robert.admin – Page 60 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

October 29, 2020

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/28/2020

utside of one mini-ops we tried, the last time we ran the club layout was back in February, back before the Covid storm swept over us. For a while the building stood empty. Then we reopened and did a lot of work. So for the past week, we’ve been trying to resuscitate our pike, getting those corroded rails clean, sweeping out the dust and cobwebs and trying to get something like operations going again. For the record, it was full masks, full sanitizers, and to keep the germs down, no phones – as dispatcher I sat at a table in […]

October 25, 2020

Pilgrim (Review)

t’s a tale as old as time, even in the literary branch of fantasy. The experienced assassin wants out. Last job. And after he pulls it off (granted, it doesn’t go so well, what with him getting cut and his inner demons (literally!) releasing), he managed to kill the target, all the released monsters, all that. And then he finds out his guild wants him dead. So, no retirement party, I guess. Danzen Ravja is now a man (or some sort of superman, maybe) on the run. Two years later, he fetches up in a little collection of villages in […]

October 22, 2020

Are you Robert Raymond? (DOG EAR)

ould you possibly hope to be the world-adventurer, man about town, writer, game designer, rocket engineer? Review the list below and score your points (1 for each thing you’ve done). Then look to the bottom to see if you are Robert Raymond. 1) Flown an airship? 2) Ridden a bike 60 miles in one go? 3) Lived in foreign country for several years? 4) Written a novel picked up by an agent and publisher, and placed on bookstore shelves? 5) Read thousands of books? (The list for the last decade is HERE) 6) Dispatched a complex model railroad? 7) Written […]

October 18, 2020

Wild Time (Review)

or you folks who want your Shakespeare more accessible, I give you Wild Time, a twist on A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Rose Biggin (who wrote a short story I particularly enjoyed) and Keir Cooper. So, as Bard Bill wrote it, the Duke of Athens and the Amazon Queen are getting married and the fairies of the forest are all abuzz (you can actually imagine that, right?). They want to give the newlyweds something they can really use, not just a toaster but a stud. The problem is that the king of the fairies gets his knob bent about how […]

October 18, 2020

OpsLog – 10/17/2020

nother op session at the club today, with AJ running his coal and Ben as the switch crew. In the logistics side, Greg ran the DS panel and I worked the nonlocking interlocking. And, as Greg put it, I also worked as the superintendent (and an auxiliary brakeman). First off, this little beauty was in place, my very first structure, the Tuscarora Station. You’ll notice that it’s been out of service for twenty years, that the paint is cracked and peeling. Not added yet are the boards over the windows and doors (or the roof weathering). And station signs. So […]

October 15, 2020

Fake News (DOG EAR)

ossibly I missed the critical news of the year – Covid-19 has an effective vaccine now? No? Nothing changed? Then why are we opening bars, tossing off our masks and acting like it’s VC day? Today I went into an Ace Hardware and there in the paint aisle was a guy standing there, deciding if he wanted Cherry Red of Valentines Pink, breathing unfiltered, unmasked air, too proud to respect a store full of others, assuming that his risks should be run by all of us. Needless to say, I loitered outside the aisle until he’d fumed his way up […]

October 11, 2020

Contact (Review)

ust like everyone else, I’ve seen the movie. But if you haven’t, Contact is about a driven young woman, Elenore Arroway, who loses her father and, indirectly because of his teachings, becomes and astrophysicist. Too driven for any sort of real life, she finds herself running a part of the SETI program (the search for extraterrestrial life). And wouldn’t you know (hey, it’s fiction – can’t have it any other way) that she’s on duty and present when a clear alien message comes in. Happily, they find out that it’s a coded picture. Unhappily, they find out it’s one of […]

October 11, 2020

OpsLog – TBL – 10/10/2020

ell, this was a first. We ran ops on my tiny layout with four people! We ran with two operators on the trains (the scheduled and the extras). We also had a full-time dispatcher (who moves trains in a sequence that minimalizes the delays). And we ran with an interlocking tower operator, which essentially did nothing save set the Train Order signals and hand up orders to pausing trains. In this (and since we don’t have the panel up) two “paper signals” (shown below) flagged trains to pick up orders. I had that position and it really gave me some […]

October 8, 2020

Pud (DOG EAR)

ack when I worked as a summer hire for the Navy in Cubi Point, Philippines, Chief Mullens would always yell “Don’t just stand there with your pud in your hands!” The things you carry forward in life. So now, fifty years later, I’m in a world we could have scarcely imagined. We have/had space shuttles (I even worked on them), computers beyond imagination, an ability to travel the globe and a pandemic that came, in part, because of that. And now I’m an old guy, retired, and I’m out riding my thirty-mile ride. Everyone I pass on the trail, baby-pushers, […]

October 4, 2020

Night Flights (Review)

he fifth of the Mortal Engines series, a YA franchise where, following the 60-second war, towns rebuilt on tracked platforms and chase each other, practicing “Urban Darwinism” by eating each other. And there’s airships and strange tech and interesting people, the usual. It’s a breezy-easy read, perfect for YAs and for reviewers who need to come up with a review a week to keep the blog fires burning. About the book – this time its about Anna Fang, anti-tractionist terrorist, kick-ass air captain, and later a nasty cyborg that launches an all-out global war. But this is about young Anna, […]