robert.admin – Page 6 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 1, 2026

The Best of 2025 (DOG EAR)

ime again for my review of books I really enjoyed for 2025. Of course, these aren’t all published this year – there is no statue of limitations on books you might discover. For example, The War of the Wenuses was a random discovered off a YouTube video which was published some century and a quarter ago. It was a lampoon of War of the Worlds and really made me laugh. However, most of you (not being addicts of the original) would not understand the lampooning that takes place in it – since it was right on the edge of getting the nomination, I […]

December 22, 2025

OpsLog – WAZU – 12/21/2025

his fine day started in the crew beanery where we were served Louisiana dishes (I think it was gumbo and something else that looked like gumbo, a roadkill mix of good eatin’. Why we were eating southern in preparation for an Oregon run, I’ve no idea. But it’s good eating, far better than anyone (save Rob Gross) serves up (the Tuscarora? Two packages of sugar-free cookies). For all my snark, I did snark down too much, feeling bloated all session. Should have brought that up in the debrief. So Zach was dispatcher and I was running road. I did have […]

December 21, 2025

OpsLog – FEC – 12/21/2025

t’s getting into the holidays, people are traveling, holding parties and such, so scraping up a session is getting difficult. As it was, the December 20th running of the Farnham’s Florida East Coast was a close-run thing. He got just enough people to run a casual session together – no dispatcher, sorta TT&TO style. The day was nice, we opened the doors and went to work. My first run was 930, the busy Titusville out-n-back. I really had a good time with this one – it was very overloaded (the Nehi bottling plant had a occupied dock and four cars […]

December 21, 2025

The Demon-Haunted World (Review)

ince I haunt flat-earther and young creation groups on Facebook (debunking various silly opinions on occasion) I thought I’d enjoy Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World, And why not? Sagan wrote this in the mid-nineties and is a noted science advocate, using his background to guide and instruct those are less-inclined to it. Yes, that’s what I wanted to do. My problem is that the book just didn’t agree with me. Perhaps it was the small print or the long routes he too on some of his points, perhaps readers and writers sometimes don’t click. Don’t know. But my rate of […]

December 18, 2025

OpsLog – LM&O – 12/17/2025

ears back in the 60s, there was a term on everyone’s lips (there were no feeds then) – “Generation Gap”. As it was, until the 50s, kids and teenagers were seen as simply “young adults”. They wore the same clothing, cut their hair the same, and the only men (and no women) with tattoos were in in the Merchant Marine. But then the 50s came, and you had “Rebel without a cause”. Teens started thinking about riding motorcycles, greasing up their hair, and not asking for their parent’s permission (By God!). Then the 60s came and the Gap was […]

December 18, 2025

Shadow media (DOG EAR)

veryone knows (should know) Plato’s allegory of The Cave. People are in a cave, never having been outside it. They are chained so they can only see the far wall. Behind them, other people with torches make shadows and sounds, defining the limited reality of those so placed. Their only reality is what they experience directly. Their thinking is stunted. This came to me while reading Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche, the first few chapters. See, I’d bought an Audible copy of a friend who is rather well read but hasn’t tried this one. Also, his life is so hectic that he can […]

December 14, 2025

Counting the Cost (Review)

‘ve been a bit remiss in my book reviews lately, largely because I’ve been remiss in reading in general. I’ve been limping through a Carl Sagan book as of late. This isn’t to say it’s a bad read. It’s just not as riveting as fiction. So, to get something out (and to take a break) I grabbed a novel from David Drake (of Hammer’s Slammers fame), Counting the Cost. Had it since 1987 (when it was published) and as soon as I opened it the ancient covers (from and back) broke off. So it’s literally now a paperback. Anyway, the world it takes place on […]

December 8, 2025

ShowLog – Miami Railfest – 12/7/2025

fter a night of jittery half-sleep at a hotel (and, like, who thought it was a good thing to hang neon lighting along the outer window frame of a hotel room? Is this the newer version of a flashing “HOTEL” sign?), I had a nice breakfast and headed over to the museum site near the Miami Zoo. Got there early and eventually they opened the gate for the site and I went in. The railroad museum here is impressive – there was once an airship hanger here. Now it’s an open train shed with all manner of equipment here, including […]

December 8, 2025

LostLog – Miami – 12/6/2025

eus is a good friend. Several times, we have joint dispatched (and no, that does not mean we destroyed doobies together). So when he called and asked if I’d bring our West Fork switching puzzle (a.k.a. Inglenook) down the South Miami for Miami Railfest, I said “Yes”. See, that’s one of my few faults. I say “Yes” without thinking. Another fault is when I give my word, I stick to it. This is because, sure, I was up in Port St Lucie, running the Western Bay on Saturday, and he needed me on Sunday. Port St Lucie should be right […]

December 8, 2025

OpsLog – WBRR – 12/6/2025

o the usual way this works is that I come to a layout, the owner surrenders it to me, and I dispatch. Yeah, he might have paid for it and built it, but I’m the guy who runs it. With Al, with his literal and archaic perception of ‘ownership’, that can cause issues. But this time, I would not be dispatching. He had a visitor who, I believe, was working on AP hours. Since Reverend Jim was off with grandkids (which I view as a character flaw), I was bumped down to station operator in charge of Navajo, Dulce, Placerville […]