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February 15, 2018

No feedback (DOG EAR)

es, it’s been a while. My computer cratered and it’s been the work of a half month (one week for the shop to scrub and rewindow my box, then one for me to reinstall and reconnect everything). I’ve got a ton of book reviews in the hopper (I’d lose myself in reading to escape my Tron woes). But it got me thinking about other things. Like the feedback I’ve gotten off the bottom of my entries (yes, if you scroll down, you’ll notice it’s no longer there). The reason for this is many-fold. First, it’s not because I don’t like […]

January 25, 2018

Book Burning (DOG EAR)

here comes a time in every book’s life when you flip to the final page and read to the bottom. And then you think, “Wonderful.” Or possibly, “Thank Christ that’s done.” But either way, we get to the end of all books (even if we blow the canopy early and bail). The question then becomes – what to do with those leftovers? Yes. For the books that made me smile or spoke to me in my loneliness, that connected to my soul in some way, I keep. There is a straining set of shelves in the Florida room I place […]

January 24, 2018

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/24/2018

o now I know what having a stroke is like. Usual session. Everyone came. We cleaned. Trains went on the rails. People signed up. In the back office I booted my computer and readied the fast clock. Odd, it booted up at 15:1. Normally the club runs at 10:1. That was a problem a few years back but I easily corrected it. And then it was hot, and then we were running. Just like a chess game. 202 went into the siding at Zanesville as it had for at least a hundred times. Silver Bullet 2 stormed by on the […]

January 17, 2018

Advocate (DOG EAR)

never started out to be a bicycle advocate. It just sort of happened. I didn’t even think about bikes in my twenties. One day in my early thirties, my brother peddled over to my house and while we were chatting offered his bike over for a spin. “Well, I don’t know. It’s not really my thing blabbady blah”. So I rode. And I rather liked it. A few days later I started talking bikes with the two ride-to-workers, getting some ideas. For the next four years I was riding four miles in every day. After I got canned from that […]

January 14, 2018

Yowamushi Pedal (1-3) (Review)

kay, seen the show. And now, for Christmas, my wife bought me the Manga (first three volumes) of Yowamushi Pedal. So for those who are old, manga are Japanese comic books. They are read in Japanese fashion, right to left, which takes some getting used to. And for those who might scoff at me reviewing “kiddy comic books”, I’ll point out that Manga is big business in Japan. The top seller (One Piece) pushed over 12 million copies over the counters last year. And when you scroll down the list, you realize that we are talking about millions and millions […]

January 14, 2018

ShowLog – Deland – 1/13&14/2018

irst show of the new year and the railroad was staffed and run at full capacity for the two day Deland show. A good group showed up on Saturday morning for the miracle (with donuts) set up – one hour from truck tailgate to basement-sized railroad. And all day we were packed. Lots of visitors. Lots of favorable comments. Lots of kids running. Lots of money in the donation buckets. And lots of lots of trains on the railroad. Like a leaky hull, trains kept squirting out of the three yard exits. When […]

January 10, 2018

Time Management (DOG EAR)

’d mentioned this elsewhere but recently I had surgery for carpel tunnel in my left hand. My doctor downplayed the recovery – he didn’t see a full splint as anything to be concerned about. For me, I lost the SHIFT, CTRL, Z, X, C, V, A, S, D, F, W, E and R keys. I went from high-speed typing to find-n-peck. And this went on for weeks. Besides typing, I couldn’t drive. One handed? I’ve got a six-speed cooper. So that was out. The first two days I had JB the wife drive me in. That meant she got to […]

January 3, 2018

Reviewing awful books (DOG EAR)

our out of you’re mind.” That was about the worst sentence I ever read in a book purchased off a shelf, a little vanity press number I got from a local bookstore by a local author (perhaps “Author” is too strong a word here. “Typist” might be better). I’ve read bad books before. Sometimes they come at you at times in your life (see, at least I know how to use “your”) when you are not in the mood for its mystery, its adventure, its craziness. But sometimes they are bad. And occasionally they are awful. Yeah, I’ve read a […]

December 31, 2017

Artemis (Review)

he new one by Andy Weir of The Martian fame, a story of a crazy wild-girl living on a mundane suburban moon base. Which, as I write this, I see the irony the author was going for. And I like it. So Jasmine Bashara has been wild in the past. She’s gotten into trouble with the Dudley Doright station security chief. She’s slept around and even burned her welder-father’s shop down. So let’s just say that their relationship is distant and cold. Now working as a porter (moving cargos from ships to destinations), she’s got plans to go big. Her […]

December 27, 2017

Best of 2017 (DOG EAR)

hat will be a new tradition here on Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium is my best-of review. I tend to give a review a week, year after year, but with all the rubbish I read, nowhere do I list what I thought my favorites were for 2017. Note that these weren’t necessarily written in 2017; I’m just posting up what I thought were the most outstanding reads I had for the year. I’m not going to rank them – culling them from the mass of pulp I read was good enough. But all these books are strongly recommended by me. He gave […]