Author Archives: Doug

When I decided to leave the IT world in July 2005 and try to get into the aerospace industry, my dream was to work for XCOR Aerospace or a company like it — a small company working on getting humanity … Continue reading →

Popped open one of my bottles of Graybeard Nut Brown Ale this evening to check the carbonation. It gushed all over the table, a foamy brown fountain. Yes, it was carbonating very well, thank you.
I stuck another bottle in the … Continue reading →

As I read the various Steve Jobs eulogies and retrospectives, I keep seeing the same things come up. USB, killing the floppy, iPhone, iPad. Believe it or not, his influence was even greater than the extravagant lists being published this … Continue reading →

When I read the news, on my 11th Macintosh, I felt a great shock. Suddenly something huge but unnoticed inside me was gone, and I felt dizzy and hollow.
Sure, I knew he was sick, but this? Unthinkable. How could he … Continue reading →

NMSU requires students to take a certain number of courses from outside their major.  They’re called “Viewing a Wider World” courses. This term I’m taking my last one.  It’s from the Chemical Engineering department, and it’s called “Brewing Science and … Continue reading →

Every full moon, the White Sands National Monument (an hour away from my house) stays open late to let the public enjoy the moonrise over the surreal White Sands landscape.  On June 15, five of us went.  These are a … Continue reading →

My last IT job ended in 2005.  I sat down and thought about what I should do next. With a world of possibilities before me, I came up with this personal mission statement:
To make a material contribution to the creation … Continue reading →

So NASA decided where the Space Shuttles will end up, and Houston wasn’t on the list. Neither were 24 other sites, including my long-shot favorite (Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, OR) but they were all without fail … Continue reading →

Calm down, everyone. I didn’t discover a new constant, as tantalizingly suggested (tongue-in-cheek) in my previous post.
Recap: While writing programs to calculate pi, I experimented with a circle-drawing algorithm called Bresenham’s Circle Algorithm. It turns out that if … Continue reading →