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
Heidi’s Heavenly Cookies, Wow
I enjoy writing this blog because I'm not constrained to a single topic. Today is all about cookies. Let me set the background. I love cookies. Everyone who knows me knows I love cookies. The only thing that lured me off my Atkins diet was cookies. My Food Scout...
How Do I Know If an Engineer Loves Me
About once a month I see a Google query from someone wanting to know how to tell if an engineer loves them. Google, for reasons best known to Google, directs them to my post How to Argue With an Engineer. I don't know if this is always the same person but their...
In Search of an Editor
I'm afraid that my mental picture of a newspaper editor is largely limited to movie characters. Perry White and J. Jonah Jameson are two that come to mind. I also assumed that they had something to do with the big picture for a newspaper but I never gave it much...
Congress, Too Focused on Being Politicians? – Part 2
There's an old saying "The enemy of my enemy is my ally". Congress has certainly made me see the truth of that. My Mother-in-Law is a very nice person that shares my love of technology. There's two topics where we are polar opposites, choice of computer platforms and...
Congress, Too Focused on Being Politicians?
My previous post on Congress made me wonder, how is it possible that the people in Congress don't see themselves in the same light we do? How can you have a 10% approval rating and honestly feel like you are doing the job you were elected for? All the evidence says...
What Are The Odds? You’ll Enjoy Udacity Statistics
During 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,...
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 that’s they way it happened, […]
Why Can’t I get The Internet Speed I’m Paying For?This year my electric company made me a deal I couldn’t refuse, 1000 Mbps Internet. Only two years ago, I was still living with two very questionable ADSL lines from AT&T. On a good day I might get 1.2 Mbps. Last year T-Mobile Home offered service in my area and I felt like I had […]
An Opinion On Opinions. Why The Other Guy Isn’t Always WrongWith all the freedom and enlightenment our society is supposed to have, I find it amazing how little tolerance we have for someone with an opinion that differs from ours. Maybe the anonymity provided by the Internet reinforces this behavior, Twitter certainly seems to thrive on a crowd mentality. Still, I’ve seen a lot of […]
Random Posts
Shelby, The Reason I Have Australian ShepherdsGiven a number of choices, each having equal weight, I tend to use minor factors to decide rather than make a totally random choice. In this case a post on Shelby won out because she looks really good in the previous post with my wife. Shelby was and still is our first Australian Shepherd. She […]
Happy Mother’s DayIf I had given thought to the idea, I would have timed my Celebration post to come out on Mother’s Day. Then again, my Mother deserves her own post for all the grief I gave her as a child. The following are a few examples of what she had to cope with while raising me. […]
Email, A Training Tool For Poor PerformanceIn a typical game you have a number of obstacles that you have to overcome. Overcome enough of them and you gain a level. Not unexpectedly, the designers of these games often use psychologists to maximize the rush of endorphins you get for each accomplishment. It should come as no surprise that responding to your […]
Random Posts
Emotional Content as a Communication ProtocolI’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 and understand that the maximum rate of communication is limited […]
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 engineer in your life, you […]
The Martian Notifier, Another Smartwatch?In today’s world it’s a given that in every large gathering of people somebody’s ring tone will blare out. Choosing not to be that person, I try to always keep my phone on vibrate. Only two problems with that plan, because I keep my phone in a holster, I don’t always feel it and worse, […]
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
How A Hijacked Post Helped Me Realize The Value of CommentsWhen I said I wanted to expand my Opinionbypen experience, I was thinking more about advertising and social media. I didn’t mean getting my website hacked or getting one of my posts hijacked and yet so far this year that’s exactly what’s happened. There’s no other way for me to …
Making Decisions Based On Website DataIf there’s an engineer in your life, you know how utterly fascinated we are by data. We use data to make purchases, to troubleshoot and to make important decisions. In How to Argue with an Engineer, I told you how engineers use data to support our arguments. It should come as …
What Can Spirit Animals Teach Us About Today’s America?This week, while perusing my feed on Bluesky, I stumbled upon a post in which someone shared that she had just learned that crows can hold a grudge for 17 years and thus declared crows as her new spirit animal. While many responses expressed surprise or shared their own observations, …
A Design Principle Frequently ForgottenIn 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 his lecture. …
Apathy, How To Waste Your VoteOver the last few months I’ve had some very harsh words for our politicians in Washington. My Mother-in-law pointed out that the politicians really aren’t to blame for our current situation. They may be totally incompetent and dysfunctional but it’s not their fault they are in office. The only reason …