robert.admin – Page 2 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 29, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 8/27/2025

here is a story I read years ago. Deathrow. On one side of the aisle, there is a brute of a man, stupid and blunt. On the other, “The Professor”, an intelligent yet ruthless killer. Tonight, the Professor is going to the chair. A priest stands clear of the bars between the cells, administering to the doomed man’s needs. But the Professor ignores him, facing the far wall, pushing against it, stopping, pushing, stopping. Ignored, the priest asks him why he is doing that. The Professor tells him that he cannot press through the wall because his molecules are colliding […]

August 25, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 8/24/2025

o we had a wonderful rainy-day run on the WAZU in the Pacific Northwest. It started off with Doc Andy attempting to one-up Bob Gross’s legendary lunches with his own personal Chef, Philippe “Bon-bon” Klauck, who provided us with a pulled-pork lunch with all the fixing, and homemade ice cream for the debrief. Used to be that I’d toss out a couple of sacks of oreos. Now, on the Tuscarora, I point to the club galley area and remind operators that everything’s a dollar. So yes, that culinary performance upstaged everything. Hard to think how we could top lunch. […]

August 24, 2025

OpsLog – FEC – 8/23/2025

hen you die and Saint Peter says to you, “Hey, when were you happiest down there?” You’re gonna say, “Well, it was okay the day I got married, and I didn’t much mind the day I first fell in love. But seein’ the sky with the Great Waldo Pepper, that beats ’em all.” -The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) Personally, my own end-life reflections would turn to all the many moments model trains and their operations have given me. There have been soaring successes and comical pratfalls. And here’s a new one: I’m standing out in the back yard of Ken […]

August 24, 2025

The Tomorrow Testament (Review)

haven’t had the pleasure of reading something so changeable since The Gap Cycle series by Stephen R. Donaldson. There, your usual space opera characters are presented in a scene, yet we follow them before and after that moment, finding out what they really are like, our opinions changing as the story develops. It was flowing in an interesting and adjustable narration. This time, it’s The Tomorrow Testament, a book by Barry Longyear, the second part of The Enemy Papers. This is just a continuation of the war between the Humans and Draks, from the point of view (sic, and you’ll see why) […]

August 21, 2025

The Villain (DOG EAR)

as talking to a friend the other night about storytelling and literature and anime and everything, and a thought hit me. What sort of villain do you prefer? Essentially, there are two types. The Mad Dog: This is the villain you love to hate. His first trait is that he usually offs an underling (often for being the bearer of bad news, but sometimes simply as a character establishment (and what the hell do the other underlings think about this?). Usually he’s charismatic and fun to watch, but he’s made to hate. He boasts and brags, he kicks the dog, […]

August 19, 2025

OpsLog – Tusk Coast – 8/17/2025

t’s nice, after all the shit of last week, all the backstabbing pettiness, that Zeus took time off from between-classes time to push me to sponsor a session of Tusk Coast (Tuscarora with ACL equipment). This time, we figured that we’d add in the Interstate Railroad, running presumably on some sort of trackage rights, down from their lofty North Carolina peaks to the ACL mainline. What made maters more interesting was that it was our fourth new-version run of seasonal weather events – winter, specifically – and snow was forecast up in the high ridges above Westly. So to start, […]

August 16, 2025

Tuesdays with Morrie (Review)

ve read another one of Author Mitch Albom’s books, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, and that was an interesting novel that I really enjoyed (read before I was reviewing everything, like now). Anyway, in this book (with the secondary title of “an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson”) was a curious thing. At the time it made a big splash. A barista at the coffee house told me she cried while reading it. As for me? Well… To start, Morrie Schwartz is an old college professor who discovers he has Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative […]

August 11, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 8/9/2025

he only real problem of engaging in two operation sessions (one with the Orlando Society of Model Railroaders) and the second a Saturday Night Session, is the number of husband points it costs me (just wrote a check for 500,000 points). But it was worth it. I wasn’t sure how many we’d get for a standard session on a Saturday night. A lot of us were still dragging from the three-and-a-half hour session we’d just gotten through. So there we were at Culvers, sucking down food and rebuilding our energy. And to my amazement, more members came, and more, until […]

August 10, 2025

OpsLog – OSMR – 8/9/2025

sister club to ours, the Orlando Society of Model Railroaders, decided they are going to give ops another try (they’d done it once but life got in the way). So Tom, one of our former members, scouted out our ops, took careful notes and carried them back to incorporate into their setting. And then he was nice enough to invite us over to run on the inaugural. I’ll mention that this was going to make for a long day for a number of our crew – we already had a planned session at our own club at 7pm. If we […]

August 10, 2025

The Spear cuts through Water (Review)

ne day, I came into Framework Coffee and found all the baristas agitated. They’d discovered a new fantasy novel and were racing through it, eagerly chatting about the crazy and wonderful plot. Jacob and Maddy both were loving it and knowing my own passion for books (I go to that coffee shop more times with a book than my wife, and when I do go with the wife, I bring a book) they implored I read it too. So that day I picked up a copy. And now I have a strong contender for Best Books of 2025. As mentioned, it’s […]