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
How To Convince Your Spouse You Need A 3D Printer
Some of my favorite memories are from the times I spent as a computer salesman during the home computer revolution. I met astronauts, entertainers and an entire community of very smart people but the number one question my prospective customers always asked was “how...
Musings On A The Existence Of Parallel Universes
The concept of parallel universes has always fascinated us. Think about worlds identical in every respect to ours except for a single difference. Somewhere out there we took that job in California or married our childhood sweetheart or won the lottery. Roger Zelazny...
The Loss of A Subscriber; You’re More Important Than You Realize.
I lost one of my subscribers a few days ago. Although I never met the man but I always appreciated his willingness to read my posts and to remain a subscriber. I feel bad that I didn't know more about him. It's obvious that we could have been friends or he would have...
The New Chair, An Engineer’s Journey In Buying A New Chair
Last week the bracket securing the arm of my gaming/ current office chair broke. I’ll admit I’ve put on a few pounds during my Covid isolation and I never intended it to sub as a full-time office chair. Still, I haven’t gained that much weight and the chair was less...
OTR Mobile, A Review
OTR Mobile is not the Internet solution you’re looking for and whatever you do, don’t expect any money back from them. At $60 a month, OTR Mobile seemed like a no brainer decision. they offered me as much as 10 mps, almost 7 times than what my archaic ADSL service...
How To Drive Customers Away, Why I’m Done With Netgear
Over the years I've used a number of Netgear modems, routers and switchers but this weekend I received what will be my last Netgear product. It's a simple Wi-Fi range extender and probably works well but Netgear's attempt at customer retention is not acceptable....
Random Posts
What’s Amazon Whispersync And Why Do I Care?I think I’ve stumbled on a great way to save money on books from Audible. It doesn’t work every time and your savings tend to vary dramatically but when it works you feel like looking over your shoulder to see if the Amazon police are watching. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of e-books. […]
Ever Think of Your Engineer as a Super Hero? The Evidence is There.I’m going to assume you’re reading this because you’re trying to make sense of the engineer in your life. I’ve written several posts on understanding engineers but maybe you’re looking for new insights. Ever think of your engineer as a super hero? There’s more evidence than you might suspect. Let me try to describe your […]
A SEO Enhanced ResumePeople tell us not to judge a book by the cover but we’ve all passed up good books because of poor cover art. If you think about it, your resume serves much the same function as a book cover and let’s face it, compared to our counterparts in marketing, most engineers write really poor resumes. […]
Random Posts
Driving Change With Comments, You Should Do ItGrab any product you know like the back of your hand and check out its comments. Ditch the fake, fluffy ones—they’re as real as a three-dollar bill! Personally, I get a good laugh out of reading those one-star dramatics. Oh, and we’re ignoring the folks who say, “Awesome product!” and then slap it with one […]
Where Have All The Mentors Gone?It’s easy to forget there was a time before the Internet, before YouTube and before Facebook. Nowadays if you want to know how to change the power window motor on your 1994 Ford pickup, you pull up Google and do a search. Odds are good that someone has made a video telling you how. As […]
Congress, Too Focused on Being Politicians? – Part 2There’s an old saying “The enemy of my enemy is my ally”. Congress has certainly made me see the truth of that. My Mother-in-Law is a very nice person that shares my love of technology. There’s two topics where we are polar opposites, choice of computer platforms and politics. I can usually get past her […]
Random Posts
Married To An Engineer: When Does Repair Become Replace?“I know engineers better than that! They would never throw away a 3D printer that quit working without trying to repair it first.” These words were exclaimed by my wife as she watched a credit card commercial showing engineers trashing a malfunctioning printer and using a credit card to order a new printer. She was […]
Whatever Happened To Compromise And Acceptance?I have no mouth and must scream is a short story by Harlen Ellison. Unfortunately it also very accurately sums up my feelings on American politics. I’ll confess to avoiding Twitter and Facebook. I have my website but I’ve accepted that the stats on my website don’t lie, nobody wants to read my political posts. […]
Companies Not Reading Your Complaints? You’re Probably Dealing With A ChatbotEver write to a company about a problem and their response made it obvious they weren’t reading your message? No, it’s not your spouse moonlighting as customer support. Odds are, you’ve just encountered a chatbot. Chatbots have been around as long as I’ve been interested in computers. My first encounter was a chatbot named Eliza […]
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
The Sundae Style of Management, Please Don’t Try This At WorkIt’s been fairly busy at work this month and nobody wanted to help me out by writing a guest blog. In a moment of desperation, I agreed to let Sundae share her views on management. To be fair, I have worked for managers who seemed to share many of her …
An Open Letter To The Democratic National CommitteeLet me be absolutely clear about this: I detest Trump. And yes, I fully expect that one statement to drive away half of my readers, but I’m reminded of an old quote: “For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” Fortunately, I had the good sense …
An Easter Cactus FlowerNo matter how I considered it, I couldn’t come up with an appropriate post for Easter. To me, Easter announces the presence of spring and spending time with family. More than anything else it’s a time for relaxation. It was my cactus that gave me the inspiration for today’s post. …
Why Is It So Hard To Describe A Problem To An Engineer?If there’s an engineer in your life you already know the soul numbing frustration that comes from trying to describe a problem to an engineer. My poor Wife has suffered through this so many times she’s become a computer expert in self defense. Why is it so hard to work …
Giving Criticism That Will Be Heeded, An Engineer’s GuidelinesWhen I started Opinionbypen, I had long discussions with myself wondering if I was tough enough for all the criticism I would get. I knew my writing needed help. I knew I my paragraph separation was accomplished by feel rather than doctrine. And, if we’re doing true confessions , my …