Whatever happened to that troll over at MTR who had the handle of TEXAS?

[blawp]

I think he said "Pooing is cool." a lot too. Is he here on this forum?

[NE2]

lOl

[realjd]

lOl

We don't take kindly to you imperial types around here, what with your fancy tie fighters and all.

[J N Winkler]

These are two separate people:

*  TEXAS is a valued member of this forum.

*  The "pooing is cool" guy is also a valued member of this forum.

Moderation makes all the difference.

[agentsteel53]

which one is TEXAS?  bugo?

[kphoger]

which one is TEXAS?  bugo?

It's the really big state at the bottom of the map.

[bugo]

I think he said "Pooing is cool." a lot too. Is he here on this forum?

Never heard of him.

[Alps]

<eom>

[hbelkins]

I think he said "Pooing is cool." a lot too. Is he here on this forum?

No, he would have have had the handle "New America." 

I honestly don't remember the "Texas" guy.

I just wonder how many people here have usernames that I don't recognize, but I would know their names or the usernames they used on m.t.r. or one of the Yahoo groups.

I know the names of "bugo" and "US 71" and "dougtone" and "froggie" and many others because they have used consistent identities across many forums, or they have identified themselves otherwise.

No doubt about my identity. I don't feel the need to hide behind a nom de plume here. I have the same name here as I do on Twitter as I do on Yahoo as I do on... Just add capitalization and a couple of periods and you have my name.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

I think he said "Pooing is cool." a lot too. Is he here on this forum?

No, he would have have had the handle "New America." 

I honestly don't remember the "Texas" guy.

I just wonder how many people here have usernames that I don't recognize, but I would know their names or the usernames they used on m.t.r. or one of the Yahoo groups.

I know the names of "bugo" and "US 71" and "dougtone" and "froggie" and many others because they have used consistent identities across many forums, or they have identified themselves otherwise.

No doubt about my identity. I don't feel the need to hide behind a nom de plume here. I have the same name here as I do on Twitter as I do on Yahoo as I do on... Just add capitalization and a couple of periods and you have my name.

Actually, we have to hide behind a nom de plume here because the admins won't allow folks to change their handles on here.

[blawp]

dougtone was always really high and mighty and arrogant

[hbelkins]

Actually, we have to hide behind a nom de plume here because the admins won't allow folks to change their handles on here.

Yeah, but we know you too. 

Actually, you can ask the admins to change your username if you so desire.

dougtone was always really high and mighty and arrogant

You're trolling, right? Doug's the salt of the earth. He even bought small bottles of pure Vermont maple syrup for gifts for those who attended his Bennington meet, and gave me an extra to bring home to my wife.

(Up until I saw him at Joliet, my last sighting of Steve was him chugging his syrup bottle like it was an airplane liquor sample).

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Actually, we have to hide behind a nom de plume here because the admins won't allow folks to change their handles on here.

Yeah, but we know you too. 

Actually, you can ask the admins to change your username if you so desire.

But this isn't the social security agency, I shouldn't need anyone's permission to be a Blues Geographer one week, a Magyar another week, or any other turn of the phrase that catches my fancy at any given time.
But I'm glad to see that no matter what I call myself, that my style is always self evident. :-)

[Alps]

(Up until I saw him at Joliet, my last sighting of Steve was him chugging his syrup bottle like it was an airplane liquor sample).

Not only that, but I was hung over when I did it.

[Scott5114]

Actually, we have to hide behind a nom de plume here because the admins won't allow folks to change their handles on here.

Yeah, but we know you too. 

Actually, you can ask the admins to change your username if you so desire.

But this isn't the social security agency, I shouldn't need anyone's permission to be a Blues Geographer one week, a Magyar another week, or any other turn of the phrase that catches my fancy at any given time.
But I'm glad to see that no matter what I call myself, that my style is always self evident. :-)

We decided that the need to have the continuity between posts given by consistent names outweighed that of allowing people the freedom to change their name whenever. Put simply, if someone changes their name on a frequent basis, it's hard to keep track of who is what name this week. That makes it harder for the forum to feel like a real community, because it is harder for you to get to know people when you have to stop and think "Right, Bill Stickers is going by the name 'Bumcivilian' this week" (it also makes moderation a little bit more difficult too, though of course we would be able to figure it out eventually by post history). If you wish to change your display name we are more than willing to do that for you. But we want to have the ability to step in and say "right then, this is your third name change in as many months, you're overdoing it just a tad."

