robert.admin – Page 237 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

April 4, 2011

The Most Dangerous Game (review)

Just watched this one tonight, a 1932 movie with Fay Wray, Joel McCrea, and Leslie Banks (as the smarmy, scarred, aristocratic Zaroff). Read the story over and over as a kid from my favorite collection, Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. In a nutshell, a Russian big game hunter has grown bored with traditional game, and has set up a Pacific island with false buoys with which to wreck passing ships. Those who make it to his hospitality become “The Most Dangerous Game”, forced into the jungles to be hunted by the count and his dogs. The imagery here […]

April 3, 2011

The Ragged Astronauts (review)

My Florida room looks out across green native foliage. Beneath its wide widows is the grande shelf, three decks straining with books, the “I might want to read this again” books. Many of them I’ve read in college or before. Many of them are yellowing. But they are (or were, to that younger self I was) great books. The Ragged Astronauts comes from a time before many Avatar / Potter fans were born, 1986. Back then, youth still cared about the environment (to the point they didn’t throw their plastic bottles all over it). We were still jazzed about the […]

April 1, 2011

April Viral

If there is a day for religious observance for me, it’s this one – April the First. It’s a chance to shake people awake, to pull them from their monotonous lives, to puzzle and puzzle them until their puzzlers are sore. Every year, I try to come up with something fun. This time, I concocted an email posted to all the process leads (those who monitor process at our corporation, rather like the political officer on a Russian submarine (and about as liked, I suppose)) and to my team. I related in the most officious terms possible concerning a new […]

March 30, 2011

Bad work day?

It could have gone better. The day was bad enough. A two-hour corporate Nuremburg Rally with pre-positioned questions and carefully worded answers. Clap clap clap. I have a bunch of things I need to do yet I’m sliding backwards as interruptions hit me like bugs across a windshield. At 2pm, I decided I couldn’t attend the train club – I’d have to work. Then, at 4:30 all hell broke loose. First it was the gust off a squall line that actually shook the building – not something good to experience on the 14th floor. Looked out the window to see […]

March 26, 2011

Unwitting favor

Typical Friday for a commuter cyclist. My Indian coworkers have been screwing around (watching cricket finals on tiny tellies), and now we’ve got broken code and fumbled patches, all after quitting time. By the time I’m rolling off the dock, it’s 7pm. The sunlight is getting long so I’m running lights and I’ve got my yellow bee-jacket on. At least traffic will be light. But then again, it only takes one car. Going through Eatonville on the bike lane, nice tailwind. Observe a car coming in from the right, a sloppy cross-the-line stop. Figuring the flubbery woman driver is going […]

March 26, 2011

Signal Maintainer

If you think you just build a layout and your work is done, think again. Problems under the Salinas control panel (which controls turnouts through the fruit packing area). First off, crummy Radio Shack DPDT toggles, which must be being assembled in some hellhole factory in China. After a while, they stop working – you gotta wiggle them and try to coax a current through them. Perfect for engineers focusing on their timetable or waybills, a turnout that dosn’t go over when you throw the control. And second, somehow (and I curse the day it happened) I somehow got acid […]

March 26, 2011

The Egyptologist (Review)

The act of observing an event changes an event. And sometimes, the act of reviewing a book ruins it for the readers. This is true for Arthur Phillip’s novel, The Egyptologist – how can one review a book for curious readers yet put up spoiler alerts? Rest assured – I’ll do my best not to give away any of the succulent moments or the gripping ending. So here goes… The novel takes place directly in 1922, and indirectly in 1954. told entirely through correspondence. The primary writings are from the Egyptologist himself through his combination of his working journal and […]

March 23, 2011

OpsLog – LM&O – 3/23/2011

Harris Glen – a high bluff with scudding gray clouds, gloomy but for the occasional stabs of pure lightning. Circling vultures. Ominous. A grim place in any occasion, but especially for this railroad. Either ascent is steep, and the Glen’s only got a short passing siding. It’s the bottleneck, no question. In every session, that’s where the railroad balls up at. This time we had two sections of varnish east, two expresses, the coal train, two freights, and a trailer train that popped out of a spur, all demanding rights. Worse, I’d been latching warrants, meaning I’d clear one guy […]

March 22, 2011

AAAAAA

Last night I read for a bit (The Egyptologist – review coming soon) and went to bed. Nothing special. But suddenly, doing! My mind was spinning. I didn’t even get the benefit of some sort of creative thought process, that guilty pleasure of laying in bed, knowing I’m burning my candle but marveling at the story, the game idea, the train deal, whatever, that’s got my brain afire. Not this time – I was just hypersensitive – I’d hear a motorcycle go past, then a plane, then a train. And owl started to hoot. The wife began to snore. By […]

March 18, 2011

The Game of Life

I’ve worked for corporations for years, as evident from the high-water mark of shit just under my chin. Corporate life can tarnish one’s values and blacken one’s soul. I just try to keep my head down and keep plowing forward in the face of over-regulation, bureaucracy, off-shored stupidity and pervasive executive greed. But still. I can’t go into what set me off this time; regardless of the saying that ‘the mountains are high and the emperor is far away’, his spies are everywhere. A blog with my name is a blog with my name, right? So no details. But as […]