robert.admin – Page 140 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

April 9, 2015

Time Flies (DOG EAR)

ontinuing from our last entry, I was stuck with a plot quandary – how could I trick a whole ballroom of noblemen who’d come to see the execution of the illustrious Baronet Mergenstein Hippen Von Graftin into flouncing away the time-limitation of their trumped up charges, voiding the execution which was to descend on his very neck a minute before midnight? How could the svelte leather-clad thief Tubitz alter the ballroom clock’s speed in the grand ballroom, decreasing its time so that the swells would blow their chance to axe him? As I mentioned, I thought about this for days. […]

April 5, 2015

Inverted World (Review)

here is something about a really good book. If you watch a really good movie, you want to go buy the DVD or something. With a book, you want to have the author’s baby, the feeling is so powerful. I’d have Priest’s children after reading through this 1974 classic about a colony settlement that’s in a horrific situation. See, they know they came from Earth. And they know the sun their new planet orbits is strange, shaped rather like a child’s top. And they know the ground beneath them is slowly sliding, a mile every ten days or so, down […]

April 4, 2015

Big scope, little scope (4/4/2015)

fter texmex with my old NASA buddy Mike and his lovely daughter Tara, we caught up with his wife and then went over to Eastern Florida State College Friday – they have a great observatory and we got a chance to check it out. The sky was clear, and on the rooftop outside the dome we chatted with one of the staffers and picked out the constellations. Also caught a satellite with the naked eye – cool to see it arching past. Anyway, the dome was very impressive. Big scope pointing out to the slit, and unlike other big scopes, […]

April 2, 2015

Eureka! (DOG EAR)

he incandescent moment that hits without warning. Just had one. Was at work the first Monday of March. The work day was through. Was outside my pod, loading my bike for the ride home. Weather was pleasant. Hanging the saddlebags over the bike’s haunch, my fanny pack around my rump. Tossed on my lobster bib. Gloves. Road ID. Sweatband. Helmet. We’re good to BANG Right there, an idea, another, and another. I literally rocked back on my heels. A concept erupted in my mind, a wondrous vision of a steampunk world in a unique setting (one I’m not ready to […]

April 1, 2015

ClubLog – ONT – 4/1/2015

ome folks in the club wanted this blogged, so here you are. It’s been a weird April 1st today. I played a couple of pranks today, one of them on the club (a freeway was coming through). I was pretty proud of myself – I find myself so very amusing. Worked at the club. Did a little scenery and a lot of club maintenance – trash goes out, filters swapped, vinegar down the drain, doodah, doodah. So now it’s getting late and time, perhaps to leave. First problem – we’ve got a short on the main across Bethlehem. For some […]

March 29, 2015

A People’s History of the United States (Review)

know enough to be outraged by slavery. I don’t agree (i.e. I think it’s horseshit) to the droll explanation of economics and time and place that makes slavery in the U.S. into some understandable economic phase. It’s as if we consider that our country is a human being and the slavery phase was when it was rebelliously and petulantly thirteen. We had steam engines, telegraphs, and iron-working to the point where we could build metal ships. And still we had people in chains? I mean, WTF? So that didn’t surprise me. But everything else in Howard Zinn’s massive A People’s […]

March 29, 2015

The Sweep (3/29/2015)

t’s been a busy period here, one full of frustration. Right now I’m wrapping up an evening sweeping everything I can identify – clear night, finally. The last thing I want to look at is the moon, currently hiding behind grandfather pine. Anyway, my barlow lens arrived a week and some back, which doubles my existing lens (giving me 120X, but I’m begriming to realize that isn’t all that it sounds). Still, the day it came, cloudy. The next day, cloudy. And cloudy cloudy cloudy. Finally, while coming home from the club Wednesday night, I saw that the moon was […]

March 28, 2015

OpsLog – FEC – 3/28/2015

een listening to a lot of old radio serials while drilling though audits at work. Some of them are pretty stupid but there are a couple I really like, amongst them Gunsmoke and Frontier Gentleman. However, I really like this new one, Night Beat, where an intrepid night-shift newsguy digs up stories in 1930’s Chicago. Usually it involves gangsters leaning on him, generally beating the shit out of him while sneering things like, “So, going to write about that, Newsie?” Yeah, well, I know what it’s like. So we ran Ken Farnham’s Florida East Coast, and I was once again […]

March 26, 2015

OpsLog – LM&O – 3/25/2015

‘m late on this piece – yeah, I know. Running home after a great session, I saw the moon through (appropriately) the moonroof, and so regardless of the time, one hobby lent itself to another and I was outside with the scope until 12:30am. But that’s hobbies for you. Even when I came in and was putting the peeper away, I really didn’t know what to write about. We had a good showing, a number of the old timers had much of the layout already cleaned. The clocks booted up in master/slave configuration perfectly. My paperwork was already out and […]

March 26, 2015

Death’s Doorway (DOG EAR)

veryone who’s a geek can remember that dramatic moment in Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, where Spock dies. I can remember a trekkie next to me quietly sobbing in the dark. Truthfully, it was as good a death scene as could be written, full of sacrifice and victory and sadness. Of course, they ruined it in the third movie – his body wasn’t even cold yet and suddenly he popped back in, none the worse for wear. Character death is a primary tool (like a chainsaw, a valuable yet dangerous tool) of the writer. Killing an important character […]