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

October 26, 2011

Beetle bugs

I love beetles. The first of the three cars I’ve ever owned was a yellow 73 superbeetle I took to the ends of the Earth (well, Irvine California, but I did the transcon in three days). So now I’ve got a 2000 New Beetle (again, yellow with distinctive bug-about-town bee’s knees). And the love, alas, is fading. I understand that a car 11 years old is going to have problems. But there seems to be this airbag issue (due to a harness under the drivers seat). If you get the light, it’s a grand right out of your pocket. I’ve […]

October 26, 2011

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/26/2011

The reason we run trains is to escape reality. Even though we often push weathered cuts of cars into rusty sidings flanked by shabby industrial buildings, even if the era is the great and deep depression, there is an escapism to operations. I hate when reality follows us into our make-believe world. The recession is hitting the club hard. People have been forced into crummy jobs, night work and such. Others are having to extend services of their businesses to stay afloat. And those with 9-5 jobs are so burned out by the stress of keeping them that they often […]

October 23, 2011

The Three Musketeers (Review)

The classic measure to the Musketeer movie is, of course, the 1973 version with Michael York, Oliver Reed, Raquel Welch, etc. That one gets 10 for 10 for following the storyline, great casting, great pacing, and wonderfully choreographed sword-play. Since then, there have been several excretable versions of this classic tale, most of them having nothing to do with the original. The Three Musketeers (2011) is not a bad little version. I wouldn’t want to see it with literate friends but it’s fun enough. Its a rather steampunky affair (the 1973 version had a spring dagger in the hilt of […]

October 22, 2011

Compasion and fairness

Hit the ground the other day, going home. My fault, really. Got myself into a tight spot that I can usually avoid – for this one stretch I usually keep to the sidewalk – the road is narrow and there is a barrier down the right. Anyway, decided to stick to the street and when traffic backed at the light, I cut to the right between the cars and barrier. Then I remembered the the lip between the asphalt’s undersurface and final coat, a half-inch step that I slid down. Humming down this tight space, I realized that the lip […]

October 18, 2011

The “Early ReTyrement” Challenge!

What would you do if you fell backwards in time? Yes, all these iron-age boners are still head-scratching over smelting while you can make silicon circuits dance. You’d be a wizard! A king! Wouldn’t you? But all these things around you that grant that superiority: computers, cars, flush toilets; could you produce them? Could you reconstruct the tools, techniques and processes to recreate them, all the way down to their building blocks? Do you know what it takes to make a spark? A sheet of paper? A pencil? A paperclip? Join Mason Trellis, hapless castaway in a temporal drainhole, as […]

October 16, 2011

The joys of writing

So this weekend, I had a long slow cold, one that came up on Friday as a fevered flush with minor diarrhea. Normally it would be nothing to worry about unless you were one of the Carthaginian host crossing the Alps in the dead of winter, where if you sank along the side of the muddy trail, you’d be left to die. Or, if you were at work with only a bike. Got home okay, but it was a long ride, and my head pounded through ever pedalstroke. Yet writers have duties. I had to scroll through the latest Kindle […]

October 16, 2011

OpsLog – FEC – 10/15/2011

There were lots of things I could have done Saturday. First off, I was coming off the tail end of a low-grade cold / long workweek, just bone tired and ready to take it easy over the weekend. And there was that new Steven King novel, Under the Dome, which the library just sent. Things are heating up in this corrupt Maine town trapped under a mysterious force field. And there is that Occupy Orlando march going on downtown. Regardless of what you think of them (I’m certainly not a fan of corporate turdworms), it would be an easy bike ride to get […]

October 10, 2011

OpsLog – Longwood & Sweetwater – 10/10/2011

The trains are streaming out of Orlando Yard at the start of the session, and then the layout goes down. We all look at each other. The owner starts cycling his system. We all help by checking our trains, making sure we’re not on turnouts, we’re not derailed or shorting in any way. The system comes up – briefly – then goes down again. You hate to see it – owners put a lot of time and energy into setup, and they feel a need to provide a good session. But still, with all the electronics a modern digital command […]

October 4, 2011

Statistics

Statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Fatality Facts: Bicycles – 2009 Less than two percent of motor vehicle crash deaths are bicyclists. The most serious injuries among a majority of those killed are to the head, highlighting the importance of wearing a bicycle helmet. Helmet use has been estimated to reduce head injury risk by 85 percent. Ninety-one percent of bicyclists killed in 2009 reportedly weren’t wearing helmets, the same percentage as 2008.

October 2, 2011

The writer’s life

Everyone has this dream of being an author. And with self-publishing, it is easier than ever. Well, that’s the story anyway. Been working on the final cut for the physical book of Early ReTyrement. Hired Mercedes from WriteTheWriteStuff off Elance and she’s been a good sport, dealing with a maniac obsessive perfectionist. But that’s what writers are, right? When Hemingway couldn’t have it his way, he blew his brains out. Been through this before. Back when eBooks published Fire and Bronze, they were supposed to (by contract) give me a final pass at the proofs. Well, they did. Kinda. They […]