robert.admin – Page 243 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

December 26, 2010

Lowlife

Our train club, a non-profit fellowship organization, has been broken into five times. We know who did it. There is a nest of thieves infamous in that neighborhood – the neighbors told us about them. On the third break in, the K-9 unit went right to their door. They all bonded out the next day. The ringleader, a 35-year-old bag-of-shit, has three other B&Es he’s currently bonded out of. We’ve gotten a look at his rap sheet – its almost a novella. We’ve added motion detectors to the club and strengthened the weakpoints. We’ve also removed anything of value – […]

December 23, 2010

OpsLog – LM&O – 12/23/2010

Good session at the club tonight. One of our experienced dispatchers took a trainee (who is about to graduate it seems) to run the board. That put me out on the road. Good enough – I don’t get to run enough trains. First run was an unlikely lashup of old passenger E-8s (daylight colors) pulling modern TOFCs. Okay. Grabbed a newbie who was thinking of wallflowering and put him into the cab (I’d conduct). Picked up orders and off we went, east out of Martin Yard. It looked like it was going to be one of those nights. The two […]

December 22, 2010

Auto traitor

It’s always a little shocking when your best friend turns on you. Look, I know (intellectually) my car isn’t alive. But my yellow Volkswagon beetle (with its black bee’s-knees fender plates) is known about town. I’ve driven it for a decade now. People see it, they recognize it. There is even a miniature of it (with bee’s-knees) on the train club layout. It harks back to my college days, to my first rattle-trap beetle (also yellow). I crossed the country in that car, slept in it, lived in it. Perched on its fender, I had my first kiss. I might […]

December 20, 2010

Reality check

Was sitting at work today, the Cannodale leaning against the cube wall, when I got a sad call from a friend. Turns out his father passed away this weekend. He’d been found lying in the middle of the road with his bike. Maybe he’d had a stroke, or perhaps had fallen and hadn’t been able to protect himself. Either way, he never recovered. It really hit me later, as I put on my bike clothing for the ride home, that this is a dangerous pastime. Even with helmets, gloves, all that, there is still a risk. Orlando is one of […]

December 18, 2010

Seven Samurai (review)

Everyone gripes about how dumb movies are, how the action is undirected and the target audience must be cretins (or seventeen-year olds) (same difference). Seven Samurai is a movie that treats you like an adult. You stand with the heroes as they strategize their desperate defense (against forty mounted bandits – yow!). You are given time to know the characters (at over three hours, the movie doesn’t rush). The action is brutally realistic (not funny and not bloodless – there aren’t seven samurai at the end). It’s just a damn … good … movie. One of the best of all […]

December 17, 2010

Work – where everyone screws up

Had to ride in today. The car is having severe electrical problems – everything except the headlights and recharger is out – no windows, no moonroof, no mirror adjustment. Even the heated seats are out (and damn, did needed them this week). So its in the shop and I’m on Kiki’s broomstick (i.e. my bike). So had that going on, and a late start because I had to curse the dead batteries out of a tail light (with the help of a screwdriver). Found myself playing bus-tag up 1792. You know the game, where you are riding and a city […]

December 16, 2010

The Great Panel of China

“You said you wanted to dispatch sometime,” Ken said with his usual friendly demeanor. “How about today?” “Sure,” I smiled. Holy crispy crap, I thought. Ken’s three-room layout represents sixty miles of Florida East Coast mainline – huge! He’s also got a a half-dozen serious operators taking their starting positions, reviewing their train orders, checking out their paperwork, as serious as career engineers. This is not the place to screw up. He walks me through the CTC board, essentially that big black 2001 monolith bristling with lights and toggles. I’ll be the dispatcher today, setting switches and signals in to get the traffic […]

December 14, 2010

Live Free or Die (review)

You know Iran can’t have a nuclear power plant. But did you know Disney could? This pissed me off a decade ago, so I wrote a scathing novel about theme parks growing into “duchies” with their own laws, courts, and (it turned out) armies. And as I wrote it, I found myself really chewing on those enablers of theme parks, the shambling middle class. With their annual passes and their comfortable entertainment expectations, my novel did everything it could to give them a wake-up slap, a cosmic black eye. One agent asked me, “So, if you piss off everyone, who’s […]

December 12, 2010

Four reasons

It’s too damn early, my breath is frosting my glasses and the bike is as cold as a popsicle. I’m out in the carport in two sweaters, sweat pants and polyester head-condom. On go the bike gloves, the helmet, and lastly the Road ID bracelet (for the time I might be too mangled to speak for myself). There is the usual fumble to get the 20 lb saddle bags (pre-packed the night before with a full set of office clothing, a towel, a bike pump, repair gear, my breakfast and my tinytop) over the back rack. Whenever I ride without […]

December 12, 2010

Matrix places (links)

The following sites are places that mean a lot to me on the World Wide Webbie. Click through and have a look – it’s the undiscovered country! StoreyMinus This is a text-adventure I spent a year putting together. Dropped into the world under London’s streets, a place of tube lines, buried rivers and lost passageways, can you survive and return to the surface? And every time you play, it’s random! GridSims This site carries the games Jesse Markowitz and I put together, using Excel as our platform. Best of the lot – Solar Trader! Can you pilot a ship across […]