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
What Can Spirit Animals Teach Us About Today’s America?
This week, while perusing my feed on Bluesky, I stumbled upon a post in which someone shared that she had just learned that crows can hold a grudge for 17 years and thus declared crows as her new spirit animal. While many responses expressed surprise or shared their...
An Engineering Valentine’s Day, A Tribute To My Wife Carol
Three days before Valentine’s Day, my wife gave me a priceless gift. She demonstrated the ability and initiative to think like an engineer. After 30-plus years of marriage, she’s starting to understand me in a way that feels both surprising and deeply fulfilling. Let...
How Does Philco Television Relate To Our Current Leadership?
Years ago, there was a thriving television company called Philco. Being the forward-thinking company they were, they assigned an engineer by the name of Larry Goch to cut costs. He was ruthless. He even went out on the line to snip parts out of a working TV circuit....
An Open Letter To The Democratic National Committee
Let 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 not...
Lamp Replacement For My Hotpoint Freezer
I know, I hinted at a video, but after careful deliberation, I decided lamp replacement was way too easy for my first video. There are many direct replacements available on Amazon, even if you don't want to cough up the $40 for an OEM replacement. Although the OEM...
Whitewall Nebraska, A Study Into Current Reality
I’m proud to announce that I’ve been elected mayor of Whitewall, Nebraska. It was unanimous—or will be as soon as I update the websites I created for this event. Of course, you’ve probably never heard of Whitewall, Nebraska. That’s not surprising because it doesn’t...
Random Posts
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 Thought Simulation ChamberTM, gives me […]
The Importance of Teamwork in a DesignImagine if you will, a design team that has been tasked with designing a tablet that will be crucial to the future of their company. The team consists of the best and brightest engineers and programmers in the company. For those of you that like names, let’s call the company Chester’s Online Natural Gas and […]
Prusa MK3S, Built In Self Destruct Or Swiss Cheese Theory of FailureI’m writing to warn all the Prusa MK3S owners about a built in self destruct mechanism in your printer. Avoiding it is easy, not avoiding it cost me over $100 and took my printer down for over a week. It all started when I started seeing bare copper traces on my heat bed. For those […]
Random Posts
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 sooner or later you come […]
Can A Love Of Reading Be Considered A Secret Advantage?If you were to ask me what my professional secret advantage is, I would say I love reading. Seems to be a strange thing to brag about. After all, almost all of us can read. The fact that you are reading this post says you can read but do you enjoy it? When you need […]
A Solar Powered Emotional EpiphanyThe 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 amount of water […]
Random Posts
Why Are We Allowing The News Media To Manipulate Our Opinions?I know, I vowed no more political blogs but that was last year. This really isn’t about politics anyway. It’s about the manipulation of our society by the news media. I believe the divisiveness we see today is driven largely by this manipulation. Remember the recent headlines about a high school student harassing a Native […]
The Killing Frost, A Transition to Winter In My GardenAfter six years, I finally persuaded my wife to write a post for OpinionbyPen. Well, that and the sadness she felt with the transition to winter killing so much of her garden. She’s writing under the nom de guerre of Big Tomato. Keeping the Brussel sprouts at bay, I hasten to add that her name […]
Stop Insulting My Intelligence, A Rant For The Rest Of UsI’m tired of people insulting my intelligence. No, I don’t mean the comments on Opinionbypen suggesting my writing is only slightly better than what my dogs could write or the few choice words my supervisor uses after reading my latest progress report. I’m not even talking about the 500 emails I get every day telling […]
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
How To Become A Crypto Millionaire, Or Go Broke TryingLet me start by saying my view of crypto is limited—and very negative. Trying to be fair about the subject, I turned to ChatGPT for a better understanding. Here’s what I finally came up with. Crypto has no intrinsic value—none. Its value comes only from what people are willing to …
Are The Engineers In Your Life Ignoring You? What You Can Do About ItIf there’s an engineer in your life, I’m certain you often feel ignored by them. Don’t take it personally, it happens to everyone. My goal is to explain why they seem to be ignoring you and how to improve your situation. Notice I did not say gain full attention. Having …
Bringing It Altogether – An Engineer Attempts To Justify His ToysReaders of my blog have been subjected to reviews on three different 3D printers, a CNC wood carver, a laser etcher and a host of solar projects. By now most of you have asked yourselves why is he doing all of this? The same is true of my wife. She …
What I Learned From Udacity About LinkedIn Getting HackedThe only thing keeping me from doing my victory dance at the moment is the presence of my wife in the living room. Like many of the people in my profession I’m a member of LinkedIn, so I was very concerned when I heard LinkedIn had been hacked. Then why …
An Engineer Looks At AccountantsPut 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 not a term of high regard. There’s …