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
Emotional Content as a Communication Protocol
I'm writing this post for all the other bewildered engineers out there. You're welcome to read on if you're not an engineer but I'm not sure what you'll glean from it. If you're familiar with communication theory you've already been introduced to the Nyquist theorem...
A Futuristic Design Concept, REPTILE
Today's post doesn't fall into any of my normal categories. It won't educate you or make you think about an issue. It won't give you a better idea of how to cope with an engineer (although you will see the imagination that my wife has to put up with). No, today I'm...
The Rise and Fall of a Power Zombie
We've all been told about the coming zombie apocalypse. We've seen the movies of the zombie hordes but the reality is here, now and it's far uglier. Forget the mindless searching for brains and more brains. That particular species of zombies accidentally migrated to...
A Question About Poor Customer Service
I often try to get you to comment on my blogs but today is a little different. I'm going to describe an issue I had with customer service about a year ago and I really want your opinion. Am I being petty? What have you done in a similar situation? What do you want the...
School Funding, Some Skin in the Game
Saturdays are often lively at my local feed store. People go to buy feed but they also enjoy sharing their opinions on politics, drought, school funding and other elements of life in Texas. It would be unfair to describe me as out of my element in a North Texas feed...
The Law of Resonance
The Law of Resonance by Jeff Scholl The Law of Resonance is defined as, “Our life force will react to adjust on every stimulus or force that it is being exposed to within the body, mind, emotions or spirit. If the force of stimulus is stronger than the inner life...
Random Posts
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 […]
ControlsI want you to try an experiment. Pick a remote control that you use frequently and tell me what each switch does. Odds are that you can’t. I would even guess that you only use a few of them. As an engineer I love choices. The more controls you give me the better. As a […]
Creating An Alexa Podcast For OpinionByPen Using Amazon PollyIn my previous post I took you on my journey to add Amazon’s speech synthesizer Polly to Opinionbypen. I have to admit I did this as an excuse to play with some of the emerging technologies offered by Amazon. Although there were a few minor obstacles along the way, Amazon has made adding speech to […]
Random Posts
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 course, it was so ancient that replacement parts were […]
Why Don’t I Have Any Visitors To My Website, Do I Have Bad SEO?When I started Opinion by Pen, I knew I was posed for fame, fortune and wealth. All I had to do was get my website established, put some advertising up and the money would start rolling in. Only two things stood in my way. I had no advertising on my website and I had no […]
Great Appearance, Good To Have, Bad To Vote ForI have a point to make but before I do so I want to put my audience in the proper frame of mind. When I consider the perfect woman I think of somebody who is very slender, drop dead gorgeous with perfect makeup and long hair. Of course with these attributes there’s no question that […]
Random Posts
A Futuristic Design Concept, REPTILEToday’s post doesn’t fall into any of my normal categories. It won’t educate you or make you think about an issue. It won’t give you a better idea of how to cope with an engineer (although you will see the imagination that my wife has to put up with). No, today I’m sharing a futuristic […]
What’s Your Opinion On MOOCs?A good friend sent me this link because he knew that I often recommend Udacity courses, San Jose State suspends collaboration with online provider. The story tells how San Jose University is scaling back their partnership with Udacity because things were not going as well as San Jose wanted. The story was interesting to me […]
An Easter Cactus FlowerNo matter how I considered it, I couldn’t come up with an appropriate post for Easter. To me, Easter announces the presence of spring and spending time with family. More than anything else it’s a time for relaxation. It was my cactus that gave me the inspiration for today’s post. Last week it decided to […]
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
WaitingJust as I feared, I got the wrong name for my website. It’s a very small thing but still annoying. I had selected OpinionByPen.com and then realized I might want more than one opinion. Easily fixed or so I thought. I then registered OpinionsByPen.com but my hosting account was still …
The Up Mini 3D Printer RevisitedThe 3D printer testing this week by Make magazine inspired me to do this follow-up post on my Up Mini 3D printer. I’ll answer the most obvious question first. Then again, maybe not, I still have no rational reason for why I bought the printer but I can enthusiastically say …
Spam Reduction, An Idea From The Thought Simulation ChamberToday I’m the recipient of some sixty odd emails. Fifty-five of them assume I’m dumber than a pile of rocks and want me to visit their website and spend money. That’s not quite true, only eight of them want me to spend money on useless junk, the rest want to …
Married To An Engineer: We See Problems DifferentlySeveral years ago, there was a study on the differences in the way dogs and wolves interacted with people. Now I’m not going to insult your intelligence by comparing engineers to wolves but the study did reveal an intriguing similarity. Like wolves, Engineers see problems differently than our counterparts. When …
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 …