John wrote:
"be proud of what YOU have achieved. People will admire you in the same way, because they can't make the same little engines as you do."
How true that is. Our club puts on presentations in a number of local venues and I'm constantly getting questions like...
Where did you buy the kit to make that?
Did you buy those on Ebay?
The vast majority of people are not only absent the talent to make things, they're absent the very CONCEPT of making something from scratch. (A growing small business in SoCal assembles knock-down furniture and Xmas toys for gormless yuppies.)
The questions I really hate, though, are:
So, you have a machine shop? (No, I gnaw them out of old bed frames like a crazed beaver.)
Are they for sale? (Sure, I'm having a special today. Any engine on the table for only $5000.)
What are they good for? (They calm my mind so I don't go postal and murder clueless twits like you.)
I've also discovered that most people think that perpetual motion is completely possible if only enough engineering attention is applied to the problem. These yuppies are entertained for hours by LTD Stirlings, sitting on a saucer of ice in the hot California sunlight, and spinning gaily. "So, it doesn't need any energy at all to run? Could you use that to power an SUV?" Sure, but you would need a 300HP V8 to power the DVD viewer and the electric cup heaters.
I have a model of Elmer's donkey engine pump that pumps mineral oil from a clear plastic container through the pump and back into the plastic container. One engineering-challenged yuppie was convinced that the oil was making the engine turn over. (He had to speak quite loudly to be heard over the din of the club air compressor running in the background.) When he toddled off to his next encounter with his own ignorance, I had him convinced that I had invented the magic oil and I'd inform him when I went public with it so he could get in on the ground floor of what was sure to be a real moneymaker.