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

April 7, 2016

A verbal plea (DOG EAR)

kay, so not so much writing as communicating and identifying a new (or somewhat old) trend. I recently watched an impassioned message by comedian Sarah Silverman on Facebook. She’s making the pitch for Bernie Sanders. Yeah, I like her and I like Bernie – I voted for one of them recently, not sure which. This issue here is not political, though. It’s toastmastersical. I noticed, as I watched the video through, that the stream breaks and breaks and breaks, as if they shot it a number of times and pieced something together. To me (with my boomer viewpoint) this appears […]

April 4, 2016

M3 and the Queen of the Skies (4/3/2016)

t was pretty clear tonight. Looked at the star charts and decided to shoot for M3, a star cluster I’d never seen. It would be rising above Arcturus tonight, above the line formed between this and the dipper handle. Like, how hard could it be? Messier found it – his first one. My view east sucks (remember how we learned that watching OA-6? The oaks get in the way). Anyway, squidged over to the corner of the garden on the path and got as much east as I could. Saw Jupiter shimming in ascent and took an early shot – […]

April 3, 2016

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Review)

e’d watched the first few episodes of the miniseries lifted from this book and petered out – just didn’t hold us. And then a person I know at work borrowed a copy of this book and tried to get through it, only to die on the white burning pages about halfway through. And when I’d agreed to read it, and when it was handed to me (with both hands, all 782 pages of it (why do people loan me such massive books?)), I knew I had my work cut out for me. But, actually, not bad. Jonathan Strange & Mr. […]

March 31, 2016

The Adventure Begins (DOG EAR)

otta make this vague – too much real-world tie in here. But there is a point to be made. Sometimes things happen, especially between the individual and the group. Wars begin over a slight between princes. Men are called into the dusty street to slap leather over a quip. The course of lives change over the smallest of things. Without being specific, such a thing recently happened between myself and a group and I didn’t see it coming, I hated it when it happened, burned in shame the entire evening, and lay in bed the entire night thinking of what […]

March 27, 2016

Tanks (Review)

o, what do you do when you have an hour for lunch, no computer and no book? Well, there is always a work laptop and Project Gutenberg. This time I found a nifty short story, Tanks, written in first issue of Astounding Tales (Vol 1, Number 1, January 1930, a new decade, new magazine, a new future – so optimistic). Anyway, I always enjoy stories like this, ones where author attempts future combat based on what they know (from World War One) and what they can guess (from the current day). And while Tanks was a bit off, it was […]

March 26, 2016

OpsLog – FEC – 3/26/2016

ometimes you have ops sessions that make you want to slink away and take up stamp collecting… But…. Sometimes you have ops that you want to lacquer up and hang on the wall, and just lean back in your easy chair and look at them, preferably smoking a big fat cigar. Yeah, today’s run of the FEC was one of those days. Man, did we have fun! I ran the panel and was feeling so comfortable with it, I wasn’t looking at the in-out cheat-sheet, but actually working the yard throat panel logically. We had everything moving including a rail […]

March 24, 2016

Johnny Pulpseed (DOG EAR)

edia comes at us pretty fast these days. Where people in the “old days” (such as the 40s) might have a newspaper, the radio, and billboards, now we have full internet streaming, pop ups, on-demand movies and TV, all through our phones (well, your phones. I don’t do that). It’s understandable that we can get behind. I was that way with my Model Railroader magazines. I had about 6-8 of them sitting beside my bed still in their wrappers. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to read them. No, I did. But I just didn’t have time. Between the stars, […]

March 23, 2016

OpsLog – LM&O – 3/23/2016

e’re going to have to start throwing random events in. It went too well. Oh, I know that there are always derailments and issues. The random car spotting has gotten crazy (Variety Press is getting all their unsold copies of Early ReTyrement back, it seems). But really, from the panel, it was a smooth night. We ran all the drag freights, most of the passengers and three of the four locals. Everyone came in and set up smooth. I fired up the computer and got the back office running. Had some guests show and put them on 202 – poor […]

March 22, 2016

OA-6 (3/22/2016)

lear skies for the last few nights, a full moon with Jupiter in formation. Wanted to check these out with the telescope but just no time. But tonight… Standing out in the back yard, my father’s old wristwatch hanging easy (I can read it by starlight), the big Orion astronomy nocks around my shoulders. OA-6, an Atlas-V on an ISS resupply mission, was launching at 11:04 pm. I’d never gone out and shot a glance at something like this – with clear skies, I’d be able to see just where it was going up from. Got out about twenty minutes […]

March 20, 2016

Gods of War (Review)

‘ve mentioned in a Dog Ear column how I found, then lost, then refound this book. Really, it is a thing of charm I discovered in my recent trip to India, a scifi novel written by the very popular Ashok Banker, an Indian author of impressive credentials. Unfortunately, it’s the first book of a series – which he never completed. And dammit, I really was grooving in it until the end. Maybe, like King’s Dark Tower series, it will find a conclusion. Anyway. Gods of War is a stunning tale. A strange artifact enters Earth’s orbit. Before we can even […]