[national highway 1]

I honestly don't remember the "Texas" guy.

I thought BigMatt was the 'Texas guy', or it was someone completeley different.

[J N Winkler]

On the general question of noms de écran:  I use this one ("J N Winkler") on all of the Web forums I frequent.  When I was posting to MTR, however, I generally used handles which were variants of "Argatlam" (meaning "silver-handed" in Irish Gaelic) for three reasons.  First, I lurked on MTR for several months before I started posting and realized that it was routine for people to post from spamtrap addresses.  Second, I saw that a number of MTR regulars had poor self-control and I wanted those people to have to do some work before they started harassing me at an email address where I actually read mail.  Third and finally, I also observed a tendency for professionally trained MTR regulars to stand on their dignity and say things along the lines of "I am a licensed professional engineer, and you are . . . pond scum?"  I believed that this was wrong and that anything said in MTR should be evaluated on its own terms, and not on the basis of any professional training or credentials the person who said it might have had.  I thought that by posting from an anonymized address, while consistently using the same identity in MTR, these people would be forced to ignore who I was and pay attention instead to what I was actually saying.

I created the "J N Winkler" identity when I signed up for SABRE in 2003.  By then I had had two years' experience of MTR under my belt, and had come to appreciate the value (both to the community and to the individual poster) of accepting the constraints of an online identity which was visibly and closely related to one's real-world identity and thus had a reputation which needed to be maintained.  I also realized that if I were harassed by email or PM, I would be able to appeal to management for recourse, an option which is not available in unmoderated forums like MTR.

I have also come to see the problem of PEs and other professionally trained people standing on their dignity as unimportant in the grand scheme of things.  First, I discovered that if I responded to these disguised appeals to authority by pointing out that an independent authority would have to evaluate technical claims on these merits, regardless of the licensing status or professional training of the people making them, that left them with nothing to say.  (This is not the only rebuttal that can be made, by the way--a close study of engineering practice legislation suggests others.)  Second, I eventually realized that the true purpose of these appeals to licensure was to goad specific regulars who would be provoked by them.  Since they never worked on me, there was never a reason to try them more than once.

[vdeane]

But this isn't the social security agency, I shouldn't need anyone's permission to be a Blues Geographer one week, a Magyar another week, or any other turn of the phrase that catches my fancy at any given time.
But I'm glad to see that no matter what I call myself, that my style is always self evident. :-)

It used to be possible to change your display name at will here; it got abused, hence the current policy.

[Beltway]

Regarding comment about PEs on MTR --

About appeals to authority being an attempt to provoke certain posters  -- I wouldn't go that far, I think in most cases it was simply an attempt to silence the other poster, "I am the expert by profession in this matter, and I am right about this point, so you are wrong, and you need to stop arguing about it".

The PEs on MTR went a long way to damage my trust in professional highway engineers.  While there is perhaps some fallacy there, there is at least some truth there.  Civil engineering is considered by many of its members to be the "noble profession", that is their guideline.

Some of the MTR PEs were blowhards who constantly "rah rah-ed" their highway departments where they work, and a few frequently got into terrible arguments with non-PE posters, and none of the other PEs ever made any attempt to step in and try to calm things down with a PE that was out of control and putting shame on the profession.  They basically "hid" by not posting when that stuff was going on.  Weasels ...

In over 10 years of my reading MTR, I never saw any PE ever get into an argument of any significance with another PE, or seriously contradict an opinion of another PE, and that is surely part of their "culture" not to do that in public.  They are cliquish, I know that as a fact having dealt with many of them in the past.

Bottom line, IMHO, the 8 or 10 PEs posting over the years on MTR added very little value if any, on the balance, to MTR.  And that is assuming at face value that they are indeed PEs working in highway engineering.

[blawp]

I'm a PE in mechanical engineering. It's not that hard to get. Those who gloat about it worry me.

