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
Magic, An Engineer’s Perspective
Being an engineer isn't easy. I don't mean the bewilderment that comes with social interaction. I don't mean dealing with math and science. I'm talking about trying to enjoy a good fantasy book. I'm drawn to fantasy because it gives me a vehicle to explore new...
Quitting Doesn’t Always Mean Failure
I 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...
Pepper, Someone Else’s Problem
I’m mad and worse I find myself exceedingly frustrated because I can’t express the full depth of my anger. All my life has been suppressing anger in favor of calm rational analysis. No, I don’t pretend to be Spock but I do believe anger can distract from the message....
The Demise of the PC, Where I Blame Everbody
Writing this post took a lot longer than usual. It wasn't all the additional research, the facts are staring us in the face. This post depressed me because it was so obvious. Building your own PC is about to go the way of the 70’s muscle cars, suddenly the entire...
A Design Principle Frequently Forgotten
In his lectures on rhetoric, Professor Michael Drout said write what your audience needs to hear, not what you want to say. Each time he said that I nodded my head in agreement. This concept was important enough that he repeated it several times at various points in...
Sequestration, Escrow and Congressional Cuts, An Idea
Think about this. You’ve known for a while that your company was having some issues. Your company seems to be slipping in its market position and recently the board of directors can't seem to agree on anything. Your manager calls you into his office to tell you that...
Random Posts
Are The Engineers In Your Life Ignoring You? What You Can Do About ItIf there’s an engineer in your life, I’m certain you often feel ignored by them. Don’t take it personally, it happens to everyone. My goal is to explain why they seem to be ignoring you and how to improve your situation. Notice I did not say gain full attention. Having the full attention of an […]
A Brief Guided Tour of an Engineer’s Thought ProcessI’m going to break a few rules today. I’m going to take you on a guided tour of an engineer’s thought process. Just in case you know an engineer and realize just how easily we get distracted, we’ll keep this very focused with no detours allowed. My particular brand of engineering is electrical but except […]
Google Wallet, PO Boxes and No Nexus 7I promise this will be my last word on the subject but looking at the traffic to my website I’m not the only person not getting a Nexus 7 tablet today at my PO Box because Google Wallet cancelled their order. The issue is interesting because it shows a massive lack of communication between Google […]
Random Posts
Does Communication Method Influence Thought?I want to confess that my previous post was an experiment in communication. No, there’s no subliminal messages or hidden phrases. It wasn’t written using a random buzzword generator. Instead, it was written almost completely by dictating it to Dragon Naturally Speaking. Hmm, I see by the expression on your face, you don’t understand why […]
Why Did My Electric Blanket Fail? An Autopsy Into Its DeathMy electric blanket was just your typical, everyday electric blanket, barely a year old and lightly used. It came with a promising five-year warranty, a promise that quickly dissolved into nothing when the supplier conveniently went out of business or changed their name, a mere six months later. Then, as fate would have it, on […]
Handwriting as a training method?There are a number of people that would describe my personality as a tightly closed book, written in small font, in code. I wasn’t always this open. When I still lived in the city I had a ritual for starting my weekend. On Saturday morning I would walk to a used bookstore to pick out […]
Random Posts
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman, Too Enjoyable?The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman was an unexpected treat. You would expect a collection of lectures from a Nobel Winning particle physicist to be dry, containing lots of math and another incomprehensible discussion on why they believe certain subatomic particles to exist. That was certainly not the case. Please understand, I’m […]
What Are The Odds? You’ll Enjoy Udacity StatisticsDuring the Christmas and New Year’s holiday’s I was doing research on hard drive failures when I came across the white paper by Google on hard drive failures. It’s a really nice breakdown of hard drive failure statistics. A few caveats before I get into the details, the paper was presented in 2007, based on […]- Does Communication Method Influence Thought?I want to confess that my previous post was an experiment in communication. No, there’s no subliminal messages or hidden phrases. It wasn’t written using a random buzzword generator. Instead, it was written almost completely by dictating it to Dragon Naturally Speaking. Hmm, I see by the expression on your face, you don’t understand why […]
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
Married To An Engineer, The New CarBefore you start reading, I should warn you that this post has a lot of math. It’s not complicated, it’s not difficult and you really don’t need to follow the math to get the point I’m trying to make but the math is there. I only want you to see that I …
Justifying My AI Hobby By Finding Blaze A Forever HomeFrom my early teenage years, technology has always played a significant part in my life. Though I was late to the party, I joined the technology revolution as the world transitioned from vacuum tubes to transistors in 1963. By 1975, I found myself in the midst of the personal computer …
Space Heaters, They Need Lots of PowerIt’s winter again in Texas. Most of the time, unless you’re a farmer, that statement means very little to us but every once in a while it gets below freezing and we break out the space heaters. These little heaters are very useful in heating greenhouses, in heating parts of …
So Much Knowledge Lost Through RetirementI have a friend who has retired after many years as a mechanical designer. He was as good as most engineers when it came to mechanical design but he didn’t have the degree that would allow him to call himself an engineer. Certainly he recognized his limitations. If you asked …
How To Take Part In A FCC Scam Without Really TryingI think I’ve made my view of the current FCC leadership fairly clear. In my opinion, commissioner Ajit Pai has lied and misrepresented facts in order to turn the Internet over to the big cable companies. When I read that the New York Attorney General was investigating a FCC scam, …