robert.admin – Page 101 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 29, 2019

The Saddest Little Bookstore (DOG EAR)

f course, you’d think I’d love finding a bookstore that offered old favorites I loved to read, just hundreds of them, at the low low price of nothing. Sure. Except that in this case, I’m cleaning out the dozens of boxes of old paperbacks and comics I’ve accumulated over the years. Mission One of retirement is to clean out the garage and make room for Mission Two, cleaning out the storage unit. And that means pulling down all those boxes I’ve dragged from place to place with the expectation that someday I’d have a full spare room with dozens of […]

August 25, 2019

No Other Gods (Review)

till crushing my way through a major book. And given what’s going on in my life (details in Thursday’s Dog Ear) I’ve got a lot of short story collections floating around. So this one comes from Catastrophes, a collection of short end-of-the-world scifies edited by Asimov, Greenberg and Waugh. It looks at disasters that end life, from the galactic to the localized. I’ve just puttered through two stories and picked this one to pass along. So it turns out Yvonne and Quinton, doctors of science and seemingly out in a spaceship, in and out of hyperspace, come back to find […]

August 25, 2019

OpsLog – FEC – 8/24/2019

ince the dispatcher’s seat was filled with a trainee (Doug, who did a damn good job out of the chute) and the yard was filled with the Lady’s Quilting and Trim/Classification Club, I was out on the road again. And there’s no time like waiting at a red board to wax philosophic on the meanings or life and model railroading. To wit – the puzzle of industrial switching on the standard out-n-back turn. When you run one of these jobs, switching your way through a set of towns along the mainline, it begins to feel like an intelligence test. So […]

August 22, 2019

Time for Crime (DOG EAR)

s mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I’ve retired (or “ReTyred“, shameless plug). And as others have warned me, I am now busier than I’ve ever been. I’ve got a garage to clean, a storage room to sort and shut down. I’ve got a newsletter to edit (more on that in a later blog). Three times a week bike rides. Meeting with the accountant. Gardening. Astronomy. Model railroading. And, of course, writing. But here’s the rub. Back when I was a workaday-Joe, I had a good couple of hours a week to write – this was called “lunchtime”. I’d just find […]

August 19, 2019

OpsLog – L&S – 8/18/2019

oing some final switching in the Longwood yard. Got my buddy Greg back in the caboose, going through the waybills and trying to figure how to block this local. We’re shuffling in the yard throat with one eye down those long paired rails that follow the slow rises and falls of the marshy ground through a cave of cyprus trees. The L&S runs on a very simple operations principle – don’t crash. And we’ve got a train overdue. It’s been (by my quick flip back through the blogs) four years since the last time we ran on this Southern division. […]

August 18, 2019

Roasting Robert Raymond (Review)

‘ll admit that I’m still chiselling through Infinite Jest (with literally no end in sight) and I needed something to review. But then I remembered this effort by a local writer-in-training (the dark-contessa-like Marilyn Yokley), who roasted me with this in my retyrement (nyuk) party the other day. It’s a good example of how to lovingly roast someone – not cutting and sharp but rather just bringing aspects of a personality (in this case, mine) to bear. And to Marilyn, as Cardinal Richelieu put it; “One must be careful what one writes… and who one gives it to.” Roasting […]

August 17, 2019

Squirrelly Retyrement

oday was my last day at FedEx. It’s been twenty years (counting in my contractor time) and it’s been a hell of a ride. I’ve gone through a number of managers and made more friends than I realized. So today was the going-away party. I was thinking it would be maybe some sheet cake and a dozen mooching well-wishers. Ended up with a large packed conference room with two orgs, a bunch of returning retirees, cake (yes, but still), food, drinks, a plaque, speeches, roasts, handshakes, hugs. Two hours of this. It was a choke-up moment that went on and […]

August 15, 2019

Two heroes (DOG EAR)

f you know me (or have read this column for any length of time) you know I love good storytelling. And I’m always looking for good tales. I watch Japanese sitcoms, good miniseries, Indian song-and-dance epics, just about everything. I’m always open to suggestions. So, recently, my niece’s boyfriend told me (since we both share a love of anime) that I should watch HunterXHunter. And a friend from two decades back told me that Longmire was one to watch. So I started them both. HunterXHunter is the story of Gon, a plucky little kid who wants to take “the Hunter Exam” and become […]

August 11, 2019

Genius without Education (Review)

‘m currently plowing through Infinite Jest (a massive book, and I don’t think the exchange will be reciprocal). Anyway, kiddies, that means it’s time for another one of my short stories from The End, a massive collection of the best the late Jurassic Publishing could offer. I was a little surprised at this one. Genius without Education comes from the string of western stories Jurassic commissioned (I should know – I submitted one). In this short story, we have a mysterious woman (named Genuine Truth) comes to the town of Pandemonium. That she comes with a Chinese servants (siblings, a […]

August 8, 2019

Pixar’s Screenwriting rules

came across this on the web, a (supposed but not verified) list of rules Pixar has forwarded to it’s screenwriters. Possibly you might find use for them in your own writing. Or maybe not. If you are trying to write a book on your own and throwing yourself open to your creative muses, don’t put too much into this. But if it’s long green you are after, consider them. #1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes. #2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as […]