A Late Mother’s Day Praise For Mother Nature
It’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...
Musings on Parallel Universes
All my life I’ve been fascinated by the concept of parallel universes. You know what I mean, universes that coexist with ours, having only minor differences. Then again, maybe you don’t know what I mean. The idea goes something like this. Every time you make a...
An Engineer Looks At Accountants
Put a group of engineers together discussing projects and sooner or later the discussion will turn to beancounters. No, beancounters aren’t an apparatus for counting individual beans, we use the term to refer to the accounting department. As you might guess, this is...
Makerspace for Young and Old Engineers
I was doing some research for this post when I stumbled onto the Makerspace site for Dallas. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the term before but you could think of as a gathering for innovators, people willing to share their knowledge and skills with other...
Using WordPress.com To Host Your Blog
I used to work at a small electronics store that grew too fast and could not sustain itself when to economy took a turn for the worse. When the store finally closed, I was amazed by the ego of the owner as he started selling subscriptions to his newsletter, a...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
Married To An Engineer, Sometimes You Have To Call The ProfessionalsSometimes you have to call the professionals. In a story, you have time to develop all your characters. You let the reader discover how they look, how they react and their motivations. Good writers do it seamlessly. Too bad I’m not that good (yet), so, I’m taking the easy route. …
Why Do I Care If My Random Number Generator Isn’t RandomI’m always amazed at how little interest people take in probability and random numbers. Is that RAND function in Excel really random? Is it possible to synchronize two random number generators and predict numbers? What is a weak random number generator and why would you want one? There’s an entire …
Married To An Engineer – Part 1I’ve written several posts about the risks of getting involved with an engineer but some of you have already decided to entwine your life with an engineer. My wife suggested I write this post, not as a warning, but as a guide to communicating with that engineer in your life. …
Credibility, Amazon Lost It, Goodreads Failed. How Do I Choose My Next Book?There’s a big difference between consumer satisfaction and marketing. That difference is credibility and has become a major problem for me. Years ago books making it to the publisher had been carefully screened. After all, it was expensive to publish a book. This meant that the books getting published had …
I’m Sick And Tired Of Hearing Politicians Say Follow The DataI’m fairly sure it’s a conspiracy but since no one else is warning you, I feel that it’s my duty to warn you about the highly toxic nature of tomatoes. We’re all fortunate that tomatoes are becoming less toxic over time but their deadly nature cannot be denied. Of course, …