robert.admin – Page 19 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

November 28, 2024

Phone Question (DOG EAR)

kay, so I’ve got a flip phone. Yes, I’ve taken a lot of crap for it, the whole dinosaur thing. Ironically, they are making a come-back – people realize how invasive and consuming immediate internet gratification can be. It turns you into a drone. Now, my flip has its own problems – I keep it in my front right pocket – I can just get it in there with my keys and wallet (the left front pocket has my pocket watch – an old staple). But the problem with that is that there are some critical buttons on the outside, […]

November 24, 2024

OpsLog – FEC – 11/23/2024

consideration I’d never had before – the environment of your train room. When I was fifteen or so (and since it is my birthday today and I am sixty-six, that was effing fifty-one years ago), my dad and I built a moderately large HO layout in our Cincinnati basement. In the winter, the floors and walls were icy and the air cave-cold. I remember crawling under the layout to wire (thanks, Dad. I see your guile only now) on the stone-chilled floor, my joints stiff and my hands, ass and knees numb. So yes, your environment means a lot. Recently […]

November 24, 2024

Destroyermen 12: Devil’s Due (Review)

o what can I tell you about this series I haven’t yet? The way keeps expanding. We learn more about the League of Tripoli (the alternate fascists in the Mediterranean). And more about that maniac Kurokawa (the Japanese cruiser captain that chased USS Walker through the portal and into this crazy world). And all the crazy crap that’s been going on. The Japanese are playing for time. The Grik are expanding towards another mega invasion fleet. The League is up to no good. The Republic of Free People in South Africa finally got their thumbs out of their asses and got […]

November 21, 2024

Losing my Religion (DOG EAR)

t doesn’t take much of a stretch to imagine that I’m a liberal. Commute by bike. Live on a pretty gay street. Have friends of all nationalities. There are a couple of business I won’t buy from unless backed into a corner. Exxon, for the Exxon Valdez and their bullshit response. BP, for the same sort of thing in the Gulf. So that’s environmental. You might even say my wife and I have taken it a step further – we own a small (older) Mini Cooper and a newer Prius. For other concerns, I don’t buy from Chick-fil-a and Hobby […]

November 17, 2024

OpsLog – LM&O Saturday Night Special – 11/16/2024

ell, you can’t spell “Shenanigans” without “Shannon”. And, it seems, you can’t spell “Dumbass” and “Dipwad” and even “Wackadoodle” without him, too. I’d really overbooked Saturday. I agreed to run on the Virginia Southwestern earlier that day, but the club was having a Saturday Night Special session that evening. I’d asked at the business meeting if we could maybe, you know, skip it but too many people wanted it. I even considered not going but Shannon sweet-talked/blackmailed me into doing it. So, spending thousands of husband points and possibly fatiguing a year or more off my life, I agreed to […]

November 17, 2024

OpsLog – VSW – 11/16/2024

his wasn’t my best idea – going over to Polk City to run the Virginia Southwestern when I also had a Saturday Night Ops session at the club later. So I’d be dispatching for, let’s see, eight hours (and on the road for three). And all that model railroading and I wouldn’t touch a throttle. Still, I do enjoy dispatching. We approached the VSW with the same caution that sappers would an unexploded bomb. Last time on this railroad, everything blew up and the session ended with a critical staging area dead. The only reason we were able to run […]

November 17, 2024

The Mercy of Gods (Review)

o the creators of The Expanse series have closed it out and moved on to a new series. Or did they? The Expanse ended with (spoiler) the ring gates closing and hundreds of colony worlds cut off. Most of them were not established and probably died off. So in The Mercy of Gods, it’s loosely hinted that the humans on this world can find records of their DNA existence, including themselves, animals and plants (alongside more indigenous animals and plants with their own form of DNA). Records were, of course, lost. Nobody knows how they got there but it hints […]

November 11, 2024

OpsLog – WAZU – 11/10/2024

f you are thinking that you already got posted from me this weekend for a Saturday show, you did. But now it’s Sunday and a big bunch of us train-freaks are over at Doc Andy’s, running on the WAZU. For once, I didn’t jump for the DS panel. One, I wanted to run some trains for once and two, some of my friends were going to need my burly brawn assistance to get an old lady up some stairs. Since I was on a short leash that day, I chose to run trains and see how it would play out. […]

November 10, 2024

ShowLog – Lake Nona – 11/9/2024

o this is what an easy train show is like. Instead of getting up at 5am and running out to Deland to build our layout in the dark, then walk around it all day, with this show at Lake Nona Middle School we were able to go out on Friday and casually put things together. The next day, it was a leisurely local drive out. The layout was already up and ready – we just put trains on and ran. We had a lot of help this time around, with new members wearing their bright yellow bullseye shirts and really […]

November 10, 2024

Icerigger (Review)

kay, so back in the seventies, I really loved Alan Dean Foster’s stories. They were funny and exciting and great reads. And now I picked up one that’s a half century old, Icerigger. Of course, the question is, how does it keep up with modern scifi? Not StarWars either, but adult series like The Expanse. So in Icerigger, a passenger liner is making a stop at a colony world, one totally covered in a sea of ice. During ship’s night (as they orbit in) the main character, a merchant named Ethan Fortune, comes across a kidnapping in progress. The inept […]