robert.admin – Page 226 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

December 4, 2011

Spelunky Junky

Okay, I admit, I’ve got a monkey (or, rather, a Spelunky) on my back. I just read Hull Zero Three, where a crewmember of a massive disabled colony ship finds out he’s been “spawned” thousands of times to attempt to right things. When he finds a pile of his own shattered bodies, it hits home. He’s died and died and died. I’ve been playing Spelunky, a wonderful platform game (which randomizes, and which you can get free HERE). It’s just great. Your little man jumps, falls, bomb-tosses and dashes his way down through dangerous subterranean levels, attempting to get to […]

November 29, 2011

Summer’s end

I’m sitting at the traffic light in the evening gloom, perched in the mix of cool night air and warm exhaust, bathed in the glare of the impatiently waiting cars. Its going December in Florida and the chill is hinted. My vest sleeves are attached. A half bottle of tap water suffices where once a fully chilled container was needed. It’s nice in a hard cyclical way. You see less and less of the summer flamingos, the Sunday riders who brag about their millage – all those pointless circuits (the Hobbit’s “There and back again”). Lean your spindly, impractical bikes […]

November 27, 2011

The World House (review)

I picked up Restoration because it looked like interesting scifi, and had a cool cover with an English steam engine on it. It was only when I got home that I realized I got played in the airport bookstore way, that this was the second part to The World House. I only figured this out once I started reading and had no idea who all these characters were, and what they were talking about. It’s sure not clear on the cover. Anyway, read something else and started The World House once it came. Read the set back to back. It’s […]

November 25, 2011

Omega man

People talk about Black Friday in terms of shopping. But I love it in terms of commuting (by bike!). Nobody is going to work at 7am on the Friday after Thanksgiving – nobody. The road is empty. I actually saw a piece of paper blow across an empty 1792 and thought that this was what cycling after the apocalypse would be like. It was great. The best moment was when I got to 1792 and Lake, where I hang that left turn to run to Eatonville. Usually at this time all six lanes are filled by streams of motorists with a […]

November 23, 2011

OpsLog – LM&O – 11/23/2011

I’ve had the grim distinction of being audited by Earnest and Young for Sarbanes Oxley compliance. Pretty much every changed line of workplace software code needs review signatures and unit tests. And here I was, sitting with my boss while E&Y scowled over the phone at us, realizing we didn’t have any testing at all on a change we’d made. Blood in the water… Image my relief when closer examination showed a note from myself to the coder, clearly saying, “Close after attaching test cases”. And what did he do? He just closed it. Suddenly the eye of Sauron swung […]

November 17, 2011

Divider

Working on the kindle version of Early ReTyrement this weekend when it hit me – I don’t know where the divider clipart I used came from. I’d been dorking around on the internet a year and a half ago and found this groovy little Persian god icon (from Persipolis). Great little thing to separate chapter sections. But now I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t copyrighted. So onto the net for a desperate search. Found it on an Aussie scholastic site – great – but the contact email bounced – not so great. Also found plenty of clipart your could buy, […]

November 15, 2011

Nanny State

I’ve mentioned elsewhere I’m a bit of a socialist. I don’t like the idea of fighting my way through the work day, not for promotions, riches and success, but merely to avoid living under a bridge. A women on the other side of the fence from me (politically, not locationally) goes on and on about the “Nanny State”, and how government should not tell people what to do. Well, from my own life-perspective, I’d agree to junking the benefits of civics if only I didn’t see the following… People who refuse to use turn signals or turn on their lights […]

November 13, 2011

Writer’s block

After six weeks of horsing around with the book assembler I’d hired off eLance, we broke off our professional relationship. She ends up with $500. I end up with a bunch of files that are mostly useless. I’m reworking the kindle version now myself – nuts to her. Its like that line out of War of the Worlds, where the narrator sees how little the artilleryman has achieved in his actual plan of digging an underground stronghold for the remnants of man: “…and when I saw the work he had spent a week upon – it was a burrow scarcely […]

November 13, 2011

OpsLog – Nebraska Division – 11/13/2011

Hosting an ops session is a good example of Murphy’s law. I showed up at Docs a little early to set up the dispatcher’s office, eager to see his newest effort – a train-cam which an engineer would use to run the train from a cab-level-view from the dispatcher’s office. It’s been a subject of model railroad conjecture for years now. So it’s run for two weeks – Doc’s even got a video of an earlier test run. And now it’s showtime and the camera fails. Nothing. I can see he’s disappointed and I feel for him. I can remember […]

November 7, 2011

OpsLog – Tehachapi – 11/6/2011

Here’s a word problem for you: Our black-widow lashup of Southern Pacific F-3 diesels idles in the afternoon sun at Bena in 1952 at the head of a seventy-car string. We are the fifth (and final) section of train 804 (meaning there are four sections ahead of us, the fourth section 10 minutes down the line). It is now 1:40PM. As head-end engineer, I’ve gone back to meet with my two helper engineers (midtrain and rear) to discuss our next move. Positionally, we are located as follows: Kern Jct (Bakersfield) – 10 minutes behind us Bena (where we are at) […]