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

December 7, 2014

The Kill List (Review)

his one was a tough one to review. Not because I had a difficult time with it or couldn’t find anything positive, but because I’ve got a sick wife. Five times, when I started the review, we had a crisis. The sixth was today. So now she’s settled. And now I can review. Drones. This is what the book is about. The liberal bugaboo, the conservative uncertainty. Drones. Yeah, so there is a fellow raising cain out in the Middle East somewhere, the Preacher. He’s calling for Jihad with untraceable internet speeches. All one needs to do to go to […]

December 6, 2014

OpsLog – L&N – 12/6/2014

oday was one of my hardest dispatcher gigs ever. Was running the namesake side of John Wilke’s twin-route L&N Railroad (Bruce Notman held down the Southern), dispatching under warrants for four hours. I was doing it the hard way, running off actual train sheet reporting (keeping time like I had at the B&M a week past, but this time for something like twenty-plus trains rather than four). And I was starting to lose it. South of Norton Yard, there is a stretch with two sidings, some shared trackage (at Goodbee, and thankfully under my control) and then another siding. I […]

December 4, 2014

Getting older (DOG EAR)

hen I was young, I was reading a book on anime (this was back before Akira, and if you don’t know what that was because you are too young or too old, shame on you). There was a picture of a Japanese artist sitting in front of a pyramid study room in his back yard, something someone had told him to make. It was supposed to give him all sorts of mystical triangle powers of creativity. “All I do is sit in there and drink sake,” he told the interviewer. I didn’t understand that – if you can draw so […]

December 2, 2014

OpsLog – B&M – 12/2/2014

t’s a long haul over to Rockledge on a work night – 53.3 miles to be exact. And this is to run a layout so small, only four mainline trains get to cross it. (That’s like 25 miles of driving per train run – whew). But Kevin Loiselle’s Boston and Maine gets around these small room limitations. While some modelers talk about details in terms of handrails and bells, Kevin thinks in terms of ops. When the Bellows Falls switcher comes out onto the main, he has to physically unlock (with a key) the turnout controls, then call the dispatcher […]

November 30, 2014

City of Widows (review)

hat Western writers often miss in all the flying lead and howling Indians is that there is something in the western genre that goes beyond all this. There is the thing that makes a western a western, and not simply a historical fiction with guns. It’s the pragmatism of the western hero. It’s the saddle bum with nobility, the tramp with a strong sense of right and wrong. That’s what makes a western, and why the same story with Russians or Hawaiians or Eskimos does not work. And Page Murdock, hero of City of Widows, has it in spades. I […]

November 29, 2014

Hatetorium

Here’s a full list of things I hate. Well, things I hate that I’ve gotten a moment to write about. More to come. Much more. Jeeps Black Backstabbers Drink machines Jawas TechNads {jcomments off}

November 29, 2014

I hate: Drink Machines

hate drink machines. You know the ones – in fast food restaurants. A $1.80 cup of soda only costs about 5 cents. Fast Food conglomerates know that it costs more in time and order line disruption to have a counter serf fetch it than to have you do it yourself. So they’ve opened up their soda bar like a self-serve gas station. You pay your money for a cup, and you can guzzle down all you want – you’ll die before they talk a loss. What I don’t like about this is that the average consumer (I use that as […]

November 27, 2014

The Last Argument (DOG EAR)

his is a story I just submitted in a short fiction contest. Rules: 750 words, about space and funny. It didn’t make the cut. So let’s share it here. Enjoy! When the Imperial BattleScout Last Argument broke from null space over the third planet of an unassuming (and unsurveyed) system, every sensor station klaxoned dire warnings. The captain of the hulking survey ship nearly tripped over his ceremonial scimitar as he dashed from station to station and leaned over shoulder after shoulder, his buggy eyes reflecting their lurid displays. The indications of a sprawling civilization were there. Huge space stations, […]

November 23, 2014

Iron Sunrise (review)

egardless of what you see in movies, stars don’t just explode, not without long years of warning. Which is why when the G2 star warming the planet Moscow just blows, sweeping everyone away, certain people (and AIs) take notice. And the worst thing? Moscow didn’t trust it’s neighbor New Dresden. And so its own failsafe devices (slow speed missiles that will take decades to reach their target but are now on the way) make this a true double-whammy. Iron Sunrise is a follow up book (I figure) to Accelerando, and interesting universe we see played out here. It seems that […]

November 22, 2014

OpsLog – FEC – 11/22/2014

ne of the ways to tell the difference between casual operators and intense operations is how they handle getting stuck in a hole (or a siding) for a long period of time. At La Mesa (in San Diego), it’s not unheard of to get locked in the box for five (real) hours. It’s happened to me, and guess what – that’s railroading. Wasn’t thinking that when I rolled out of Cocoa Beach at the controls of Train 930, a short (really – no cars) train that does sweep up work to Titusville and ducks into the small industrial yard there […]