robert.admin – Page 145 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 25, 2015

The Ashtabula Diaster (Review)

eing a railroad guy, you’d have think I’d have heard of this one. But no, I was casting about on Project Gutenberg and fell over it (HERE). And so now I know a little more about the world. That is, a little more of its bad and terrible history. It was December 29, 1876 and a pair of locomotives were lugging eleven passenger cars of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway towards Ashtabula, Ohio. One hundred and fifty nine passengers were aboard. As they crossed the bridge just short of the station, it gave way, throwing everything (save that […]

January 24, 2015

OpsLog – FEC – 1/24/2015

t hunched predator-profile low in the shadows, its unblinking ball-turret eyes rotating independently, watching for prey. Its twenty foot body yearned to feast on a hobo or railfan – either would do (the camcorders it could regurgitate). Beneath the shielding fen of lichen, it watched. The dull roar of something even bigger and more unstoppable that itself made it raise its head, its throat-sack ballooning in alarm. Something massive and blue growled along the forest line. Panicking, the creature made its mistake, bursting from cover to flee, directly in the path of the oncoming FEC engine… The first I knew […]

January 24, 2015

OpsLog – FEC – 1/24/2015

t hunched predator-profile low in the shadows, its unblinking ball-turret eyes rotating independently, watching for prey. Its twenty foot body yearned to feast on a hobo or railfan – either would do (the camcorders it could regurgitate). Beneath the shielding fen of lichen, it watched. The dull roar of something even bigger and more unstoppable that itself made it raise its head, its throat-sack ballooning in alarm. Something massive and blue growled along the forest line. Panicking, the creature made its mistake, bursting from cover to flee, directly in the path of the oncoming FEC engine… The first I knew […]

January 22, 2015

Right Hand Man-uscript (DOG EAR)

‘m in my reader’s place, sitting at Juniors Diner, a short walk from the house. My wife and I are enjoying our books while browsing through our Sunday lunches, our standard routine. And beyond this normality, beyond the sunlight streaming through the picture window (with the reversed RENID neon sign), beyond the humming traffic, 35 million miles away, Mark Watney is really screwed on Mars. See, Mark was left behind on a Mars mission, accidently abandoned by his crew. And now, as told in Andy Weir’s deservedly successful The Martian, he’s struggling to survive. But something just happened, a component […]

January 18, 2015

The House in the Borderland (Review)

pulled this from Project Gutenberg, read it, didn’t like it. And now I’m finding that H.P. Lovecraft deemed it his greatest influence. I don’t get it. See, I have a problem with fantastic (meaning amazing, unique, and stupendous) things. Having one is fantastic. More than one? You gotta have a good reason for it. I don’t like the idea that Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spiderman) not only gets bit by a radioactive spider and has his body uniquely change, he also (as a high schooler) figures out how to manufacture web slingers so he can swing all about town. See? That’s […]

January 15, 2015

Graphical Anuses (DOG EAR)

eah, yeah, so that’s a pretty crude title. Please keep reading and see when you get the point of it. Now, one thing about being a writer – and as I’ve said before – it’s not always about writing. This website, with twice a week minimum blogging, is not only writing but also web administration. Recently I had to work with my Greek pal Stergios to get the backups running again. And several months ago, I had a problem with bill-posting blog-jumpers. And two years ago, I got hacked and was being used for denial of service attacks. All this […]

January 15, 2015

The Name of the Wind (Review)

‘ve mentioned Brooke, the cute little redhead who cuts my thinning hair and talks books, books, books with me. Noticed she had an old copy of The Stand amid her combs and sheers and started talking books and now we’re thick as thieves. If only my hair grew quicker. Anyway, I always honor suggestions – if someone tells me I should read something, I generally will. So Brooke mentioned Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind. I’d never heard about it. Apparently everyone else in the world has (including a parking lot attendant and a rounds doctor when I had a […]

January 11, 2015

The U.P. Trail (Review)

‘ll always remember a class I took in junior high, one for reading. The idea was that you’d read a book and talk to the teacher about it. One time, I read a western. I’ll always remember the teacher frowning and saying, “I thought you read at a higher level than that.” Westerns are good fun. As mentioned elsewhere in my blogs, westerns define our American values. I’ve always loved them. So, The U.P. Trail deals with an engineer (civil, not train) who is working to drive the Union Pacific rails west on the transcontinental. Along the way, he and […]

January 8, 2015

Writing humor (DOG EAR)

’m not a comedic writer but occasionally I’ll slip a joke into the book (if warranted). I don’t think I did for Fire and Bronze (since I burn the troubled Elisha alive by the end of it (actually, from the very first line)), it was hard to go ha-ha with that. Early ReTyrement had some humorous moments and some funny bits. But Don’t Jettison Medicine (my book for doctors to decide if they should be doctors) had short funny exercises. And that’s the trick – it’s easy to write a witty character who says funny things over the long haul. […]

January 4, 2015

The Martian (Review)

here are at least two other Lonely Astronauts out there. One was a short YouTube series about a guy left on the moon by the last Apollo mission, a bitter fellow who vents with streams of bleeped cussing (it’s actually pretty funny). The other is some sort of children’s book. Be that so, Andy Weir’s take on a man being left behind, this time on Mars, is a stunning, exciting, funny, sad, and vivid account of what happens when Astronaut Mark Watney, thought to be dead during a panicked mission abort in the face of a terrifying Martian sand storm, […]