There are some great places on the web where you can find stories of engineers solving real problems.

I cannot vouch for the truth of any particular story.  Sometimes, I personally believe that the storyteller was wrong about the root cause or underlying basis of a problem.  Sometimes, the storyteller is not very good at explaining the problem.  They might use extremely specific jargon, leaving the meaning hidden to casual readers.

Once in a while, the stories are very funny.  A few might even be frightening.

But in any case, I have found some education or entertainment from each of these sites at one time or another.  As an electrical engineer, I probably have a bias towards circuit design and electrical problem blogs.  Please feel free to suggest new links that belong in this section.

EDN Magazine offers a wonderful blog/forum titled

 

Design News Magazine offers the excellent Sherlock Ohms collection of user-submitted stories.


EE Times Magazine has a more general blog area, but problem solving is a recurrent theme amongst the posts.