In my pre-teen youth, I used to read Popular Electronics. There was one advertisement that was printed repeatedly in that magazine that left a long term impression.
There was this picture of a man perhaps forty years of age sitting at a workbench, looking into an upended chassis of some kind while using a tool of some kind on that upended item. He was holding his head slightly upward so that his eyes needed to gaze downward. The effect was to make the man look very haughty and even snobbish. The caption under that photograph read: "If it's worth the engineer's time, it's worth engineered wire."
I wondered back then what kind of equipment might not be worth this guy's time. Maybe a new high fidelity amplifier? Maybe a new neon sign controller? How about a new teleportation machine?
What really came through all that was a sense of praise being offered for arrogance and false pride.
By that time, I had a pretty favorable sense of admiration for people I met who really were achievers, who knew many things which I did not and who were happy to share that knowledge with me to the best of my ability to absorb.
A case in point was one superintendent of the apartment building I lived in who took several of us kids into that part of the building's cellar that housed the heating system boiler. That thing looked like it was the size of a ferry boat. He explained how it was monitored and controlled and I was utterly fascinated. His name was Vinnie.
In the course of my career, I met many other people who provided knowledge and guidance BUT (pause for one moment), I also met a few real life "engineered wire" types, most of whom I discovered really didn't know that much despite their claims to the contrary.
"I'm an expert in everything from DC to daylight."
All part of collective human nature, I suppose.
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