robert.admin – Page 135 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 28, 2015

Moon and Vega (8/27/2015)

he reason I haven’t posted anything to this thread is because we’ve had no viewing nights all summer. Rain. Clouds. Haze. Even the Perseid meteor shower – we saw three falls through a cloud “keyhole”. Bah! Last night, I’d checked the sky earlier and saw the moon through a silken veil of haze – bah again! But while on the phone with a buddy at 10pm, I stepped out on the back porch and saw, to my amazement – EVERYTHING! Clear as a bell. I hadn’t had a night like this in months. I finished the phone call while shifting […]

August 27, 2015

Gentle nudge (DOG EAR)

ike, Jesus Christ, I’m glad I don’t have kids to burn time on! I’ve got the train club (with twenty feet of pine forests to model in N-scale) (and wherever we don’t have forests, what are we modeling? Pine tree farms! No shit!). I’ve got a meteor event bashfully hiding behind heavy clouds night after night and a sky that hazes up every time I touch my telescope. And there is our game Solar Trader, which my best friend and I are readying for final release (see my free game links on the sidebar for directions to the site). As […]

August 26, 2015

OpsLog – LM&O – 8/26/2015

onight was a pretty amazing night at the club, full of all sorts of highs and lows. Route 50 is just a disaster, especially when it rains. It’s like running on a layout with a new dispatcher, everyone waiting for each other. When I finally got out, I saw four cars in the parking lot. Well, this was shaping up to be a disaster. But eventually people trickled in, held up by the road delays. We actually staffed up for a pretty decent session. I gotta say, it all was worth it early on in the session – had 202 […]

August 23, 2015

Casino Royale (Review)

think I read Ian Fleming back when I was a teen, Dr. No I’d guess. So it’s not that I don’t like him – I’m just not a spy thriller guy (as my review list HERE will illustrate – few spy books). Still, they can be fun and a nice diversion to the ruts all readers fall into. Casino Royale is early Bond, before all the super-agent crap and gizmos and stuff. He’s just a guy, see, and while brave, he is quite human (a plus to the story). Bond has been sent to the gambling halls of this picturesque […]

August 22, 2015

OpsLog – FEC – 8/22/2015

t was one of those days… I walk into the session’s crew lounge, the only guy who forgot to wear his new FEC shirt (embroidered!). Everyone else was blue and snazzy. I had an old Daylight shirt on. Strike one! At the panel, the clock is hot. The first train is rolling for Titusville. I checked, double checked, even gave the train a rollby. I was certain I had it routed right out of the yard. Yet it ended up in Palm Bay, not Titusville. Had to back him all the way to the yard and come out the right […]

August 20, 2015

Brown alert (DOG EAR)

have enough problems getting between me an Tubitz and Mergenstein. I’ve got model railroading (twice a week, and pretty much every other weekend). I’ve got Astronomy (though the skies have been shit since June). I’ve got game writing (Solar Trader is about to release). I’ve got cycle commuting (and that poor tandem we haven’t been on in ages!). And I’ve got household chores to work on (after I finish this, I need to go cut back an encroaching hedge). So, lots of stuff. I was thinking about writing the other weekend. Yes, it was Thursday. Was going to give platlettes […]

August 16, 2015

OpsLog – L&S – 8/16/2015

he Longwood & Sweetwater, always an old favorite that’s been down too long. Ran with a couple of the boys and had a great time. Came to realize two things while switching Altamonte today. See, Altamonte is not for the timid nor the short – you need to get under benchwork to switch it and it requires a long reach. That I’ve got. So I’ve run this one more than just about anyone on the planet. The thing is, I’ve really got it down. I moved the cars in, cut them off on the holding track, methodically plucked the outbounds, […]

August 16, 2015

Bad Monkey (Review)

‘ve read a lot of Hiaasen. My shelves are loaded with him. And I’ve been wanting a crack at Bad Monkey, just not a hardback crack. Well, I never got the book but noticed the audio disk in the library right before we went on a vacation trip. Perfect. It would be great for the run home. For those unfamiliar with Hiaasen, he writes whimsical (if you can call foul-languaged, gristly-event crimes whimsical) stories. I love them. He centers them all in Florida, his champions rough but honest heroes and our state’s imperiled beauty against developers, politicians, lawyers, tourists and […]

August 13, 2015

What’s in a name (DOG EAR)

here is a man I’m imagining for my novel. In opposition to his strict discipline father (for whatever reasons) and instead of enlisting in the Emperic Fleet, he shamed his entire line by joining the skiptracers (i.e. vessel recovery services). He’s one of their older captains now, a hard man who is ruthless to his crew. In fact, his long cruises looking for pirates and hijacked hulls and his aversion to limes have cost him his teeth (through scurvy). How he has two pairs of teeth (one in use, one in his pocket) – a wooden set that are marginally […]

August 9, 2015

I Am Legend (Review)

eah, you’ve seen that stupid Will Smith movie. It isn’t that. I am Legend is the title story of a collection of Richard Matheson works. He was doing cutting-edge stuff a few years before I was born, and he really deserves better credit than a plate of CGIed audience-rated bullshit that we got out of this. In the true version, the main character is one of the last humans left after a plague sweeps the Earth, turning everyone else into things resembling, well, vampires. We follow the hero’s mental craziness at this situation, his drinking, his ravings, all that. And […]