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
Upgrading To The Prusa MK3S From the Prusa MK2 , Is It Worth It?
It’s Saturday night as I listen to my new Prusa MK3S and wonder how I can justify my purchase of a third 3D printer to my wife. After two years, my Prusa MK2 was getting a bit long in the tooth. My prints were no longer a thing of beauty. Where I used to have smooth...
Married To An Engineer: We See Problems Differently
Several years ago, there was a study on the differences in the way dogs and wolves interacted with people. Now I'm not going to insult your intelligence by comparing engineers to wolves but the study did reveal an intriguing similarity. Like wolves, Engineers see...
Wonder Why Society Is Failing? Blame It On The Internet
Wonder why society is failing? I blame it on the Internet. Don't get me wrong, I love the Internet but I also believe it's responsible for causing us to become a very mean-spirited society. Until now, we’ve always had some amount of personal risk for displaying bad...
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...
They Make It So Easy to Sign Up, Why Do They Make So Hard to Cancel?
Why is it so easy to sign up for a service and yet so hard to cancel that same service? The current trend in business lets you sign up with nothing more than a credit card and an internet connection but when time comes to end the relationship, they make it as...
Married To An Engineer – Change Is Inevidable, For You
As I wrote in Married to an Engineer Part 1, living with an engineer isn’t for everybody. Not only do you have to put up with someone you often suspect loves technology more than you but living with an engineer will change you in more ways than you ever anticipated. I...
Random Posts
Without Net Neutrality Expect Cable Television Content And ServiceNet neutrality is one of the things that keeps the Internet from becoming an echo of the vast cable television nothingness. If you were to take a survey of the most hated companies in the US, I’m willing to bet that the cable companies would top the list. Nobody likes their bundling, their tiered pricing […]
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 […]
The Use and Misuse of Metrics, What Do They Mean?I was showing a book in my Kindle library to a fellow engineer this week when he noticed the time to the end of the chapter was two minutes and fifteen seconds. The book was interesting to him but the use of reading metrics was even more interesting, not because of what it meant but because […]
Random Posts
The SainSmart 3018 PROVer CNC Router, A ReviewGiven the number of posts I’ve made on 3D printers, it’s safe to assume that I feel I’ve mastered the basic techniques. Still you always wonder if the grass is greener on the other side. In my case, thanks in part to the Covid blues and Amazon’s Prime day I ended up with a SainSmart […]
How Did My Website Get Hacked?Getting hacked was not one of the new experiences I planned for my website in 2016. True, when I went to Rome’s Porta Portese flea market, I carried a spare wallet just so I could say I’d been pickpocketed but that was an experience I was planning for. I’ve already written my 2016 plan. I changed […]
Makerspace for Young and Old EngineersI 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 people wanting to learn. Looking at their website, […]
Random Posts
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 […]
Tired Of Being Spied On? Support Data Gathering TaxesIt’s fall again and with the lower temperatures I tend to take longer showers. Those of you that visit my site frequently know what that means, more time for me to think about solving world problems. My first shower of the season and I think I’ve really found a gem this time. It’s a given […]
Why Would You Want To Write A Blog?Ever notice that the moment you describe a problem to an engineer, they stop listening to you? Before you’ve finished describing the problem, they’ve started working on a solution for you. True, some of the very best engineers have the ability to remain focused on you until you’ve fully described the problem. As my wife […]
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
Data Mining For Personality CluesI find understanding people every bit as difficult as trying to crack an encrypted file. I spend a lot more time at trying to understand people because I believe communication requires mutual understanding. While taking Udacity’s Cryptography course I learned about the use of side channels to help in decrypting …
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 …
Problem Solving And The EngineerLast night my wife did a very cruel thing to me. I don’t think it was malicious but it did destroy the rest of my evening. What was it that my wife did to me? All she did was show me a fairly simple mathematical problem that had been given …
What It Takes To Be A Winner by RoninThere are times when you don’t feel like writing. This week, I’m trying to beat the rain and finish the new chicken coop for my wife. When I asked for volunteers to write, Ronin was the only one to speak up. Here’s hoping you like it. What it takes to be …
Speed Reading, the Good and the BadI’ve always been proud of being a speed reader. With light fiction I can hit about 1000 words a minute. If I’m scanning a document for key words, I can push it far above that. It’s not a skill that I was taught, it just sort of developed. When I …