robert.admin – Page 232 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

December 16, 2011

DBS – the writer’s resource

As you long-time followers know, I suffered a bad experience with a contractor through eLance. I spent six weeks fighting, weeping, struggling, and hair-tearing to get my book out on both the Kindle and hardcopy (via Createspace). In the end, I had a bunch of rubbish files that had been rejected by the various quality control scanners. I ended up doing Kindle myself, which wasn’t that hard once I sat down with it. I could generate the files and then use an emulator to read it. I finished that up in about a week, which was 3 weeks quicker than […]

December 14, 2011

Early ReTyrement – Kindlized!

It’s been a rush of a weekend. I’ve got a train show, an out-of-town trip and publication all going on at once. Anyway, got the Kindle version of Early ReTyrement finally up on Amazon (you can order it right HERE – go pick up a copy, we’ll wait). Funny thing was: I don’t own a Kindle and wanted to test the version before shipping so I sent the file to my buddy Jesse to have a look. Told him to call me as late as it would take – I needed to know if it was fit for release. Anyway, […]

December 8, 2011

Movie Guide

A friend asked if I would recommend my favorite movies of all time. In that, I went through my collection, looking for dear old favorites. Many made the top set of favorites. Some just fell short – I’ll include them too, further below. The best…. Amelie – Simply put, the cutest movie ever made. Adorable. Blade Runner – We’re talking director’s cut here. Mortality and morality, all in a grim futuristic setting. The Blues Brothers – A car-crashing music video. I don’t even like R&B, but I do when I watch this. Still hate Illinois Nazis. The Blue Max – […]

December 6, 2011

The shoe fits… perfectly!

I’ve always been insulted by modern ads which show white, middle-aged men as man-children, always seeking base pleasures, slow to react, stupid to the point of retardation. As advertisements cannot go after women, minorities, or anything else, they focus on guys. Men will grunt with pleasure before a beer, a chicken-wing, a big-screen TV. Nobody can be that stupid. Now I’m not so sure. Since I haven’t been able to ride recently, I went out on my old ten-mile loop tonight, up and around to Rollins, then down Cady way to the house. It’s a nice ride. How much stupidity […]

December 5, 2011

OpsLog – San Diego & Eastern Az – 12/05/2011

Usually it doesn’t go this well. Doc had brought his secondary layout back into service, his tightly-spooled San Diego and Eastern Arizona. We’d run it a while ago, but not recently. And since it’s been slightly shortened and simplified, all to the better. So the boys milled in the train room while I set up the dispatching computer. A little fumbling with the clock, a scattering of radio checks, and we went hot. Timetables usually go out the window once the session starts. Sure, the railroad management might think a certain siding might be an ideal place for two trains […]

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 […]