Engineers, a Blonde, & a Flagpole Arthur and James (two engineers) were standing at the base of a flagpole, looking up. A blonde walked by and asked what they were doing. "We're supposed to find the height of the flagpole," said Arthur, "but we don't have a ladder." The blonde took a wrench from her purse, loosened a few bolts, and laid the pole down. Then she took a tape measure from her pocket, took a measurement and announced, "Eighteen feet, six inches," and walked away. Ray shook his head and laughed. "Just like a blonde! We ask for the height and she gives us the length!"

Operators, Engineers & the Bear The Pope took a couple of days off to visit the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Alberta for some sight-seeing. He was cruising along a campground in the Pope mobile when there was a frantic commotion just at the edge of the woods. A helpless engineer, wearing sandals, shorts, and the customary "pinkie ring" (engineers in Canada wear a ring to indicate their profession) was screaming while struggling frantically, thrashing around trying to free himself from the grasp of a 10 foot grizzly. As the Pope watched horrified, a group of Operators came racing up. One quickly fired a .44 magnum into the bear's chest. The other two reached up and pulled the bleeding, semiconscious engineer from the bear's grasp. Then using 8" crescent wrenches, the three operators finished off the bear and two of them threw it onto the bed of their truck while the other tenderly placed the injured engineer in the back seat. As they prepared to leave, the Pope summoned them to come over. "I give you my blessing for your brave actions!" he told them. "I heard there was a bitter dislike between operators and engineers but now I've seen with my own eyes that this is not true." As the Pope drove off, one of the operators asked his buddies "Who was that guy?" "It was the Pope," another replied. "He's in direct contact with heaven and has access to all wisdom." "Well," the operator said, "he may have access to all wisdom but he sure doesn't know anything about bear hunting! By the way, is the bait holding up or do we need to go back to Calgary and snatch another one?"

Costume Party

A bald man with a wooden leg gets invited to a costume party. He doesn't know what costume to wear to hide his head and his leg so he writes to a costume company to explain his problem. A few days later he received a parcel with the following note: Dear Sir, Please find enclosed a pirate's outfit. The spotted handkerchief will cover your bald head and, with your wooden leg, you will be just right as a pirate. Very truly yours, Acme Costume Co.

The man thinks this is terrible because they have emphasized his wooden leg and so he writes a letter of complaint. A week goes by and he receives another parcel and a note, which says: Dear Sir, Please find enclosed a monk's habit. The long robe will cover your wooden leg and, with your bald head, you will really look the part. Very truly yours, Acme Costume Co. Now the man is really upset since they have gone from emphasizing his wooden leg to emphasizing his bald head so again he writes the company another nasty letter of complaint. The next day he gets a small parcel and a note which reads: Dear Sir, Please find enclosed a bottle of molasses and a bag of crushed nuts. Pour the molasses over your bald head, pat on crushed nuts, stick your wooden leg up your ass and go as a caramel apple. Very truly yours, Acme Costume Co.

Proof That Men Have Better Friends... Friendship among women: A woman didn't come home one night. The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend's house. The man called his wife's 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it.

Friendship among men: A man didn't come home one night. The next morning he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend's house. The woman called her husband's 10 best friends. Eight confirmed that he had slept over and two said he was still there.