[Alps]

Only two or at most three of the PEs on MTR really flaunted it or used it as justification for everything they say. To me, the only thing being a PE gives me is greater responsibility to think about what I type here or on my site, making sure that it's sound engineering or at least a good guess. It comes into play very rarely, and only if someone really starts questioning me or naysaying for the point of being a prick will I bring out the PE card.

[Brandon]

I'm a PE in mechanical engineering. It's not that hard to get. Those who gloat about it worry me.

Now that, I'll toast to.  I'm a PE in environmental engineering (in 2 states so far).  I'd consider it hard to get (at least the exams and time spent working under a PE in Illinois).  I will gloat about passing both the FE and PE exams on the first try. 
That said, humility is a good thing to also have, and that means not rubbing someone else's face in your PE license.*

*Unless they've proven themselves to be a complete idiot, at which time rubbing anything in their face is well worth it.

[Brandon]

Steve, +1. 

[hbelkins]

Regarding comment about PEs on MTR --

About appeals to authority being an attempt to provoke certain posters  -- I wouldn't go that far, I think in most cases it was simply an attempt to silence the other poster, "I am the expert by profession in this matter, and I am right about this point, so you are wrong, and you need to stop arguing about it".

The PEs on MTR went a long way to damage my trust in professional highway engineers.  While there is perhaps some fallacy there, there is at least some truth there.  Civil engineering is considered by many of its members to be the "noble profession", that is their guideline.

Some of the MTR PEs were blowhards who constantly "rah rah-ed" their highway departments where they work, and a few frequently got into terrible arguments with non-PE posters, and none of the other PEs ever made any attempt to step in and try to calm things down with a PE that was out of control and putting shame on the profession.  They basically "hid" by not posting when that stuff was going on.  Weasels ...

In over 10 years of my reading MTR, I never saw any PE ever get into an argument of any significance with another PE, or seriously contradict an opinion of another PE, and that is surely part of their "culture" not to do that in public.  They are cliquish, I know that as a fact having dealt with many of them in the past.

Bottom line, IMHO, the 8 or 10 PEs posting over the years on MTR added very little value if any, on the balance, to MTR.  And that is assuming at face value that they are indeed PEs working in highway engineering.

What killed me was one in particular who insisted on using his P.E. designation in his signature. I find that to be a bit pompous. I would never think about using my college degrees in my sig. "H.B. Elkins, MA; AB" -- for some reason, my college refers to a Bachelor of Arts degree as an AB rather than a BA -- is too pretentious and proves nothing.

He got into some pretty heated arguments with an employee of an adjoining state's DOT, but I don't know if his neighbor was a PE or not. He didn't find it necessary to fluff himself up by referring to it in every post if he was.

I ended up killfiling that one certain PE because of his pomposity and because of his politics. But I don't hold him against I-26 in North Carolina. 

And I would never hold the actions of one PE against everyone else in the profession. I work with a number of them on a daily basis and find them, for the most part, to be conscientious employees and decent people.

To me, the only thing being a PE gives me is greater responsibility to think about what I type here or on my site...

Why's that? Your being a PE in no way should affect your expression of your opinions. I certainly don't let my job affect me. Just the other day, I publicized a decision that I don't agree with. I managed to keep my personal feelings about the subject hidden when interviewed for television. But on my own personal space, I voiced my disagreement with the decision. I didn't give up that right when I took my job. Your profession shouldn't make you have to temper or adjust your own thoughts.

Anything I post here or on Facebook or on m.t.r or anywhere else is my own opinion. Only when my job title is attached to it or it's issued through officials sources does it have anything to do with work. My work life and my private life are two completely different things.

[Alps]

Steve, +1. 

Back at you. The FE exam is just a comprehensive first-year college exam. I probably could have passed it out of high school (AP courses and all), but it's far from easy given the wide scope, so I'm not surprised at the success rate. The PE exam I found quite easy - the studying was the hardest part - because I use so much of the material on a daily basis. And that's how it's supposed to be. If you don't know it, you're clearly not ready to be an engineer. A lot of people take it because they've been in the industry, but that doesn't necessarily qualify them...