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
Thank You Udacity
What do I like about Udacity? From ST101 Statistics that I just finished, to CS387 Cryptography that I will have to take again, I've enjoyed the challenge and the learning experience. The instructors enjoy their work and it shows. With a very professional appearance...
Blogging Changes and Improvements
Two months ago I posted about the mistakes I made in starting this blog. It's in my nature to review the changes I'm made since then and give them an objective look. The most obvious change is my theme. I know I said that I wouldn't but as I also said, it was...
Email, A Training Tool For Poor Performance
In 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...
Time, A Perspective and An Apology
When it comes to time I seem to have a lot of conflicting behaviors. If a meeting is supposed to start at 10AM, I strive to be there on time. If my meeting is supposed to last one hour, it will end before the hour is up. These actions are categorized by many people as...
Olympics, Meet The Connected Age
Every two years my wife starts building her media center for Olympic viewing. This consists of carefully looking at all the schedules, verifying that all the recording devices operate, verifying that everything is hooked up correctly and that we get all the channels...
Adobe Premier Elements 10, Almost a Review
One of the things that I'm trying to improve on is the inclusion of videos in my posts. Enforcing that, my wife has recently started using her iPad to record dog runs during her Agility shows. That gives me the perfect excuse to start looking at video editing...
Random Posts
After The Crash, Comparing Backup Software, Acronis, Aomei and ParagonThe idea behind a software review is to give an unbiased appraisal of the program. Unfortunately most reviews are anything but unbiased. As hard as I tried, this review is no exception. After my experiences last month, I decided to see what else was out there for backup software. Given my love hate relationship with […]
Married To An Engineer, The Christmas Dinner DilemmaI just discovered that I’ll be having steak for Christmas dinner instead of the ham everyone else will be having. Truthfully, I don’t see this as a bad thing but I hate to see this happen simply because my wife and I don’t seem to communicate on the meaning of like and don’t like. My […]
The Solar Powered Chicken Coop Fan Project RevisitedBetween Google, Pinterest and the renewed interest in keeping chickens, my solar powered chicken coop fan project has become a very popular post. Although low maintenance, I was replacing the battery every year. The Texas heat and the way I hooked it up both conspired to shorten the life of the battery. This year I […]
Random Posts
Lower Gas Prices And 100 MPG The Congressional WayOver the last few weeks I’ve been thinking hard about two things, how to get lower gas prices and how to get better mileage on my vehicle. It was while I was in the thought simulation chamber (shower to you) that the solution came to me. I was amazed, all these weeks I’ve been thinking […]
The Use and Misuse of Metrics, What Do They Mean?I was showing a book in my Kindle library to a fellow engineer this week when he noticed the time to the end of the chapter was two minutes and fifteen seconds. The book was interesting to him but the use of reading metrics was even more interesting, not because of what it meant but because […]
Married To A Systems Engineer, Why Do Engineers Ask So Many QuestionsI really don’t think it’s fair for my wife to break into uncontrollable laughter every time I explain that as a systems engineer, most of my job involves facilitating communications. I understand why she starts laughing, despite speaking a common language, communication between the two of us is difficult but that’s still no excuse. She […]
Random Posts
An Engineer Muses On Fictional WritingIf you’ve seen the movie, Apollo 13, you remember the scene where the mission director comes in with a box of stuff dumps it on the desk and says this is what we’ve got, make it work. I don’t think there’s an engineer out there who wouldn’t love to have that challenge. Just watching the […]
Shelby, We Miss YouOur first and oldest Australian Shepherd, Shelby, died early Monday morning. Her death was a natural one brought about by old age. We knew it was coming but the knowledge did little to soften the loss. She spent fifteen too short years with us, having joined our family as a rescue at the approximate age of two. […]
Can A Love Of Reading Be Considered A Secret Advantage?If you were to ask me what my professional secret advantage is, I would say I love reading. Seems to be a strange thing to brag about. After all, almost all of us can read. The fact that you are reading this post says you can read but do you enjoy it? When you need […]
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 Proposal For Developing Engineering SynergyIf you work in a factory you’re used to hearing management babble, just think about your mission statement. If it’s like most mission statements out there, it’s a collection of meaningless phrases. Take this for example, “Utilizing our engineering synergy, we will develop a paradigm of waste cutting and improved …
UdacityWhen I signed up for CS101: Building a Search Engine at www.Udacity.com, I had no idea what to expect. I’ll admit what I really wanted to sign up for was CS373:Programming a Robotic Car. After a careful examination of the requirements for CS373, I realized I’d always wanted to build …
Bell, Book and iPadWhen it comes to understanding women I often feel that my engineering background is a handicap. My entire career has been based on evaluating data, solving problems and looking beyond the obvious to find a root cause. All of which seems to be completely useless when it comes to dealing …
Adobe Premier Elements 10, Almost a ReviewOne of the things that I’m trying to improve on is the inclusion of videos in my posts. Enforcing that, my wife has recently started using her iPad to record dog runs during her Agility shows. That gives me the perfect excuse to start looking at video editing software. When …
What Idiot Designed This? In Defense Of EngineersEver try to fix something and ask yourself, “what idiot designed this?” It’s certainly happened to me often enough. Yeah, a few of those times it was one of my own designs but we’re not going to discuss those today. Before I get too far into this post let me …