I swear to god, sometimes I think my husband married me just because my brain doesn't work like his. And it's like this challenge to him to somehow optimize me/my life.
He is so unnaturally confident, it drives me up a goddamn wall. The worst part with him is that he can actually do house projects. He's REALLY good at them. So like I can taunt him for being like, "I could make that," but usually he CAN. wtf. It's like God hates me. Not only is he an enginerd, he's a mechanical enginerd (I'm convinced they are the worst), plus his dad is a mechanical enginerd who was raised on a farm. So he spent his whole youth doing everything you could think of around the house. Fixing cars, house maintenance... on the one hand it's great he can do all this shit, on the other, SOMETIMES IT WOULD BE NICE IF HE FAILED.
Oh, I hate when I challenge him to actually DO what he claims he can do and he nails it. The gloating that happens afterwards is just too much. One time i mentioned on a whim that I wanted our tv wires hidden in the wall and mounted like such and the next minute he is sawing our wall open. Arguing ensues, he waits until I go to bed and does the whole thing. Every single time we watch tv he makes the whole family acknowledge how awesome the tv looks. Even our 4 year old knows to say "good job dad".
Will you please send him to my house? I HATE all the wires!
What drives me insane is that he'll be like "Yeah, I could do that." and then NEVER ACTUALLY DO IT. At least with the woodworking items. I am still waiting for that Adirondack chair, 15 years later.
My husband claims he could do it all if I would just let him buy a table saw.
OH MY GOD.
You know what H "bought" himself with his 10-year anniversary present from his company? A circular saw.
My husband told me without hesitation that he was certain he was in the top 1% of people in the world in intelligence (it was relevant to the conversation). Then he went on to explain to me that that's not such a big deal because it's 70,000,000 people.
THEN HE EXPLAINED TO ME HOW HE MADE THAT CALCULATION.
What drives me insane is that he'll be like "Yeah, I could do that." and then NEVER ACTUALLY DO IT. At least with the woodworking items. I am still waiting for that Adirondack chair, 15 years later.
My husband claims he could do it all if I would just let him buy a table saw.
Every year for Christmas, my ILs buy my husband tools. Sometimes my FIL just buys him tools for fun. One was a table saw.
But I did get this:
And my FIL is coming down next week to put built ins in my great room that MH designed.
This is the worst part. I want to give him hell for being an egomaniac, but he can actually accomplish things so I have no argument.
He did do what I consider to be a sloppy job with about five inches of caulking behind the kitchen sink. Does this count?
What drives me insane is that he'll be like "Yeah, I could do that." and then NEVER ACTUALLY DO IT. At least with the woodworking items. I am still waiting for that Adirondack chair, 15 years later.
So Carl's one saving grace is that he recognizes that even though he *can* do that, he doesn't *want* to.
But for the rest of this thread, YES. I don't know if you guys could tell from what you know of him, but "overconfident man" is probably the best descriptor available for him.
I cope with lots and lots of snarky comments about how the rest of us morons get on in life.
When I ask my husband why he is tailgating the car in front of him he says that he thinks it will make them go faster...
H doesn't tailgate because "there is an ideal distance from the car in front of you to optimize your gas mileage. It's science." - Mr. Tooshort
#hypermiling
If I hear about goddamn hypermiling one more time...
Also, I refuse to drive if my husband is in the car. So much so that my daughter thinks that if a man is in the car, he has to drive. I feel sort of bad about that, but he is the most critical backseat driver I can't handle it.
Do civil engineers not fall into this equation? I work with a lot of enginerds, and most of them aren't like this. Granted, I'm not married to them. One guy told me this week that he tried to drywall his basement to save money, and the drywall is so warped they're going to have to hire someone to fix it. He said his wife suggested he try first.
I do like screwing with them, though. I intentionally hung up a map crooked to see how long it would take them to fix it. It lasted a week.
Ha! I am married to an engineer, but I am also an engineer so...
We are both chemical engineers with a physics background so when we get together we can kinda get into a feedback loop and get a little out of control, lol. Especially in the kitchen.
On babies - Carl once made me go without coffee for like 3 days to make sure that wasn't what was causing A's fussiness. And he wasn't even really fussy, he was just, you know, A BABY.
On hypermiling - Carl has a spreadsheet complete with statistical analysis from some nerdy work program comparing his calculated mileage to what the car tells him.
