robert.admin – Page 188 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

March 16, 2014

OpsLog – TY&E – 3/16/2014

After we got the issues of the Bruces settled (a true “Bruce on first” moment), and after some of the slowpokes got in (you can tell railroaders by how they get somewhere on time), we got down to running trains. Superintendent JW has made a number of solid improvements to his layout: better lighting, some progression of scenery, and even squirrel damage repair. All to the good. But like any host, it’s never good enough. I wasn’t really noticing how the layout ran. I was rattling along in my favorite run, the Sand and Lumber train, a movement I personally […]

March 16, 2014

My Brother’s Keeper (Review)

You can never go home. Or so Teke Manion finds out when he does. Having scraped his hometown of White Sands, Florida off his shoe and joined a huge multinational in Paris, our hero is sent back five years later to access wildfire damage to over-leveraged houses (whose owners are setting them on fire ahead of the fireline in hopes of walking away from the ashes). And Teke has cut all ties including those with his “brothers”, the members of “Three Dog Knights”, his two buddies with whom he used to prank through his early years to drive the local […]

March 13, 2014

Do androids dream of fame (DOG EAR)

I’d mentioned in my last Dog Ear how I’d come to read Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and the mix of the movie and book (from a Japanese anime perspective). And yes, the little cartoon characters were right – both the movie and the book had merits. I’ve always enjoyed Blade Runner (but only the director’s cut – I mean, really, Rachael has no inception date? That ruins the entire story (and its sprawling idea of the preciousness of life)). Overall, I love the idea of androids desperate to live and a burned out bounty hunter […]

March 12, 2014

Corporate 5K – it begins!

I like trains, but not training. Big difference! We’ve got that corporate 5k coming up and that means jogging so I don’t totally humiliate myself. This time, the wife is coming (for the walk). Me, I’m jogging again. Hopefully, with better shoes and stretching exercises, I won’t suffer a repeat of last year (cramps, pulled muscles, a month of pain and a slow jog in the event (but, dammit, I made it)). So now, Tuesday and Thursday noontime, my work friend Manjula and I are training together (Omar, he’s somewhere back there someplace). We’ll jog around the neighborhood behind the building, […]

March 9, 2014

Scaramouche (Review)

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. This is one of the best openers ever in a novel, penned by Rafael Sabatini in one of his greatest works, Scaramouche. Some background – in old plays, it was common for known character types to be cast in fixed positions. This way, an audience would know that character on sight, and know his personality and characteristics (modern movies and books do this pretty much today, with their lack of creativity). The character “Scaramouche” is the trickster, the fellow who stirs the pot, creates […]

March 6, 2014

Do Androids Watch Anime (DOG EAR)

So one of my entertainment passions is Japanese Animation (or “Anime”). Some of it is stunningly good, some of it is insightful, some of it is just reactionary fun, and some is just stupid. Was watching one, a little one-season deal called Psycho-Pass, a story involving a future society where scanners can tell if you are above a certain “potential” crime level. If so, you can be killed just because of your possibility to do crime. So the broad story is unraveling, the somber mastermind is lounging around, interviewing a hacker who he’ll need for his devilry. But then the […]

March 2, 2014

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Review)

I read this years ago, probably because I’d just seen it’s companion movie, Blade Runner. And recalling the sort of person I was in college (half-baked, like most humans under twenty-seven), I remember being slightly disappointed in it. Silly me. Let’s toss the movie and focus on this wonderful book by Philip K. Dick. Do Androids Dream… is centered on a tomb of a world, our world following a nuclear exchange that left the planet dust covered (and slightly radiative, too) and dead. Pretty much all the animals are gone (and those that are left are hoarded and worshiped (in […]

March 1, 2014

The new car

I‘m out of Orlando, driving over to Palm Bay for a fun model railroad ops session. Nobody else could go – the invite list is tight and my buddy has a cold and backed out. So it’s just me. And that’s fine. I’m finally getting a chance to get my new Mini Cooper out of the city, to let it loose on the wide open road. I’ve got the windows down, the sunroof open, and its a balmy 74 degrees. The sun’s just overhead, so sliding the shade forward screens me. The car’s flying along at 80+mph, sipping gas in […]

March 1, 2014

OpsLog – FEC – 3/1/2014

So at the start of the week, I was dispatching on a middle-sized coal hauler. By midweek, I was dispatching a huge railroad stretching across several states, as well as running their freight forwarding division. And now, on Sunday, I’m sitting in a going-to-rust, unwashed FEC engine in Miami Yard, tugging cars back and forth, a lowly classification hogger. How did this happen? The author side of me wishes it was because of a substance abuse problem, a fight over a woman, or perhaps because I caused a wreck that killed innocents and this was the only railroad job I […]

February 27, 2014

Serendipity (DOG EAR)

A little something happened while I was running a mile-long freight through the Carolina foothills, hogging on the Tennessee Carolina & Coast. I placed a magazine article. See, I was running trains up in the Asheville area (you can see my blog on trains, over on the left, for details of prototypical operations of trains). Guy named Steve was on the dispatcher’s panel, in the other room, directing the traffic by line phones. He’s got a magnetic board in front of him and he’s moving his markers to keep track of the trains (and telling the crews how far they […]