From the Doghouse
A look at dogs having fun
Poser Gallery
My gallery of pictures I’ve created in Poser
My Science Fiction and Fantasy stories
Stories I’ve written
Nature by Carol
A look at the less technical side of life
A Followup to Amazon Polly and My Solar Fountain
I live in Texas because I enjoy the hot summers, mild winters and the food. Well, also because my wife has told me she's not moving out of Texas. What I really dread is springtime when my allergies kick into overtime and I feel like a druggie looking for my next...
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Married To A Systems Engineer, Why Do Engineers Ask So Many Questions
I really don’t think it’s fair for my wife to break into uncontrollable laughter every time I explain that as a systems engineer, most of my job involves facilitating communications. I understand why she starts laughing, despite speaking a common language,...
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Why Would An Engineer Find Gordon Ramsay Entertaining?
One of the major differences between my wife and I is the way we view food. My wife likes to savor new foods and enjoy the delicate interplay between the seasonings. Me, I'm more concerned about how long it takes to prepare and eat. My wife accuses me of only having...
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Creating An Alexa Podcast For OpinionByPen Using Amazon Polly
In my previous post I took you on my journey to add Amazon’s speech synthesizer Polly to Opinionbypen. I have to admit I did this as an excuse to play with some of the emerging technologies offered by Amazon. Although there were a few minor obstacles along the way,...
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Amazon Polly For WordPress, A Review And Maybe A Podcast
It’s inevitable that having mastered their own specialty, an artist will go on to explore other media. For example, a painter who has worked with oils will probably try watercolors. An experienced electrical engineer will probably think he’s capable of doing...
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Is It Murder If You Club Your Beeping Carbon Monoxide Detector Into Silence?
I like to think that my wife has learned a lot from me about dealing with recalcitrant electronics. Still after analyzing the situation,when she uses a hammer to completely destroy a beeping carbon monoxide detector in her RV, I find myself applauding her initiative. ...
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A Design Principle Frequently ForgottenIn his lectures on rhetoric, Professor Michael Drout said write what your audience needs to hear, not what you want to say. Each time he said that I nodded my head in agreement. This concept was important enough that he repeated it several times at various points in his lecture. About the third time this […]
An Engineer’s Plan For Romance On Valentine’s DayIt’s not that I hate Valentine’s Day but I certainly have reason to fear it. From my point of view, nothing good comes from this holiday. Forget it and I’m in the doghouse. Use the day to tell my wife I love her and my wife questions me about the other 364 days. Putting in a bird […]
Encryption and Hacking, A Government Granted Right?Did you heave a huge sigh of relief this year when your personal rights were reaffirmed? Twice in fact, once by the Library of Congress when they issued an opinion that hacking your vehicle’s software was legal and once by the UN when they declared encryption to be a basic personal right. Considering the mess that […]
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A Futuristic Design Concept, REPTILEToday’s post doesn’t fall into any of my normal categories. It won’t educate you or make you think about an issue. It won’t give you a better idea of how to cope with an engineer (although you will see the imagination that my wife has to put up with). No, today I’m sharing a futuristic […]
An Attempt To Make Sense Of The Rules Of WritingOver the last 3 months I’ve been trying to improve the content of my blog, both the pictures I use to illustrate my articles and the quality of my writing. As I expected, Poser has helped me to improve my pictures. I’m starting to understand the shortcuts and tricks that make a picture look real. […]
Why Does the Net Neutrality Fight Look Like A 1970’s Wrestling Script?It’s times like this that I feel fortunate to only have ten loyal readers. You see, much to my eternal embarrassment, I used to spend my Sunday mornings watching wrestling. That was a long time ago and I was fairly sure it was fake staged but the constant battle of good versus evil always seemed […]
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A Very Personal Look At The Engineering Decision Making ProcessI’ve written a number of posts about how engineers think and make decisions, so I was stunned when my Wife questioned my decision making process and demanded details. My first response was to deny any malfeasance on my part but when I recovered my composure I realized she might have a point. Having admitted that […]
Food ScoutIn almost every war movie I’ve watched there’s one guy that seems to be able to scrounge anything. In the corporate engineering world we all scrounge for parts but the talent we really admire is the food scout. It’s no secret that engineers are strongly food motivated. I don’t know what the connection is but […]
Why Is It So Hard To Leave A Comment?The majority of Website owners want you to leave comments. After all, the only reason their site exists is for you to visit. Comments show you took enough time reading the post to make your comment. So why is it so hard to leave a comment? Why do these websites want our email addresses, force […]
From the Doghouse -It’s all about them
A look at dogs having fun!
Short Stories
With posts like these, ever wonder what kind of fiction I would write?
Random Posts
A Late Mother’s Day Praise For Mother NatureIt’s amazing how fast time passes. This makes my fourth Mother’s Day post since I started Opinionbypen. Okay, last year was a political piece but I dedicated it to both my Mother and Mother-in-Law because of their strong interest in politics. Given how tough it is to have good SEO …
SEO, How You Got Here Without Intending ToDespite the title I’m not going to tell you how to improve the SEO on your website. If you have a website, you really do need to understand SEO but I’m not the one to tell you. Instead I’m going to tell you what SEO is and how it affects …
Ready For Your Hard Drive To Fail? Make Sure Your Backup WorksBackup software is a lot like an insurance policy. Until you have an accident you have no idea how good it is. Of course, if you race down the highway at 100 mph, trying to determine what your stockbroker meant when he texted you, “sell immediately,” you’ll probably find out …
A Milestone?Friday the 13th was an auspicious day for this blog. If you’ve read any of my posts, it should come as no surprise that I love numbers. I also want to know what the numbers represent. WordPress, the framework for this blog, provides a very nice app that lets me …
Shelby, The Reason I Have Australian ShepherdsGiven a number of choices, each having equal weight, I tend to use minor factors to decide rather than make a totally random choice. In this case a post on Shelby won out because she looks really good in the previous post with my wife. Shelby was and still is …
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