To be fair, we cannot work on spreadsheets together without divorce coming up. I format our finances spreadsheet and he can look at it, but no comments.
Do civil engineers not fall into this equation? I work with a lot of enginerds, and most of them aren't like this. Granted, I'm not married to them. One guy told me this week that he tried to drywall his basement to save money, and the drywall is so warped they're going to have to hire someone to fix it. He said his wife suggested he try first.
I do like screwing with them, though. I intentionally hung up a map crooked to see how long it would take them to fix it. It lasted a week.
Yeeeeeeeeees.... but maybe not to the degree of mechanical engineers?
Or maybe not about the same thing. Math problems? Yeah. They're fucking loony. Also I've never met a group of people who are so utterly incapable of NOT having a project.
My dad, 2 brothers and BIL are all civil engineers. My other brother is a computer engineer.
On babies - Carl once made me go without coffee for like 3 days to make sure that wasn't what was causing A's fussiness. And he wasn't even really fussy, he was just, you know, A BABY.
On hypermiling - Carl has a spreadsheet complete with statistical analysis from some nerdy work program comparing his calculated mileage to what the car tells him.
To be fair, we cannot work on spreadsheets together without divorce coming up. I format our finances spreadsheet and he can look at it, but no comments.
MH has a spreadsheet (well he has lots of them) that tracks our energy usage/cost. He gets giddy when we get our electric and gas bills. It has all these graphs and bullshit. I refuse to look at it.
To be fair, we cannot work on spreadsheets together without divorce coming up. I format our finances spreadsheet and he can look at it, but no comments.
H and I discovered very early that we cannot both work on fixing the computer(s) at the same time.
For both our blood pressures, I handle all the computer repair in the house.
Post by Scout'sHonor on Feb 27, 2015 12:48:25 GMT -5
H has a whole OneNote book dedicated to tracking the chem levels of the fish tanks. And a spreadsheet tracking our investments, which gets updated regularly and recalibrates how soon he can retire. Though I'm a spreadsheet/list fan too. I've created the house inventory lists and done the yearly expenses in excel.
H isn't an engineer. He's in music and hoping to teach. Also he has no handiness skills whatsoever. And we live an apartment that has maintenance. Yet whenever something breaks he thinks he can fix it and I should just give him a chance. DUDE YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO FIX THE DEADBOLT/SINK/DISHWASHER! He usually tries, and then calls maintenance. There was one time he successfully fixed the problem and I never heard the end of it.
My H is an engineer, too, although his degree is in (I kid you not) "Computer Integrated Manufacturing Engineering Technology" which is some kind of process engineering thing for electronics manufacturing. Very confusing to me, having come from a liberal arts school where one majors in things like Math or Psychology, but whatever. He did take engineering coursework but he's not really a mechanical engineer, or electrical, etc.
Our dishwasher broke last week and he ordered parts and fixed it. I was a little hesitant to turn it on and he totally gave me the attitude - "I AM an engineer, you know!!11!!" I was like, "yeah, but I am pretty sure your background does not translate to appliance repair, really." Lol.
How do you deal with guys who think they're the hottest shit around? Like, can't even follow another conversation b/c they want to tell you how well they would do whatever you're talking about. And are convinced they're a super star at work, even though they've only been there 1 month.
This may or may not be H and I may or may not want to shank him.
WE ARE MARRIED TO THE SAME MAN!
It's like a game with him whenever he tells me a story it's like "Who's loving me now?". I throw plenty of shade at him, which only seems to embolden him. But, you know, it pays the bills so I deal.
When we bought our house, it didn't have a dishwasher, so DH decided to install one (purchased from habitat for humanity's "restore" for $30) and built cabinetry around it.
MIL's oven locked itself closed, so she got a new one. DH insisted on taking it to fix. He fixed it with a $1 part. It is a much nicer oven than our old one.
He also did our bathroom - replaced the toilet (our only toilet in the house, while I was pregnant..) and sink.
He buys cars on craigslist that are broken, fixes them, and flips for profit.
I recently hired a cleaner to come to our house twice a month, after almost a year of him telling me that he would do the chores because some calculation proved his time was worth $X and that was lower than the hourly rate for the cleaning lady. Needless to say, he didn't actually do the chores, and despite his nerdy ways, his idea of "clean" is not in alignment with mine.
