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
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...
Sundae Explains Why Fashion Changes
While engineers are far more challenged by fashion than most of our species, I don’t believe a lack of fashion sense is limited to engineers. I have the basic rules down, well as long as I’m wearing nothing more than business casual. Throw a tie into the mix and I...
Half Full or Half Empty, An Engineer’s Viewpoint
My wife will confirm that living with an engineer is different. It’s not just that we tend to be socially inept or even standoffish. We see the world differently and until you spend time with one of us you can't comprehend how differently. All my life I’ve listened to...
Windows 10 Upgrade, Can You Trust Microsoft?
Somehow a discussion of trust seems very appropriate as Microsoft starts rolling out Windows 10 for free. Are they doing this to apologize for the mess they made of Windows 8? Are they hoping that giving free upgrades will convince Windows 7 users to upgrade? And if...
Bounce Rate, What It Means To Your Favorite Site
In America we’re taught to tell someone something nice before we criticize them. I’ve never understood if this is supposed to soften the blow or if it’s a tool to boost their ego before it gets completely crushed. I’ve also been told by a few other cultures I work...
First Impressions and a Great Steak
We’ve all been told how important first impressions are. From dating to job interviews we’re lectured constantly that people will judge us based on their first impressions. If you’re like me, you also believe that people are rational beings and will easily overcome...
Random Posts
A Plea For An End To Tiny Instruction ManualsOne of the movies being released this Christmas is Downsizing, a tale of people being shrunk to reduce their cost of living by reducing the resources needed to support them. It’s a sad commentary on our current state of affairs that my first thought was they would be able to read the tiny instruction manuals […]
Know When to Say Goodby to Your AppliancesWhen I make a mistake I try to admit it. If I can turn it into something positive it helps reinforce this behavior. Writing this post is about as good as it gets for this one. From my wife’s point of view I have a very bad habit of maintaining our appliances well past their […]
A Study In Communication As Demonstrated by SadieAs I continue in my journey to improve my writing, I’m starting to see some of the key elements of communication. To tell you the truth, I’m amazed at how difficult it is to communicate with you. I know you don’t believe you’re difficult but let’s try an exercise in communication. This is a horse. […]
Random Posts
Ronin, From Puppy To AdolescentThis post started as a very simple idea. Most of them do but this was an opportunity to have a fun post and gain a few brownie points with my wife. You see it was Mother’s day and five weeks earlier my wife had acquired Ronin. Strictly speaking, a puppy doesn’t qualify you for recognition […]
Email Taxation, Musings From The Thought Simulation ChamberI’m going to make a suggestion and please hear me out before you call on your fellow villagers and start lighting torches. I want the government to start taxing email. Wait, put away those lighters, I do have a reason. With approximately two hundred billion emails sent every day and assuming that one tenth of […]
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 […]
Random Posts
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 […]
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 […]
Poser Debut, an Engineer’s ReviewI think Smith Micro has a real hit with Poser Debut. As a engineer I’ve always been impressed by an artist’s ability to convey a message using a minimum of information. If I want to represent a bird in a picture I immediately think of feathers, beak, eyes and wings. I break the feathers and […]
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
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 own observations, …
In Search of an EditorI’m afraid that my mental picture of a newspaper editor is largely limited to movie characters. Perry White and J. Jonah Jameson are two that come to mind. I also assumed that they had something to do with the big picture for a newspaper but I never gave it much …
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 …
Married To An Engineer, Why Can’t I Have A New OvenI wanted my wife to write this from her point of view because if anyone in this marriage has suffered, it’s her. She wants a new oven and I continue to repair the old one. As long as it continues to work, why do we need to replace it? I realized …
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 …