April 26, 2008

Sweet Dreams

I had some weird dreams last night. I do not often dream, and I rarely sleep long enough at a stretch to get into REM sleep. In these dreams I was studying a certain kind of ball bearing assembly. There was an engineering question I was trying to solve, but it was fuzzy and indistinct what I was analyzing.

I am not an engineer, but at one time in my career I would have told you I was among the top four or five experts in the world when discussing certain, specific bearings and their application. Just about everyone in that industry would have agreed. I worked with one engineer colleague for more than a year who thought I was a degreed engineer. I bet he was disappointed in his engineering education, when I knew more than him with my history degree! On more than one occasion I have been contacted by my competitors to come and work for them. This is not braggadocio, it is fact. Over time one can only whore out to a certain number of companies and peddle the same products to the same people without losing credibility. "No really, this time the product I am offering is the best..."

Now I sell different bearings in different applications. I have not thought of the old products in a long time. Can any of you amateur Psych majors do a little dream analysis for me? Why am I dreaming of detailed assembly drawings and trying to answer application issues about ball bearings in my dreams? Why am I worrying about the radius of a groove cut into the corner of a bearing? Why am I dreaming about blueprints? I want to dream about nookie, or beer, or baseball, not effing ball bearings.

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