Engineering / Designing For Dummies: The Bitch List

[Möbius]

Mozart, Does your house consist of one long doorway? I'll think that you will find that when transporting a bed/mattress, 99.9% of your journey will not be through doorways but through areas where you can move your bed horizontally. You can also shunt a mattress through a doorway using the handles when in the vertical position. If you want handles on the sides you sleep on then you might find them slightly uncomfortable to sleep on.

Just a perspective of an Engineer.

Mobius

Posted by Mozart (here)
<sigh> Engineers / designers ... jeez, could there be a more moronic group than these dudes?


I'd like to apologize in advance to any engineer / designer -- mechanical and all -- who may be a part of this forum and who may actually engineer / design very good products / things. If you do good work, then know that your work is appreciated.


But if you do shoddy engineering / design, there's a special place in hell for you!


I have no doubt that many here in this forum have encountered things that were engineered / designed by morons with lower IQs than that idiot shrub who once occupied the White House, so I'm inviting those of you who encounter idiot designs to bitch about them in this thread.


Here's my first item on this Bitch List: handles on beds.


Now, most of you have moved beds before, right? So when you move a bed, do you hold the damn thing(s) horizontally, like it is when you sleep on it, holding the handles on the sides of it?


No, you turn the bed vertically and carry it that way so that you can go through, what ... what's the narrow-assed things that are placed all over the house that are a bit wider than the thread of a needle? Doorways! That's what.


Now, most people sleep on queen-sized beds now...

http://simplystated.realsimple.com/2.../22/bed-sizes/

... do the poll on that site and see that the queen, king and California king bed sized comprise a full 80% of the bed sizes that often need to be moved when one moves.


Memo to engineers / designers: queen beds are around 80 inches wide ... doorways are around 30 inches wide ... bad match!


Moving a twin bed vertically is relatively easy, as one can grip the bottom of the bed with one hand while balancing the bed with the other as one walks through those narrow-assed things called doorways that are generally around 30 inches wide; moving a full-sized bed is more problematic for most people, except strong people.


And moving a heavy, high-quality queen-sized bed or bigger? Eff'n fugetabout it!


And why? When the bed(s) are placed vertically, can you reach those bloody, damn handles that are "conveniently" placed on the sides of the bed? Hell, no!


Are there ever any handles -- like TWO of them -- placed on the ends of the beds where they REALLY are needed when you are moving the bed(s) vertically to get through those narrow-assed doorways?


But noooooooo, those engineers / designers never, ever think of what people deal with in real life when they move beds! There are never any handles on any beds that I've ever moved and I've moved a ton of beds over a bunch of decades -- my own and others -- with nary a handle on the ends of the beds.


I've looked at new beds a few years ago and didn't find a single model that had any bloody handles on the frick'n ends of the beds. WTF? Is there a law that bans handles on the ends of beds? A grand, plus for a bed that is sans handles on the ends? Are you kidding me?


So that's my #1 bitch of the day -- the lack of handles on the ends of beds!


/rant


Feel free to rant with your own observations of things that are designed by morons -- surely there's tons of them out there.


~Mozart

[Mozart]

Posted by bram (here)

Hey Mozart, give us poor engineers a break! Here's an exercise for you- take a look around you (assuming you're in a house) and see if you can count how many things you have that have the benefit of being designed by people.

Hi Bram,


Thank you for your input.


Like I said right at the start of my OP, I appreciate -- greatly appreciate -- well-designed/engineered products.


For many years as a forest ecologist, I used Husky and Stihl chainsaws and I found their engineering to be remarkable. I totally trusted the equipment and benefited greatly from their good designs.


So, yes, there are a great many things out there that are well-thought with good, quality time/thought going into devices/things of all kinds.


But there are persistent problems with many devices that could be improved on, but as noted by several here in this thread, the systemic problem of planned obsolescence is a huge one, so in that sense, the planned breakdowns of many products are not the fault of engineers.

[Mozart]

Posted by Möbius (here)
You can also shunt a mattress through a doorway using the handles when in the vertical position. If you want handles on the sides you sleep on then you might find them slightly uncomfortable to sleep on.

Hi Mobius ~


Yea, that could work only if one is strong and tall, and the bed is (queen, or bigger) is a cheap, light one. But have you ever tried to lift a heavy-assed, high-quality queen bed by standing next to a vertical bed standing on the sides, grip it and pick it up? Too heavy!


The queen bed, for example is nearly 6 feet tall, with it being vertical on the sides, so try lifting it by grabbing the handles that would be right about the level of your head ... not easy to do for most of us. If you are 6' 4" and built like an NFL lineman, ok, fine, but for the rest of us ... bah, humbug!


That said, there are many well-designed products out there of which I greatly appreciate the quality work that goes into it.


