Two weeks ago, Dr. Ray Ridley and Ridley Engineering presented a contest in his popular Ohm Confinement cartoon series for the best recording of themselves singing the lyrics to this song to the original tune (the original Flanders & Swann recording is here):
The Consultant Cometh
‘Twas on the Monday morning
The consultant came to call
We have a specification we don’t understand at all
He drew up his schematics,
The parts were placed in bins
But he didn’t know how to solder so we got an assembler in.
Oh, it all makes work for the engineer to do.
‘Twas on the Tuesday morning
The assembler started work
"The design you have is awful – the last guy was a jerk"
Parts went on the circuit board
Wires went in the box
But when he pushed the button, he died from electric shocks
Oh, it all makes work for the engineer to do.
‘Twas on the Wednesday morning
That the Safety man came in
There wasn’t adequate clearance, when looking pin to pin
He tested and he heated
The Internet got killed
He said "That’s not my problem", and he made sure we were billed.
Oh, it all makes work for the engineer to do.
‘Twas on the Thursday morning
The FCC found our address
Emissions and noise were terrible and had to be suppressed
She waved around antennas
She added copper foil
Then she shorted out the transformer to add to all the toil
Oh, it all makes work for the engineer to do.
‘Twas on the Friday morning
The Magnetics man was late
He must have been nearly 90, his eyesight wasn’t great
He twisted lots of wire
He added turns of litz
And when he was done with all of it, the circuit blew to bits!
Oh, it all makes work for the engineer to do.
On Saturday and Sunday, they do no work at all
So ‘Twas on the Monday morning the consultant came to call.
-
Lyrics by Ray and Denise Ridley The winner would win a lifetime license to RidleyWorks. There were a number of great submissions, with engineers showing their creativity in various ways.
So without further ado, the overall winner chosen by Dr. Ray and Denise Ridley is...
