Author: Rob

  • Cargo

    I’m a sucker for a  good zombie movie. There’s just something about that mix of post-apocalypse and body horror that makes for the perfect sub-genre.

  • Sharp Objects review

    Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was a pretty great debut novel. I’m so impressed with Flynn’s sharp wit. She has this acerbic dissection of everyday relationships that is both hard to read, yet difficult to quit. As soon as I read Gone Girl, I was hooked on her…

  • de-Facebooking my life

    de-Facebooking my life

    I sometimes can be mistaken for a curmudgeon.  Perhaps it comes with age. Perhaps it’s my field which breeds overly particular engineers obsessing about better ways of doing things.

  • TortoiseSVN + Escape = tears

    TortoiseSVN + Escape = tears

    So I’m nearly done committing my software changes using the normally amazing TortoiseSVN. I’m about 200 words into this tome, documenting all the arcane bits of changes that I feel will aid the future Rob and other devs understand why I did what I did. And what should I do at that ill-timed moment? I…

  • Cordifying battery things

    Cordifying battery things

    In my house, we have a ton of “batteried” devices.  Having small children, in this modern age, one tends to collect a lot of toys, tools, crafts, and associated appliances that require an array of batteries.  Triple- and double-As are in high demand, though 9V and even the C cells are occasionally used.  Don’t even get…

  • Einstein’s religious thoughts

    I found some old collected daily calendar Einstein quotes that rang true to me recently.  Enjoy… I think that a man’s moral worth is not measured by what his religious beliefs are, but rather by what emotional impulses he has received from nature. To sister Margarit Goelmer, Feb 1955 One cannot help but be in…

  • Android visual automation programming

    Android visual automation programming

    My day job has me thinking about automation for a living . And while I try not to bring the office home with me, these concepts tend to follow me around.

  • Master vanity renovation

    Master vanity renovation

    I replaced the old, nasty vanity and sink in our master bedroom with a new (to us) double sink. It took me forever to do, since I’m not so great at texturing and plumbing, but my wife was understanding with the slow progress. 🙂

  • The broken engineering interview process

    The broken engineering interview process

    Imagine yourself in an interview, sitting in front of 5-10 others of your field. Midway through, the group’s questions drift from the personal and work experiential to the assessing and cross-examining.  They ask you to step up to The Whiteboard, marker in hand, and prove what you know.  Never mind that you’re not fresh out…

  • Redesigning our family finance

    Redesigning our family finance

    The art of personal finance has been a topic of interest for me for most of my adult life. Some people feel strongly about it, choosing all manner of tools, software, processes, etc.; while others employ no real system at all, opting for a more intuitive sense of financial decision-making. That’s a wide spectrum of…