Materials, science, and stuff

I know I'm an odd bird.I found out more about my oddness over the weekend. If someone gives me a good problem, there's little I can do to not try to solve it. En's uncle is the founder and CEO of Bambeck Systems, Inc. They make combustion control systems for industrial applications -- they include things like refineries, paper mills and beer brewers in their portfolio.He's facing a couple of engineering challenges that I won't go into great detail over. Most of these are things that I've never really pursued in any great depth before. But they are problems. I solve problems.Thousands of hours of reading random crap, looking at designs and teardowns, reading wikipedia... they all come together to almost make it seem like I know what I'm talking about.I have to say that I've never really thought I'd use anything read about materials science and manufacturing in real life. But I guess somehow it works.  :-)