Company Buyouts, Good For The Consumer?
You’re justifiably proud of your waffle maker. It was a lesser-known brand, yet it cost half as much as its competitors, and its brilliant texture sensor guaranteed you got flawless waffles every time. Unfortunately, as soon as you plugged it in, someone mistook...
Interspecies Communication As Experienced By An Engineer
I thoroughly enjoyed the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise because they spent much of the time grappling with communication issues. Universal translators, missing databases, peculiar methods of communication, and one memorable episode without a translator. I...
A Conspiracy Theory Regarding Encryption Creating My Dilemma
It seems that the current trend on social media is overwhelmingly conspiracy theories, especially as elections draw near. I’m not particularly drawn to the political ones, but I’m gripped by a conspiracy theory regarding encryption that’s threatening to...
Musings On My Greatest Achievement As I Enter Retirement
When I retired, there were a few questions that everyone seemed to ask: how did I feel about stepping into retirement (frankly, terrified) and what was my first project going to be (the rebuilding of my dilapidated well house). Yet, there was one question that...
On The Design Of My New Business Card
About 40 years ago, during a period of self-discovery, I chanced upon a handwriting analysis book. Naturally, I used the book to analyze my own handwriting. What hidden aspects of my personality might it reveal? We won’t go into the gritty details, but the picture it...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
ESD Training, A Poser OpportunityAlmost everyone has heard the term ESD, ElectroStatic Discharge. It’s the little shock you get on a cold dry morning as you touch the doorknob. It’s seldom fatal to us unless it comes in the form of lightning, also a form of ESD. Fifty years ago, unless you were working …
The Great Courses, I Almost Missed ThemI have a long list of topics for blogs sitting in my Dropbox folder. I even have a few unfinished posts that would only take a short time to finish. The problem is that nothing appeals to me as a subject and I try to do at least one new …
When Did the Definition of Unlimited Change?It always irritates me when I see commercials preying on our stupidity. I guess that’s why watching Sprint’s commercial extolling how their reliability is within one percent of everyone else, always results in my wife having to endure a rant on the difference between reliability and coverage. My lecture on …
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 …
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 …