robert.admin – Page 147 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 25, 2016

OpsLog – LM&O – 5/25/2016

ight night at the club – it’s like that sometime. But the crew runs sharp – we’re cleaned up, set up and away when the clock goes hot. Matthew made it on time so I gave him the panel – he’s off to College soon. This let me out to run the Shelfton Turn – interesting note about Shelfton; it’s the oldest section on the layout. It’s been in operation 25 years. And I’ve never run it. Nope, not once. So tonight I did. Worked it smooth – I don’t know if the usual crews do my trick – I […]

May 22, 2016

Industrial Revolution (Review)

was trapped. Lunch had fallen through (nothing else planned) and the doctor’s office called and said they could reschedule for today (always a wait there). Didn’t have my book. Didn’t have my tinytop. I’d have a couple of hours to kill and nothing to kill it with. I was entertainically unarmed. Thank you, Project Gutenberg. Hopped in and opened up Amazing or Astounding or something, downloaded it to my work computer, then stripped out a thirty page story. This I dumped into word, reformatted it and printed it into fifteen double-sided pages. And I was good to go. So, yeah, […]

May 19, 2016

New Media (DOG EAR)

eah, I always go after new media. Today on the train everyone was squintin’ and clickin’ (I, sniff-snuff, was reading Plato’s The Republic). But I bash the open changes we’ve seen, from Amazon rankings to cute media stunts to tie-ins to promotions and everything in between. But even I change, even though I resist. Was buying a mouse (for my computer, not my cat) at Best Buy the other night. They are hanging on by their fingertips (boooo, Amazon), which made me melancholy (for a box store – see – that’s part of it). But then I wandered through the […]

May 15, 2016

Visitors to Jupiter (5/15/2016)

must becoming an astronomaniac. This is the second night in a row I’ve had the scope out. My brother, his wife and their oldest daughter came out tonight. We had dinner together, then ice cream, and yeah, I was stalling. I was trying to give the moon and Jupiter time to go high so I could show them off. Kirstin (my niece) had wanted to see Jupiter and now was the perfect time. But she had a haul to St. Augustine and couldn’t stay long. We got home in the dusk – moon was up and half-full, with a big […]

May 15, 2016

War Dogs (Review)

like when scifi is realistic and sciency. It’s one thing to have space marines drop on a planet on the edge of the galaxy with technology we barely understand. It’s another when they are dropping with crude tech from maybe a hundred years in the future, down onto Mars, that planet next door over. Like The Martian, it takes place mostly on Mars, everything is screwed up (do Marines ever drop and it goes well?). But unlike all those other books you’ve read, likely with scary bugs or elvin forest creatures, this one is about all sorts of crazy situations. […]

May 14, 2016

Laser sharp (5/15/2016)

y brother is coming out tomorrow. First problem – no good restaurants open on Sunday night (I thought Orlando was hipper than this). But before he came out I wanted to fiddle with my new laser sight. Some assembly required. Not too bad. And once I got the entire scope set up in the backyard, I tried to shoot at the second-biggest object in the sky – Jupiter. This took some doing – I lined it up with the old sight and eyeballed the gas giant with my most generous lens. Once I got it lined, I dropped off the […]

May 12, 2016

An unholy experiment (DOG EAR)

he screw was a half inch long, wickedly sharp and corkscrew-twisted. Tossed without thought into a truck bed, it had rattled out as the wheels bounced across the uneven railroad crossing. And there it had lain, piercingly sharp, until I’d wheeled along on the bike on my way to work. Somehow the passage of the front tire set it to dancing, it binged butt-first against the concrete just in time for the trailing tire to strike it dead on. Bang! A reverberating shock shuddered my frame as I rode over it again and again, the tip of the screw hitting […]

May 8, 2016

M6 over the gun range (5/7/2016)

kay, went out with CFAS to the Geneva Gun Range for a clear-night sky with lots to see. And even after a year in this hobby, there is so much to learn. For example, I need to mount a laser beam on the side of my spotter scope. The spotter scope is great for locking on big bright objects. However, for lesser ones (or at high angles) it gets harder. Tonight’s goal was M81, a galaxy just off the tip of the big dipper. And I looked and looked, but simply coudln’t get enough of a line up to go […]

May 8, 2016

OpsLog – LM&O – 8/3/2016

promised I’d write this. As mentioned in our last thrilling adventure, the layout had gone down hard with electrical shorts knocking out the line from Calypso to Hellertown. Over the weekend (and right after this session – was I tired) we met at the club and figured out what the problem was (a broken turnout motor was the culprit). And so now we had a working layout and a half dozen trains blocking the main here and there. Kinda like if the rapture came and only locomotives went to heaven. So after a long day at work, after dinner and […]

May 8, 2016

Rikki-tikki-tavi (Review)

veryone has a dream pet. And regardless of if it’s got fur, fins, scales or lots of creepy legs, it’s gotta have one thing: loyalty. Teddy finds a half-drowned mongoose out near a stream and proposes a funeral for it, but his mother (happily) suggests they dry it and feed it. Given that they have only just arrived in India from England and moved into a recently empty bungalow, this proves to be a good idea given the fact that there as a couple of cobras living in a hole in the garden, and thirty-plus eggs warming up to hatch […]