robert.admin – Page 166 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

October 24, 2015

OpsLog – TC&C – 10/24/2015

he problem of running the DS panel so well (see last night’s session here) is that when we’re all standing around the next day picking jobs on the morning session shift, everyone pushes you back into the office job again. So we’re at the Tennessee Carolina & Coast, a layout I ran on two years ago. Great pike, just a long basement filler with good aisles, a long siding or two, and slow running. I had to be careful here – no clock so I set the pace running trains when I think we can get them through. The line […]

October 24, 2015

OpsLog – SR – 10/22/2015

kay, so we’re up in Asheville for a model railroad operations weekend, running on a layout that’s modeling… Asheville. Our first run on the weekend (after a marathon crazy ten hour drive to get here) was Wally Brown’s Southern Railroad, Asheville Division. It’s a tight pike with Ashville dead center and trains coming out to run the main loop correctly using the wye at Old Fort. A lot of fun here, because just about every train enters/exits the line at this location, locals work here, and most of the passenger trains turn here. So it’s busy and requires lots of […]

October 22, 2015

Past and Future (DOG EAR)

kay, everyone who reads (and only true readers find their way down to these dusty vaults) sees those things on Facebook – “How many of these classics have you read?” “The top 100 science fiction books”. In short, pretentious rubbish. If you are a reader, you read everything. Not just cowboy novels, not just scifi, not just detective or manly-hero or any of that other stuff – you read across the fields, taking in this and that and never hesitant to try anything new (or loaned). I wasn’t even thinking this was we walked over to Juniors, the little diner […]

October 18, 2015

And all the Earth is a Grave (Review)

ute little story this time, out of the 40’s or 50’s, again, a Gutenberg find. It’s a little scifi story about a tiny mistake in, of all things, a coffin factory. Seems that a computer slipped a bit and suddenly their stodgy production orders are boosted. The marketing director, seeing what’s coming (and finding all sorts of money in his department because of the glitch) blasts an advertising campaign out, creating a marketing feedback loop where demand fuels supply fuels demand fuels supply and so on. It’s a humorous look at super marketing (something I did in my own Early […]

October 17, 2015

OpsLog – FEC – 10/17/2015

ot much to write about when a session goes as well as this one. The trains were running ahead of schedule. Nobody I saw plugged the main. The new card forwarding system worked well. Oh, there was a broken coupler and a sticking wheel and a couple of derailments, but that’s model railroading. Good for all attending, but not good for blogging. Blood on the tracks – that’s what brings in the eyeballs. Still, I can tell you that being part of a spotless session can be a lot of fun. I was rolling into Palm Bay in the seat […]

October 15, 2015

Write and Wrong (DOG EAR)

can just imagine this guy typing away, hammering out a story for a radio program. He’s got an idea, it’s pretty sharp, it’s got a nice angle. All he needs is a hook. He thinks of something clever, clatters it out, looks over the roller, squinting through his cigarette smoke at what he’s knocked out. Three simple sentences. Yeah, a good start. Reads fine. Without looking back, he continues his story. But something that reads fine might not sound fine. For it was that third sentence which, listening while doing a work-place audit some fifty years later, gave me pause. […]

October 11, 2015

After London; or, Wild England (Review)

o back we go into the past (to a book written in the 1880’s) about a future (say, 2100 or so), another one of these casually fun penny-dreadfuls, back from when science fiction was trying to figure where we were going with steam and chrome and a whole lot of Victorian virtue. The author, Mr. Jefferies, begins by describing the plants and animals and how they are coming back. Fields are vanishing. Roads are slowly being erased. In the silos, the grain rots are is devoured by plagues of rats. Everything is unwinding. Finally, we are given various hints as […]

October 10, 2015

Reflections on my Kidney Stone

ne thing I reflected on as I woke up after the best sleep I’ve had in a week-and-change; I’m very grateful I live on the cutting edge of now. Yes, we have problems in this world, but also wondrous things, too. As Owen Wilson said in “Midnight in Paris”, when asked why he wouldn’t wish to stay in the magical 1920’s Paris he’s discovered, replied “Novocaine”. For me, I’m still thinking of that horrible 4mm kidney stone I carried for nine days. Drinking lots of water never moved it a bit. When we finally got flowmax in me, we managed […]

October 8, 2015

Organized (DOG EAR)

ave you taken a recent glance into my Library of Alexander, where I keep track of what I’ve read and what I think about it? 195 titles so far. The first one was written back in December of 2010 and, in the last year or so, I began to push for one review a week. So that’s a lot of reviews. The problem is that it was fine to originally just post them one at a time as they came in, right at the top. And me, I could find stuff easy, but I don’t think too many people can […]

October 6, 2015

The Wise Man’s Fear (Review)

ou can use it as a doorjamb. Or to block the wheel of your car while jacking it up. If you drop it off a three story building, you’d kill someone with it. It’s 1200 pages long. And it’s the latest of the KingKiller Chronicle. Day two. Bring it on! Once more we follow the adventures of young Kvothe, as narrated by old (well, middle-aged, but under the gloom of fate) Kvothe. For those who didn’t read my review of The Name of the Wind, it’s the story of an exceptional lad who is a consummate jack-of-all-trades. Possessing skills in […]