Company Buyouts, Good For The Consumer?

You're justifiably proud of your waffle maker. It was a lesser-known brand, yet it cost half as much as its competitors, and its brilliant texture sensor guaranteed you got flawless waffles every time. Unfortunately, as soon as you plugged it in, someone mistook your...

Interspecies Communication As Experienced By An Engineer

I thoroughly enjoyed the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise because they spent much of the time grappling with communication issues. Universal translators, missing databases, peculiar methods of communication, and one memorable episode without a translator. I...

A Conspiracy Theory Regarding Encryption Creating My Dilemma

It seems that the current trend on social media is overwhelmingly conspiracy theories, especially as elections draw near. I’m not particularly drawn to the political ones, but I'm gripped by a conspiracy theory regarding encryption that's threatening to upend my...

From the Doghouse

A look at dogs having fun

Poser Gallery

My gallery of pictures I’ve created in Poser

Nature by Carol

A look at the less technical side of life

Retirement, A Very Personal Fear

Retirement, A Very Personal Fear

Fear is a funny thing. I’ve seen grown men injure themselves to escape a common garden spider. Personally, I’m petrified when I have to climb higher than 3 feet on a ladder. They’ve never been bitten by a spider, I’ve never fallen off a ladder, so why the paralyzing...

read more

Random Posts

  • WW2 and Hacked Email AccountsWW2 and Hacked Email Accounts
    I really enjoy World War II British movies. In a time of adversity, the British people pulled together. With rationing, nightly blackouts and regular air raids, you would expect some very cranky people. Knowing their way of life was being threatened allowed them to pull together and display some of the finer moments of humanity. […]
  • The Sunshine Greenhouse, a Six Hour ProjectThe Sunshine Greenhouse, a Six Hour Project
    Every year that my wife and I went to the State Fair of Texas, we looked at greenhouses. My wife would always tell me she wanted one. I always had plenty of excuses not to get one, we could not decide on a model, we could not decide on a location, there was not enough […]
  • An Engineer’s Plan For Romance On Valentine’s DayAn Engineer’s Plan For Romance On Valentine’s Day
    It’s not that I hate Valentine’s Day but I certainly have reason to fear it. From my point of view, nothing good comes from this holiday. Forget it and I’m in the doghouse. Use the day to tell my wife I love her and my wife questions me about the other 364 days. Putting in a bird […]

Random Posts

  • Why is An Engineer So Brutally Honest But Still Can’t Read A Schedule?Why is An Engineer So Brutally Honest But Still Can’t Read A Schedule?
    For a marketing person, introducing a potential customer to an engineer is the stuff nightmares are made from. Engineers can be brutally honest about technology. Note I said technology. We’re perfectly capable of lying. Ask us about schedule, percent complete, does this dress make me look fat…. On second thought, we’re not always good about […]
  • Vampires, They Exist and Their Numbers Are GrowingVampires, They Exist and Their Numbers Are Growing
    There was a time when Science Fiction described different worlds, aliens, spaceships and ray guns. Sometimes the science was a thin veneer for the author’s own social/political views but even those were usually entertaining. Not quite Science fiction but close enough to be stocked with the Science Fiction were the Swords and Sorcery novels. Tolkien […]
  • Outsourcing Our Mind To Gadgets, The Sad Case For HumanityOutsourcing Our Mind To Gadgets, The Sad Case For Humanity
    When 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 used to pride myself on […]

Random Posts

  • Email Taxation, Musings From The Thought Simulation ChamberEmail Taxation, Musings From The Thought Simulation Chamber
    I’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 […]
  • The Challenge of Blogging and an OfferThe Challenge of Blogging and an Offer
    It should be obvious that I write this blog in hopes of other people reading it. I have no advertising on my site and certainly no one is paying me to write it. I do get some satisfaction out of the creative effort and working on this blog has certainly improved my ability to express […]
  • The Great Courses, I Almost Missed ThemThe Great Courses, I Almost Missed Them
    I have a long list of topics for blogs sitting in my Dropbox folder. I even have a few unfinished posts that would only take a short time to finish. The problem is that nothing appeals to me as a subject and I try to do at least one new post a week. Being completely […]

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

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

  • Amazon vs Hachette, A Consumer’s ViewAmazon vs Hachette, A Consumer’s View
    In the current argument between Amazon and Hachette, I’m not qualified to discuss the finer details of price points and author royalties. What I can discuss is my opinion and my response as a consumer. I don’t expect anything I say to influence Hachette. I think they see e-books as …
  • BYOD, a Rallying Cry For RevolutionBYOD, a Rallying Cry For Revolution
    BYOD, Bring Your Own Device, is a relatively new term. It reflects the desire of employees to use their own tablet, iPad or Android device rather than using the device provided by their company. I’ve been here before and it’s nothing less than a revolution, not one of violence or …
  • Class Action Suits, A Way To Balance The Budget?Class Action Suits, A Way To Balance The Budget?
    The odds are strong you’ve been a client in a class action suit. You might never know you were involved in one. Maybe more than one, I know I’ve been represented in several. It seems the moment you buy something, you’re automatically included in a class action suit. Many of …
  • An AI Assistant Comparison, Alexa, Google and Folgers?An AI Assistant Comparison, Alexa, Google and Folgers?
    Once they hit the market, it was a given that sooner or later I would acquire one of the AI assistants on the market. The only thing holding me back was bandwidth and cost. When Google dropped the price on their mini and Amazon dropped the price on their Dot. …
  • Whimsy, This Engineer’s Stress ReliefWhimsy, This Engineer’s Stress Relief
    Such a funny word, whimsy. It’s almost self-defining, although that could be because I’ve known what it meant for so long. For the rest of you, it’s defined as a capricious humor and I think there’s far too little of it in today’s life. Most people tend to think of …

Recent Comments

Gravityscan Badge