robert.admin – Page 200 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

March 14, 2013

Jimmy Allen (DOG EAR)

I‘ve got a new passion. The air adventures of Jimmy Allen… Someone sent me a link to dumb.com, a massive collection of just about everything. Here, I found old radio programs, zillions of them. Since a lot of what I do at work takes 4% of my brain, I found myself listening in. Jimmy Allen has become my addiction. It’s the story of a telegraph delivery boy who saves an airliner (how? don’t know) from hijacking. For this, he is given a scholarship to flight school where he meets Speed Robertson, an ace pilot and solid mentor. The stories are […]

March 10, 2013

In Sunlight and in Shadow (Guest Review)

Captain James Raymond is a retired naval officer and voracious reader – he’s also my Pop. Given his burn rate on books, it’s a natural to ask him to stand in for me while I saw through Twenty Years After. Watch for future reviews by him. A beautiful novel set in New York City during the early post WW2 years. Henry, a young paratrooper returns from war and attempts to reestablish his family leather business. His wartime experiences leading his squad into Normandy on D-day and during the battle of the bulge establishes his character using flashbacks. Love at first […]

March 10, 2013

OpsLog – SP Cuesta Grade – 3/10/2013

Well, it’s been a long time coming. As I mentioned HERE, it’s been over a year since I last hosted ops. I was unsure but had do to it. I resurrected the layout and hoped they’d come. And they came…. The session had some rocky moments. A stuck button. A couple of overrun switches. And a poor level crossing at King City that crews were supposed to whistle at and half of them did not (including, I might add, your humble author). But we got through the session. We […]

March 7, 2013

The perfect place (DOG EAR)

I used to write at home on my desktop. No distractions. Tuesday and Thursday nights were understood to be mine, with wife and cat silent. Wrote a couple of books like that, including the published Fire and Bronze. Things change, however. I’ve got too many distractions at home. Also, many nights (now that I cycle to work) I’m rather tired. I’ve also got my best friend’s call on Tuesday nights. Too many interruptions. But by then, I’d bought a laptop. That opened up a lot of possibilities. I could bring my computer in every day (except the one bike-in day). […]

March 3, 2013

The Club Dumas (Review)

The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte, is the second of my 3M reviews. Last week, if you’ll remember, we looked at the original, The Three Musketeers. Now we look at this author’s amazing spin on it. I remember watching The Maltese Falcon and being shocked (and delighted) at what a cad Sam Spade (a.k.a Humphrey Bogart) was (including having the sign painter scrape his partner’s name off their practice’s door before his body was even cold). But Lucas Corso goes above and beyond. He’s a ratty book-obtainer, some one you might employ if you wanted a hard-to-get copy of a […]

March 3, 2013

Time flies

I was getting ready for ops, trying to clean and prep up. Everything seems doable now and I’m hoping for a session next week. In getting ready, I happened to look at my last crew sheet. I generally list the day and month correctly at the top, but change the year to something like 1951 or so, just keeping in character. But it struck me – “Feb 19”? I knew it couldn’t be this February, but last February? Really? Looks like, as noted HERE. I guess that’s why it needed so much cleaning. Where did that year of excuses go? […]

February 28, 2013

OpsLog – LM&O – 2/27/2013

Slow night at the club, so slow night on the railroad. Some folks are at their kids baseball games, some are sick, some taking care of invalids. We’ve got enough to staff up and run a lot of things so we do. Had a turnout fail into Wierton, which because of the alignment of the track took out all of Track 2 on my double main section, everything from there to Pittsburgh. This is a good track to run by Martin Yard on so its loss was felt. Marked on my screen that the track was out of service, and then, […]

February 27, 2013

Ten Questions (DOG EAR)

This is the follow-up edition to Thomas Lucas’ blog hop. He proposed ten questions to help curious readers get to know me. Also, he asked to provide links to five authors’ blogs that I know. Since I am a recluse in the finest Hemingway tradition, I could come up with two. They will follow the important things (which are about me). So here are my answers to these questions ten: 1: What is the working title of your book? Indigo 2: Where did the idea come from for the book? The story is an adventure tale of crows. One […]

February 25, 2013

Guest Blog: Alan Kierstead

Introductions have that double-edged feel to them. Is this person worth taking the time to get to know? Are they like a well-decorated cake that you cut into and find that beautiful icing was lovingly laid atop a well-formed pile of spam? Perhaps they’re a rusty old chest filled with gems? You could always get a rusty chest filled with an iced-spam cake. I suppose it’s the mystery that makes introductions fun. So, let me introduce myself. I’m Alan Kierstead, a not-always-well-oiled writing, chess-playing, racquetball-slamming, basketball-shooting, kid-raising machine. Sometimes I’m the iced-spam cake. I’d like to think there are a […]

February 24, 2013

The Three Musketeers (Review)

This is the perfect story. It’s a foundation to the storytelling we know, crafting it so well that most stories of our era still don’t come close. Our tale begins in the classic sense; the young boy comes to town (in this case, Paris) to win fame, fortune and position. He’s young, he’s brash, and he’s mounted on a remarkable yellow nag. And he’s already encountered a dark stranger on the road (that sinister Man from Meung) who buffeted him, abused him, broke his father’s sword and stole his letter of introduction. And that sinister agent was in the company […]