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
Christmas Ideas From My Fox Alien 4040 Vasto
Shortly after I retired, Fox Alien put their 4040 Vasto CNC on sale. The timing was perfect. I had already decided I wanted to get serious about carving wood, and although I had highly modified my 3018 (now a 3040), it was limited. First impression: the Vasto is...
In Defense Of My Junk Box: Married to An Engineer
Just about every electrical or mechanical engineer I know has some kind of junk box—a treasure trove of parts accumulated over the years, all saved with the hope they might come in handy someday. My own junk box started at a very early age. Too young to work a...
Justifying My AI Hobby By Finding Blaze A Forever Home
From my early teenage years, technology has always played a significant part in my life. Though I was late to the party, I joined the technology revolution as the world transitioned from vacuum tubes to transistors in 1963. By 1975, I found myself in the midst of the...
Maximizing Profit: Reliable Designs Or Frequent Repairs?
When I retired, my wife strongly suggested I put some of that newfound free time into cleaning rather than gaining another level in my current game. My trusty old vacuum cleaner, however, decided it wasn’t up to the increased workload and promptly broke a belt. Of...
Want To Try Some AI Song Writing? Songer Makes It Very Easy.
It's an unfortunate truth that music plays a very small part of my life. So small that I’ve always felt handicapped as a writer because I don’t appreciate music. That probably stems from a lack of rhythm, I have none. I can’t even clap in time to music. Having lived...
A Solar Powered Emotional Epiphany
The rains finally made it to my place this week, answering my main concern on the Rubbermaid shed: how well would it keep water out? Turns out the answer is “not perfect but fairly well” and would have been better had my ego not insisted on a one man show. A small...
Random Posts
Language and CultureI read a lot of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I enjoy the way it gives the author the freedom to explore different concepts, different rules of physics, different societies. I also don’t have to look for a deeper meaning. One of the books that really made me think was “The Languages of Pao” by Jack […]
The Eternal Conflict Between Human Behavior And Engineering LogicThe popularity of my Married to an Engineer posts tells me that most of you have difficulty understanding how engineers think. As an engineer, I can tell you that difficulty is mutual. We try to design based on rational human beings and the truth is most of you are anything but rational. Okay that’s a […]
Married To An Engineer – Part 2It’s happened again this year, once again I’ve forgotten my anniversary. Every year that it happens, I swear it won’t happen again. I’ve set alarms on watches, PDAs and smartphones. I went so far as to enlist my Mother-In-Law’s help but every once in a while all those mechanisms fail simultaneously and I’m left red […]
Random Posts
Musings On My Greatest Achievement As I Enter RetirementWhen 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 genuinely made me pause and reflect deeply on my career: […]
First ImpressionsWhen something irritates me, I tend to remember it a long time. Many, many years ago I applied for a summer job at Six Flags Over Texas. After filling out the resume and waiting for the interview I was told that they would not even interview me until I cut off my mustache. If they […]
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 […]
Random Posts
Quitting Doesn’t Always Mean FailureI spent a lot of time thinking of ways to say I was not finishing Udacity’s Interactive 3D Graphics course without sounding like a quitter. I even wrote a post on the difference between failure and quitting. The funny thing is that I’m probably the only one that cares. It’s not like Udacity is going […]
Adobe Premier Elements 10, Almost a ReviewOne of the things that I’m trying to improve on is the inclusion of videos in my posts. Enforcing that, my wife has recently started using her iPad to record dog runs during her Agility shows. That gives me the perfect excuse to start looking at video editing software. When it comes to video editing […]
Bugs, My Blog Has a FewOnce I discovered WordPress I thought Blogging would be easy. Let me correct that statement, I thought that writing interesting posts on a regular basis would be the hardest part of the blog. I was so wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I still consider style and content to be my number one issues to improve […]
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
Why I’m Proud of My WifeMost of my regular readers are probably tired of me talking about Udacity and I promise you that they only play a small part in this post. My wife has watched me spending a lot of my time studying my coursework and doing homework. She’s certainly seen how frustrated I’ve …
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 …
Technical Arrogance, No One Is ImmuneIf there’s one thing the engineering world is full of, it’s arrogance. Don’t get me wrong, I suffer from the same affliction. I think it comes with being an engineer. After you’ve done the simulations and all the testing, it’s not a surprise that your design works. Enough successes and …
Improving Our Vote Through Technology, A TSC IdeaMy wife dreads the arrival of Autumn. She loves the season, the brisk cold, the planning of next year’s garden but with the cold she also knows I spend more time in the shower taking long showers that completely drain our hot water system. The additional time spent in the …
Are You Sure?I own an old DVD VCR. It’s a good VCR but it has one issue that really irritates me. In order to record on a DVD I have to initialize the DVD. What I don’t like is that is asks me four times if I’m sure that I want to …