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
Betrayal at Neverwinter Mod 6
(If you’re not into MMORPGs, Neverwinter mod 6 in particular, do yourself a favor and skip this.) You say you want me to help you kill a dragon? Times must be worse than I thought when you have to scour taverns to get a group together. Still, like myself, I know that...
A Late Mother’s Day Praise For Mother Nature
It’s amazing how fast time passes. This makes my fourth Mother’s Day post since I started Opinionbypen. Okay, last year was a political piece but I dedicated it to both my Mother and Mother-in-Law because of their strong interest in politics. Given how tough it is to...
Musings on Parallel Universes
All my life I’ve been fascinated by the concept of parallel universes. You know what I mean, universes that coexist with ours, having only minor differences. Then again, maybe you don’t know what I mean. The idea goes something like this. Every time you make a...
An Engineer Looks At Accountants
Put 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...
Makerspace for Young and Old Engineers
I 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...
Using WordPress.com To Host Your Blog
I used to work at a small electronics store that grew too fast and could not sustain itself when to economy took a turn for the worse. When the store finally closed, I was amazed by the ego of the owner as he started selling subscriptions to his newsletter, a...
Random Posts
How My Wife Caused A Microwave To Be An Engineering DilemmaI guess you could say my dilemma started somewhere over twelve years ago when a Panasonic engineer in the microwave division made a poor decision. Then again, Panasonic continued to build these long after the defect was obvious. He may have received a hefty bonus for ensuring the microwave failed shortly after the warranty expired. […]
Outsourcing Our Mind To Gadgets, The Sad Case For HumanityWhen my wife was complaining that she no longer remembered any phone numbers, her phone took care of that, I remembered something Kurzweil said in his book, we were outsourcing our mind to our machines. Remembering phone numbers is certainly not the only function we’ve outsourced to our gadgets. I used to pride myself on […]
Victory DanceAmong engineers there is a deep dark secret. After something goes incredibly right or when we find the solution to a problem that has been plaguing us for month , we do a victory dance. Mine is fairly vanilla but it’s also on a purely involuntary basis. Think about every engineer you’ve ever seen and […]
Random Posts
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 that’s the case, why do they care? Have […]
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 […]- Outsourcing Our Mind To Gadgets, The Sad Case For HumanityWhen my wife was complaining that she no longer remembered any phone numbers, her phone took care of that, I remembered something Kurzweil said in his book, we were outsourcing our mind to our machines. Remembering phone numbers is certainly not the only function we’ve outsourced to our gadgets. I used to pride myself on […]
Random Posts
OTR Mobile, A ReviewOTR 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 from AT&T was giving me. […]
Writers In The Field, I Wish I Had Known About This EarlierIt was a dark and stormy morning. No really, despite sounding like the start to a bad novel, it’s extremely appropriate given where I was headed and what I was facing. I was supposed to be one of many lecturers at an event aptly called “Writers in the Field,” a massive rainstorm was rolling in […]
A Dangerous Trend, Amateur Social IsolationistsI’ve always dreaded social gatherings. It’s not that I can’t do small talk, no, that would be a lie. I’m abysmal at small talk. Thirty seconds into my part of the conversation, I start seeing blank stares and glassy eyes. At forty five seconds, they usually develop an urgent need to visit the bathroom or […]
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
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 …
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 …
Vampires, They Exist and Their Numbers Are GrowingThere was a time when Science Fiction described different worlds, aliens, spaceships and ray guns. Sometimes the science was a thin veneer for the author’s own social/political views but even those were usually entertaining. Not quite Science fiction but close enough to be stocked with the Science Fiction were the …
First Thoughts on Flying a Phantom DJ3 Advanced QuadcopterSeveral years ago, I found myself admiring a friend’s F16 RC model. It was almost five feet from nose to tail and although it had single ducted fan motor in the body to replicate the jet engine of the F16, it was supposed to be one of the fastest models out there. It …
I’m Not Insulting You, That’s My Aspect Starting UpI want you to take a simple test for me. Look at the picture below and identify the engineer. Not too hard was it? All of you got it. Well, all except for the person reading this that said they’re just Poser characters, none of them are engineers. Must be …