Engineering

"I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. #%*&. I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail."
- Office Space

One of my original ideas for this blog was that it would be more technical, in terms of my engineering background as it applies to bike-related things. While I think that you can certainly see my over-the-top methodical and analytical approach to training and evaluating my performances, it's not been too technical. C'est la vie.

So, here's an article about how Felt Racing used CFD software to build their new time trial bike. If the picture is accurate, I really question modeling the cyclist/bike with bare feet, no pedals, and no rear derailleur.

Here's a second article that's totally not bike-related about how today's engineering students leave school unprepared to do real engineering work. I see this frequently in my job, where engineers roughly my age and younger tend to be sloppy in their work and don't have a good physical understanding of how things work and go together. Certainly, there are exceptions (I consider myself one), but we're definitely the exceptions rather than the norm. One of my complaints, even while I was in school, was all of the "partial credit" we got on problem sets and tests (where you'd get most of the points for doing the correct process, even if you got the wrong answer). For sure, doing the correct process is important, but, in the end, in the real world, getting the correct answer is what really matters.