robert.admin – Page 110 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 1, 2019

Two reasons (CAT EAR)

had a great insight on Don Quixote today, a little curiosity I read. On the ride home, I considered it. I lay on the couch to sip wine, pop peanuts and let the idea stew while watching dumb anime. And then the two little creatures found me. As you might have seen on my general blog, we’ve adapted two kitties, Chinki and Ritz. They are adorable family members, each as big as your hand, who came up to see what Daddy was up to and to get their cold little noses into everything. Picked up a couple of ribbon toys […]

April 28, 2019

Affair in Araby (Review)

’ll admit that I was in the middle of a religious book that was as tedious as a sermon on a rainy afternoon. Had a bus, train and cycle ride home and I wanted to read something fun. So up goes good ol’ Project Gutenberg, where I found this wonderful tale of truth and virtue and pluck and right, written way back in the twenties, a little thing that plays counter to the actual dreariness of history. So three gentlemen of adventure, Ramsden, Grim and Jeremy (the burly Australian) (oh, and Narayan Singh, their loyal Sikh) bounce back from the […]

April 27, 2019

On and on (DOG EAR)

was supposed to get $100,000 after taxes. Yes, my company was offering an early buyout and I put in for it. I’m near retirement (or ReTyrement) and I was ready to bolt. Activated the offer, waited for five weeks, then found out that my company was not genuine on this. Hardly anyone at all got it. Bait and switch. Well, shit. So today I was in a scrum call, listening to everyone grab the conversation string in a heated argument, making their points with long-winded reasoning, just double-lung blowouts of dialog. I started doing what I usually do, figuring out […]

April 25, 2019

OpsLog – LM&O – 4/24/2019

t’s crazy the way this railroad runs. If you go back through the LM&O blogs, you’ll find Harris Glen mentioned prominently. This is because it’s a long hard climb to the top, trains stall, it’s a lot of curving single track and, frankly, it was engineered to be a bottleneck. We were so clever. But tonight the beast slept. I don’t know why it was – we ran nearly everything in the roster – but Harris Glen was quiet. Oh, trains ran through but there wasn’t the desperate parade back and forth. No, this time the river route was pretty […]

April 25, 2019

KittyLog – 4/24/2019

ast night I woke up at 2am. Wondered what was going on in the house. Found the doors open in the Florida room, but Chinki and Ritz hanging close to the night light. Apparently our dark and sizable (sic) house scared them. So taking one in each hand, I carried them back to the bedroom and put them aboard. They found it interesting – lots of whisker-bristling excitement. Looking out the back window was a real gas for them. And then Chinki started hanging around the edge of the bed so I lifted her down. Off she trotted, back to […]

April 23, 2019

KittyLog – 4/22/2019

ell, we got our two kitties last night, Chinki (a Hindi word employed for cute daughters and such) and Ritz. We decided that this time we’ll get two so they won’t be lonely when left alone (and can destroy the house together). When we got them home Monday night, we decided to keep them in the Florida room for the first night (where their poo-box and food is) so they’d stabilize to the environment. We sat out there for the evening, watching them play and explore. They kept their distance, slightly nervous around us. However, later in the evening I […]

April 21, 2019

Cibola Burn (Review)

his one’s the fourth book of the series that would turn into TV’s Expanse, a sprawling space saga that deals with humans, their curiosity (or greed or lust for power, something like that), leftover weaponizable alien goo from a long-dead race, a star gate, a virgin planet, and the crew of the Rocinante. In a nutshell – refugees from the war over Ganymede cooked through the jumpgate opened at the end of book three. They claim (i.e. they land on) a planet in one of the newly-opened system. Turns out its also a planet a corporate has claimed, and their […]

April 21, 2019

OpsLog – FEC – 4/20/2019

he Orlando Boys really shined today on the Florida East Coast RR. Bob and I got demerits (me for dropping the wrong car at a siding, him for running over a turnout the wrong way). And John, he didn’t get a demerit – he got summery execution for the horror of what happened up in Frontenac (we won’t speak of it. It involved sixteen coal hoppers, a lot of industrial track and a whole bunch of time). I still think I got the short end of it. If anything, the shipper should be happy. He was getting ready to ship […]

April 18, 2019

A new beginning (DOG EAR)

ou might have noticed (please, someone notice) that my site has been pretty quiet as of late. The reason for this was my www-based ancient Joomla webpage had been hacked (again). It first came to my attention when the astronomy site booted off one of my blogs, claiming I had malware. But then my wife chirped up, saying she’d seen it too. Maybe you did – the whole survey results thing you’d first click through via my links? Once I mentioned this, everyone I knew said, “Yes, I thought that was something you did.” Please, I’d rather mug you with […]

April 14, 2019

OpsLog – WBRR – 4/13/2019

‘m usually a pretty outgoing person – lost a few jobs by shooting my mouth off. Very, very noisy, a real chatty Cathy. At the Western Bay, I’m in charge of the center aisle. Everything that goes on there goes through me. I tell the dispatcher what’s going on. I relay his orders to the crews. At one point, when 242 was fussing around in the Placerville Jct. lead and I heard on the wire that a mail train was coming west, I advised the dispatcher to advance him to Dolores (one of my stations) while my alter-ego at the […]