~Mozart

[Möbius]

All I can say from an Engineers perspective is if you want a giant bed which is easy to move then you will pay in both price and comfort as you would have to make it modular (broken down into smaller parts) like putting two single beds together to make a double bed. I once moved house three times in under three years without using a removal firm and had to resort to removing doors to get my large sofa out. My new sofa is smaller for that reason. It is never fun moving house....

Mobius

Posted by Mozart (here)

Posted by Möbius (here)
You can also shunt a mattress through a doorway using the handles when in the vertical position. If you want handles on the sides you sleep on then you might find them slightly uncomfortable to sleep on.

Hi Mobius ~


Yea, that could work only if one is strong and tall, and the bed is (queen, or bigger) is a cheap, light one. But have you ever tried to lift a heavy-assed, high-quality queen bed by standing next to a vertical bed standing on the sides, grip it and pick it up? Too heavy!


The queen bed, for example is nearly 6 feet tall, with it being vertical on the sides, so try lifting it by grabbing the handles that would be right about the level of your head ... not easy to do for most of us. If you are 6' 4" and built like an NFL lineman, ok, fine, but for the rest of us ... bah, humbug!


That said, there are many well-designed products out there of which I greatly appreciate the quality work that goes into it.


~Mozart

[bram]

Posted by TOTHE (here)
Engineers when they design a machine start by hanging a screw or nut by a thread from the ceiling then build the whole machine around it.

You will discover this screw or nut when you try to remove it. You will either strip the head with your screwdriver or break the nut off with with the wrench. Then you have to go through the agony of drilling, countersink, blow torch, chisel, ball-peen hammer (Kentucky speed-wrench) or extreme cases with a blacksmiths maul.

You forgot to mention the part where you lose all the skin off your knuckles- I think that's round about the hammer and chisel stage. Oh, and the hacksaw?

[mosquito]

Planned obsolescence and consumere manipulation are indeed the root of all this.

Unlike most other countries, where a car's registration number tells you where the owner lives, in the UK it tells you the year it was registered. I long ago realised that this was purely a way of increasing car sales, and a few years back they decided to change the registration letter every 6 months. Result: pretentious wankers going into a strop about "needing" a new car twice a year.

I remember a few years back buying some old shirts (1930s or there abouts) from a second hand shop. You wouldn't believe the quality of the workmanship; crisp strong cotton, hand sewn with painstakingly small stitches, and buttons sewn on as though they were actually intended to remain attached. Around the same time, my ex-wife and I were browsing the fashion shops and came across some expensive (like 800GBP) designer labelled dresses with stray threads, loose buttons, hems already coming adrift. But then it would probably be bought by the kind of person who'd wear it once then trow it away.

Not quite off-topic, it would be interesting to hear other people's views. My all time best .......

Camera - Praktika Super TL3 (changed the battery once in 20 years);
Car - Citroen 2CV, the only maintenance it needed was to be fed petrol !

[Flash]

My constant complaint: jars opening

Why do you need a f instrument to be able to open a jar, a bottle, a drink, name it. Even with a jar opener, when the lip is to large, it does not work. I had to run outside to get neighbours to open my jars, they really laughed. And this happened more than once. Nobody think of women living alone with their kids!!!



Second complaint: public toilets, bathrooms whatever you call them in your country. Have you noticed that the men toilet has no line up usually and that the women toilets have infinite line ups. Nobody has ever thought that women has to sit for anything over there. That means taking off 3 layers of clothes usually, sitting, doing, reputting the 3 layers, sometime changing napkins or whatever, going out, washing hand, looking in the mirror and arranging make up, plus the kids that you have to take with you, boys and girls. This needs much more space and much more toilets and sinks. We definitely do not have the double of what man have, but would need it.

Women patienlty wait and wait and wait, with children crying around that they have to go. No men would be that patient. They would put the axe in such system. THis is my rant, a life of toilet waiting in shopping centers, in airports, in restaurants, in schools, in offices, name it.



Look here, nobody, no f body, and they even have tv and Aguilera gosh. You can listen to tv and look at Aguilera when you do not have a full lined up shaking your door to get in while you are doing it.

[TOTHE]

Posted by Flash (here)
My constant complaint: jars opening

Why do you need a f instrument to be able to open a jar, a bottle, a drink, name it. Even with a jar opener, when the lip is to large, it does not work. I had to run outside to get neighbours to open my jars, they really laughed. And this happened more than once. Nobody think of women living alone with their kids!!!

Dear Flash;

To get the lids off vacuum sealed jars I use a rubber band. The fat kind, like the one’s that hold bunches of asparagus or broccoli together you find at the produce section in the supermarket.

Fit the rubber band around the lid and twist. The rubber band gives you extra traction and minimizes the hand slippage even when it is wet.

[Flash]

Thank you very much Tothe, my inner question however remains: why can't we make jars lid that are easy to open, taking into account the vacuum. They exist in Japan for those small women, why not in America?

PS: I will definitely used your rubber band trick instead of running for my neighbours.