Oh - we were doing a cross country road trip (because it costs less than $500 in gas and it would be $2000 in airfare to fly - as proven by spreadsheet lol), and the car completely died in the middle of TN. He performed a repair in the driveway of my grandma's house (in TN) and the car is still running perfectly today (a year later).
The stories are endless. At least the result is usually good?
My god, the number of things in our house that DH has decided he can build and build better. Meet code? NAH, that's for amateurs, that bookshelf must be built to survive the zombie apocalypse! I swear, we could survive the worst earthquake ever underneath our carport or one of the tables DH has built. All because he's an engineer and totally knows what he's doing, guys... Just last night, his brother showed him a picture of a tool cart that he wanted to get for his dad and DH was all like--- "Ohhhh, that's awesome. I can build that! And it'll be cheaper than buying it!" ... LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
ETA: In fairness, DH is pretty good at fixing and building things around the house. I'm just always amazed at how "overdone" everything is done.
I swear to god, sometimes I think my husband married me just because my brain doesn't work like his. And it's like this challenge to him to somehow optimize me/my life.
He is so unnaturally confident, it drives me up a goddamn wall. The worst part with him is that he can actually do house projects. He's REALLY good at them. So like I can taunt him for being like, "I could make that," but usually he CAN. wtf. It's like God hates me. Not only is he an enginerd, he's a mechanical enginerd (I'm convinced they are the worst), plus his dad is a mechanical enginerd who was raised on a farm. So he spent his whole youth doing everything you could think of around the house. Fixing cars, house maintenance... on the one hand it's great he can do all this shit, on the other, SOMETIMES IT WOULD BE NICE IF HE FAILED.
YES OMG! mine wasn't raised on a farm - but he is UNNATURALLY HANDY. So he's a fucking know-it-all who thinks he can do anything - but the kicker is that 9 times out of 10, he's fucking right. He's never going to learn to listen if he's ALWAYS RIGHT.
What's funny is that his two best friends are actually MORE handy than he is. One of them in all realms, the other just in mechanical stuff. The one friend, the one who literally knows how to fix anything (this is the guy who's been helping us with our house reno for years now and is thus my favorite person in the WHOLE WORLD) is the only person MH will defer to. On anything. He's my secret weapon when MH is being stupid stubborn about something. I email this friend and get his take to make sure he's on my side, and then tell him to ask MH about it.
Of course...I'm also an engineer. So more often then not we're bitching together about how nobody ever does anything right and why can't they all just do it our way. Sorry guys.
Do civil engineers not fall into this equation? I work with a lot of enginerds, and most of them aren't like this. Granted, I'm not married to them. One guy told me this week that he tried to drywall his basement to save money, and the drywall is so warped they're going to have to hire someone to fix it. He said his wife suggested he try first.
I do like screwing with them, though. I intentionally hung up a map crooked to see how long it would take them to fix it. It lasted a week.
actually I was just talking to the referenced "REALLY knows everything" guy about this phenomenon. The problem with us civils is that our plans are usually +/- the nearest FOOT. Like...my stuff? Roadway planning? I round numbers to the nearest car length sometimes. That's 25 foot increments. MH has to be a bit more precise with grading and everything, but that's still like nearest inch at best. We're working with soil and concrete - you just can't get that perfect with it.
The friend in question - he's a machine shop manager (I'd wave to carl here, but he finked out on us) and he's measuring things down to like 1/10000th of an inch or something absurd. Ditto MechE's. It's a noticeable difference in mindset.
I am lol at this because this thread is describing me. And I am an engineer.
I am the worst at thinking I can do something after reading an article/watching a video/dreaming about it.
screw this "thinking" stuff. I CAN do things. I've learned how to do all kinds of shit. I'm actually a pretty good drywall mudder at this point. I'm slow as fuck, but the finished product looks good. My tile installation is pretty good. I can cook anything I read about. Over the course of wedding planning I up and taught myself jewelry making and basic book binding....I'm not an expert on any of those things, but that's just time and practice.
This is why I'm an engineer. We make things. It's a skill. We're not wrong.
I'll go hide in a corner and tell my DH to join you all. I am the enginerd in our house. I drive my DH nuts with all my plans for our future home (building furniture, tiered gardens, installing custom you-name-it).
Oh, and Adirondack chairs? I could totally build one.