robert.admin – Page 159 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

September 13, 2015

End of the Beginning (Review)

‘ve read this before. It’s Bookish Vu. A huge carrier force blasts it’s opponents on the approach to the Hawaiian islands. Pearl Harbor get’s flattened. A landing is made on the north side of the main island. The defenders do what they can to stop it but are largely swept away, in part because of their enemies’ air superiority. Then the last of the desperate fighting, the blood, the tears, all that. Where was that? Oh yeah – Days of Infamy, the first book to this two-parter. Then, it was the Japanese turn. So our cast of characters from the […]

September 10, 2015

Gearbox (DOG EAR)

n a recent hey-let’s-all-go-out-to-lunch-together Friday at work, I ended up giving a Libyan fellow and an Indian mom a ride over in my Mini Cooper. Yeah, it was tight and everyone wanted a turn driving the rumm-rumm car about. We had our share of stalls (I won’t say by who) but everyone had a blast driving that little sports car (even overloaded as it was). But the thing that they enjoyed the most was the gear shift. Yeah, it’s fun. Instead of just driving, now you are part of the process, feeding in gas and slipping the clutch. Nothing feels […]

September 6, 2015

Great Pirate Stories (Review)

kay, less a review, more of a social rant. Pirates. Co’mon. What is this suburban fascination with pirates? How many Baldwin Park Freds do you see driving around with pirate decals (usually skulls and over-ornate crap) pasted over their Tahoe rear windows? Really? Like, so, you live in suburbia and have a green lawn and a good job and house payments, but it if wasn’t for all that, you’d be cannonading a Spanish Port? Really? So clearly you desire the blood of innocence running down your elbows, and your pockets stuffed full of church gold? That you’d rape children and […]

September 3, 2015

Duality (DOG EAR)

first noticed this sort of thing in a movie back, I dunno, ten years or more ago. It was during a summer of destruction-from-space-with-a-big-rock blockbusters. Anyway, in one of them, here comes a gigantic rock that will take out all life for certain. A mission sent up to deflect the rock half-fails, breaking it into a big piece (big enough to end us) and a little piece (scary but survivable). And sitting there in that overcold theater, I knew, at that moment, where each was going. Of course the little one smashes into Earth, releasing a massive detonation of CGI […]

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 […]