The second Engineering Philosophy I learned from Dave was given to me earlier this year. Dave and I were supporting a large team, multi-year R & D project. When working on R&D projects a plan is laid out but it is not necessarily followed. This project had been going on almost three years and it was becoming frustrating to me that an important piece of the project was not being developed in a timely manner or per plan. Dave and I had many discussions about the missing pieces and whether it was going to become available as it would really help our work to have these pieces in place. So as the usual practice with those who follow, we would once in awhile start complaining to each other about the loss of direction from what was originally planned. I was much more animated about this issue than Dave, as Dave usually kept a calmer head about such things. One day in January as we were having this discussion. Dave told me I needed a better viewpoint on what we were supposed to be doing and this is what he told me, “Don’t worry about the blind horse just load the cart”. I laughed after hearing this and it became one of our phrases whenever we became discouraged about project direction. We would be discussing similar issues and one us would say, “Just keep loading the cart.” Thanks Dave, I really like that one.