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
A Guide To Your Valentine’s Day Chocolate
Valentine’s day is always difficult for me. I love my wife but I have trouble remembering an arbitrary date hyped by advertising agencies to make poor fools like myself feel like lesser creatures if we don’t shower our wives with chocolate and presents. If you've...
Death By Productivity Improvement
Have you ever screamed in frustration when your favorite software company announced that they had come up with new methods of productivity improvement? Personally I’m tired of all the help I’m getting. Windows 8 serves as a perfect example of a productivity...
Do Dogs Have Psychic Powers?
I'd like you to consider the possibility that dogs have managed to develop a psychic bond with us. I know the animal psychologists say that dogs are extremely perceptive and watch us for small clues. That’s why our dogs turn into a pack of whirling dervishes when my...
I’m Stuck But I Have A Bold And Cunning Plan
Have you ever started something but try as you might you can't finish it? It doesn't matter if it's a book that you hope will get better, a movie that always puts you to sleep or the first blog post of a new year, we all been in that position. Come to think of it, you...
The Path to Success is Filled With Failure
When faced with a problem, engineers tend to fixate on solving the problem. Often we're still looking for a solution when others would have given up long ago. It could be that I'm too stubborn to admit defeat but there's nothing more satisfying than solving a...
What Happened To Rewarding Customer Loyalty
After almost ten years with Sprint, my wife and I changed our cell service to Verizon. There were a number of reasons but the number one factor was cost. In this case Verizon was offering $150 credit per line that I added and the monthly fee, with two new Galaxy S5s,...
Random Posts
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 […]
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 no denying that most engineers […]
I’m Male But I’m Not That Stubborn, ReallyI want to make something perfectly clear. When I wrote my post about male stubbornness, I was talking about other males, I was certainly not talking about myself. Despite what my wife may think, I’ve always considered myself to be very reasonable. That is until this week, when it was made painfully clear to me […]
Random Posts
Utility Software I Depend OnI thought a lot about my first post of 2013. I wanted to start the year with a great post. I considered one on Congress but my efforts would be insignificant compared to the spectacle they’ve already made of themselves. Statistics is always a good topic and the course from Udacity is certainly worthy of […]
Death By PowerPoint, Together We Can Prevent This Dreadful DiseaseWe’ve all heard the term, Death by PowerPoint. If you work in an office environment, odds are you’ve come to hate PowerPoint presentations. Surprisingly, I’m not going to attribute this to Microsoft. No, the blame for this hatred lies solely with us, the creators of the slide deck. I’m going to let you in on a […]
Married To An Engineer – Part 1I’ve written several posts about the risks of getting involved with an engineer but some of you have already decided to entwine your life with an engineer. My wife suggested I write this post, not as a warning, but as a guide to communicating with that engineer in your life. Nothing I’ve ever written would […]
Random Posts
A Late Mother’s Day Praise For Mother NatureIt’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 have good SEO on politics, they were probably […]
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 the urge to do a […]
Why Can’t I Find A Good Book, The Evolving Nature Of LiteratureThere’s nothing as wonderful as starting a new book and finding yourself totally immersed within the first chapter. Sadly, such books are becoming scarcer than finding a worthy political candidate. I find myself reading more books and enjoying far fewer of them. I used to think that this was caused by self-publishing but this has […]
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 Milestone?Friday the 13th was an auspicious day for this blog. If you’ve read any of my posts, it should come as no surprise that I love numbers. I also want to know what the numbers represent. WordPress, the framework for this blog, provides a very nice app that lets me …
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 …
How To Talk With An EngineerLast week when I described my current systems engineer position as being all about communications, I almost lost my wife to uncontrollable laughter. When she finally recovered, all she said, while still trying to catch her breath was, “how do you stay employed?” She has a point. If you have an …- Married To An Engineer – Part 1I’ve written several posts about the risks of getting involved with an engineer but some of you have already decided to entwine your life with an engineer. My wife suggested I write this post, not as a warning, but as a guide to communicating with that engineer in your life. …
An Insidious Plot Against MenI’ve recently become convinced that my wife has embarked on a deliberate campaign to fatten me up. I don’t know why, I certainly don’t need additional help but I can find no other explanation for her actions. Consider this. It’s the weekend, I’ve spent a grueling day exercising the dogs, …