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
I’m Male But I’m Not That Stubborn, Really
I 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...
An Engineer Attempts Valentine’s Day
Today is that most feared of all days, Valentine’s Day. You don't fear Valentine’s Day? That can only mean you’re not an engineer or you’re not married to an engineer. Still not understanding? As an engineer, I automatically analyze all aspects of my life. When it...
I’m Male, My Stubbornness Comes Naturally
Male stubbornness is legendary. I think more jokes have been made about us never asking for directions than jokes about lawyers. We know you’re making fun of us and we still refuse to ask for directions. Let’s face it, Garmin is making a fortune off that trait. It’s...
Email Scam or Luckiest Man Alive?
I must be the luckiest man alive. Three weeks ago when I was looking at my bills and wondering how I was going to pay them, I got an email from an attorney in England. Some wealthy relative I didn’t even know about had died and left me his fortune. I immediately sent...
A Look Back at Some of My Favorite Posts
Each post I write is a snapshot in time. Sometimes I go back to correct them or add a little more information but I’ve learned that I always need to continue looking forward. Rewriting my old posts, as much as they might need it, doesn’t give me time to write new...
A Study In Communication As Demonstrated by Sadie
As 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...
Random Posts
Re-occurring Bills, Do The Companies Just Not Get It?It’s that time of the month again, the week most of my bills come due. Prior to retirement, I gave very little thought to making insurance payments as they were automatically extracted from my paycheck. Retirement brought monthly insurance bills. Just thinking about the cost raises my blood pressure by ten points, but I have […]
Storing Passwords In Your Browser, A Poor Security Practice?When it comes to computer security, I used to pride myself on being pretty savvy. That self-assuredness shattered when I had the daunting task of replacing my wife’s computer. The moment revealed to me a shocking truth about my own security ignorance. Her ancient machine wasn’t quite dead, but it was gasping for life. I […]
Udacity RevisitedIt’s Thursday night and I’m doing my homework for week two of Udacity CS253 Web Application Engineering. I haven’t even started doing CS387 Applied Cryptography content for this week. I may have bitten off a little more than I can chew for this run. My struggles cause me to think a lot about learning. This […]
Random Posts
Customer Retention, A Forgotten Concept Or Counting On Our LazinessI just finished deleting Opinionbypen. No, not this version of my blog obviously. I’m talking about the version hosted at GoDaddy. This year when my renewal rolled around, GoDaddy rewarded my tenure with a rate increase. Having been with then for five years, they could have rewarded my customer loyalty with a discount. Instead they […]
How To Torture An Engineer, An Engineer’s Wife Shows You The WayEver wonder how to torture an engineer? You know you want to get rid of that smug know it all attitude. No, I’m not talking about staking us to an antbed. Over the years, my wife has developed some very effective techniques. Let me share an example with you. Last week I was sequestered out […]
Spam, Spam and More Spam, A Closer Look At The DetailsReceiving more spam than email? Drowning in Amazon order cancellations? Wondering why your spam filter is so inefficient? I still believe I had the perfect solution when I suggested taxing email but no one seemed to like that idea. If you consider knowledge as power, I’m going to give you some power over these spammers. […]
Random Posts
Quitting Doesn’t Always Mean FailureI spent a lot of time thinking of ways to say I was not finishing Udacity’s Interactive 3D Graphics course without sounding like a quitter. I even wrote a post on the difference between failure and quitting. The funny thing is that I’m probably the only one that cares. It’s not like Udacity is going […]
Musings On Why Organizations Fail and How You Can Prevent ItJust after Easter, a friend told me about attending the last meeting of a club he had helped start almost 42 years ago. Their downfall was caused by a simple problem, nobody wanted to serve as officers. I suspect there were other factors too but considering the state of our government, we can certainly see […]
Christmas Ideas From My Fox Alien 4040 VastoShortly after I retired, Fox Alien put their 4040 Vasto CNC on sale. The timing was perfect. I had already decided I wanted to get serious about carving wood, and although I had highly modified my 3018 (now a 3040), it was limited. First impression: the Vasto is massive. The name should have warned me, […]
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
Office 2013 Terms, Marketing Ploy or Greed?Revised March 6, 2013: After reading my post Microsoft had a change of heart and relented on allowing you to transfer your copy of Office 2013. They made the announcement today allowing you to transfer it every 90 days. They did not mention my blog in particular but I know …
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, …
A SEO Enhanced ResumePeople tell us not to judge a book by the cover but we’ve all passed up good books because of poor cover art. If you think about it, your resume serves much the same function as a book cover and let’s face it, compared to our counterparts in marketing, most …
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 …
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 …