Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips I receive a Fiskars tool for cutting open those annoying plastic packages. I often find that the best Christmas gifts of my life are (1) unexpected and (2) inexpensive. Such happened this year. The photo here shows such a gift from this year. It is a cutting tools from Fiskars. It cuts [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips <rant>Baseball now moves into the World Series. You take the pennant winners from the National and American leagues and play a best-of-seven series to see who is the best in the world. Now, let’s see if we can ruin this. People must be trying to ruin this, because they are succeeding at [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Most people in America still see college as fun first and education second. At least education is in the top two. Here is an article about the slow pace of adoption of online learning in colleges. The technology is here and has been here for years. Still, most colleges don’t go online. [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips I’ve sold a few short stories on Smashwords. I’m thrilled. Back in February 2011, I declared that I was posting my short stories on Smashwords. To date, I have sold about $65 worth of stories. I am pleasantly surprised. The key to selling as many stories as I have is the Smashwords Premium [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips One of the few things I remember learning in high school is that if I keep quiet about some privilege I have, no one minds. I guess I learned a lot of things in high school. I remember that I learned how to play a couple of musical instruments and march in [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Systems are built to satisfy the requirements of the user. Sometimes, engineers want to add things, i.e., they desire to add things. Such are “desire-ments,” and they can kill projects. I walked into an existing project. Well, I  wasn’t in the middle of the project, but I was to work with a [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some various thoughts on Apple, writing, the TSA, the Talent Economy, and National Novel Writing Month. sundry: (adjective) assorted: consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds. wordnetweb.princeton.edu My mind is racing with a number of different things. I couldn’t decide what to write in the regular Thursday blog posting. Then one [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips I often see claims that software systems will be secure, i.e., only authorized people will be able to see the information. Just as often I see cases where “secure” software systems are broken and the data are spilled onto the floor for all to see. Why? I believe it is a simple [...]

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by Dwayne Phillips A list of some fun things. This past weekend, someone asked, When was the last time you had fun? I thought about this for a while (there is a message in there about thinking about feelings, but let’s not digress to that today). I wrote a list: taking a walk for 1,100 [...]

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