robert.admin – Page 35 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

February 25, 2024

Butcher & Blackbird (Review)

ooookay. So this was a weird one. I was talking books with a surgery-follow-up doctor and I asked for a recommendation (as a reader, it is the most precious gift I can grant another reader). This female doc was listening to this book on audible and really liked it. You be the judge. So Butcher & Blackbird is chick-lit at its most extreme. The two characters (kinda from the title, but properly named Sloane and Rowan) are both serial killers. To make them sympathetic, their victims are the lowest of society – other serial killers if they can, drug dealers […]

February 22, 2024

Politics (DOG EAR)

very now and then while scrolling FaceBook, I’ll find an old Calvin and Hobbs strip. I’ll generally pause and enjoy it (which is probably why the FaceBook AI bots send me more of them (creepy)). I like the fresh art and the humor of a child who, like Dennis the Menace, is out of control. It ended after ten years when creator Bill Watterson decided he’d said all he could and couldn’t work with the compression of comics in dying newspapers. I can respect him for this. Recently a Dilbert group showed up, complete with a weird cartoon that didn’t make […]

February 19, 2024

Destroyermen 8: Storm Surge (Review)

eesh. So here we are on book eight of this series. The world (and cast of characters) keeps expanding with the realization of the existence of a new race (South Africa), mounted riders led by (of all things) a Czech (in Northern India) and a crazy change to our world over in the Dominion area (over in South America). So we resolve India and the double stalemate there (and nobody seems happy about it), our wonder weapons – those P-40s – finally get deployed (that was fun). And the crazy Silva gets to break more things (as he is prone […]

February 16, 2024

On Sheet – Mirror image

ne thing about railroading, there are always new things to learn. For example, I remember reading in a rulebook where a switchman, after aligning a turnout to the main, must stand on the opposite side of the track from the stand. I read that and was puzzled. Why such a rule? Finally someone answered it for me – there was apparently some horrible wreck that occurred somewhere when a brakeman aligned a switch to the main for an oncoming train. At the very last second, he got confused, was certain it was misaligned, and he threw it point-blank in front […]

February 16, 2024

Missed signals (DOG EAR)

o today, here’s a brief column about the earliest form of human communication: the gesture. In this case, it’s flipping the bird. Side note: Yes, the finger came about after Agincourt in 1415, but it is a gesture so I’m going with it. Now, I’m a cyclist. And a pedestrian. I walk and bike more than most people, and hence can tell you that most people drive like furious buttheads. Having been on the receiving end, I slow way down and swing way wide of any non-car humans. I’ve been hit by cars once while on foot and six times […]

February 12, 2024

Shuna’s Journey (Review)

ound this one in a coffee shop/game store, the same place I found “Lupin III“. This one was an early work from Hayao Miyazaki (yeah, the Spirited Away, Porco Rosso, Kiki’s Delivery Service guy). This one is set in a world very much like Valley of the Wind, very open, very vast, with ruins and left-over tech littering the landscape. The characters are Tibetan in appearance (just like Valley). They even have the riding elks, always a classic. Anyway, in this, a young prince wanders to the west, looking for seed stock to replace his villages worn-out seeds. It’s all […]

February 12, 2024

OpsLog – WAZU – 2/11/2024

e started the session with my drive over, running things like I do on my trains in session. I run on time. I run exact. So my drive over involved picking up all the pizzas (five boxes of them – Andy does a great lunch). I was there in the pizza lobby (siding) fifteen minutes before the meet (or with pepperoni, is that “meat”?). Got the pies into the trunk of my Mini carefully. Then a couple of miles along the mainline, over roadbed as bad as the EsPee’s (that is, three miles of constant speed bumps). Didn’t even toss […]

February 9, 2024

On Sheet – Elbow-room TT&TO

ne of the real problems with TT&TO (Time Table and Train Order) operations is the problem of running late. Let’s face it – true TT&TO means that the superior train does not wait for the inferior at meet points – he just blows on by. And given the problems with model railroading, it’s not uncommon to derail short of the meeting point with a superior train and suddenly you are sitting on single track with the Cannonball roaring your way. A lot of people actually shy away from TT&TO for this reason, the fact that under a fast clock, times […]

February 8, 2024

Weight of years, and erosion of ages (DOG EAR)

nteresting morning: I had a bunch of little errands and since it was blustery and chilly, I decided to do them by bike. The route was from my house a mile to the donut shop (where I read a book I’ll describe shortly). Then across the street (the street being Corrine Drive, which is a good simulation of the beaches of Normandy) to drop off another book (a creepy serial killer thing). Then two miles over to the drug store (picked up some keep-alive pills). Then two miles over to the chain bookstore to pick up a classic (I’d checked […]

February 4, 2024

Destroyermen 7: Iron Gray Sea (Review)

he seventh book in the Destroyermen series finds (finally) that the author has given us a break and actually included a list of characters in the front (eleven pages – that’s how big this war has become). So in the west, the first fleet in this “prehistoric” world battles to take India from the monstrous Grik, only to overextend and be encircled. An airlift keeps them supplied, but how long can they hold out? Meanwhile, in the east, the English based out of the Hawaiian islands continue the war with the Doms (Spanish time-castaways who have infested South America with […]