robert.admin – Page 74 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

October 24, 2019

To Sum Up (DOG EAR)

etirement. I know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. I think I realized what retirement was when I was on the wrong end of town with two hours to kill before a lunch date. Rather than run back home (for what – ninety minutes?) or run some compressed errands, I hung out in a coffee shop with a book (Infinite Jest, but hey, I had to get that mother read). The thing is, I’m learning this new phase in my life. When I thought about it last year, I thought I’d be writing every structured day. Not so, it […]

October 24, 2019

OpsLog – LM&O – 10/23/2019

usy night on the line. At first, we weren’t looking at anyone showing – we had about a dozen guys cleaning. But as we prepped up, more and more came in until we had a nice collection of members (and a spicy dusting of newbie visitors). My turn on the panel so I set up the clock and the computer, did the sound check and then did my usual pawn move – 202 to Zaynesville, hold the siding. It was a pretty fast-paced night. Very little waiting (at least, that’s how I saw it – out in the cabs, it […]

October 20, 2019

Infinite Jest (Review)

here is a scene in this monster of a book, in tiny print in a footnote that spans pages. A character is trying to plagiarize a flowery-penned writer and is furious he can’t do it verbatim (since the voice is so radical and baroque). He visualizes slapping the author: left, right, left. That’s kinda how I feel about this book. Infinite Jest is, as I’ve said elsewhere, a monster of a book. The primary story is 981 pages long. The footnotes (some of them as long as a chapter on their own) adds another 96 pages (in tiny print). It […]

October 17, 2019

Filosophy of Phantasy (DOG EAR)

ou don’t have the right-of-way!” shouted an FUV driver who’d skipped a stop sign, come around a corner and nearly took me and my bike out while in the crosswalk. This is Orlando, a town made for cars, ruled by cars (in the grips of their chromed fists) and centered on cars. Motorists see the out-of-doors as a place only used for driving – it’s that void between their garage and their work parking lot and the mall. Pedestrians and cyclists are the ants that get in the way and must be horn-blared clear. A nuisance. Statistics back me on […]

October 6, 2019

Fighter Pilot (Review)

s mentioned in my Dog Ear piece, I needed a break from modern arty storytelling. I’ve had Fighter Pilot on my shelf for a decade and never read it (I don’t even know where it came from). Anyway, it’s the story of the first American ace in World War Two, William Dunn. All in all, it’s a roiling tale of a guy who joined the army to try to be a pilot in the thirties, and got put in the infantry. Then he joined the Canadians and still got put into the infantry. About all the air action he got […]

October 6, 2019

ShowLog – Deland – 10/5/2019

Saturday! Saturday! Saturday! It’s SteamDays at the beautiful Volusia County Fairgrounds DogBone Raceway! Throbbing Mikados! Bigger-than-big Boys! GS4s in ArtDeco SP Ride-me-please Colors! All there, furious Back-in-black microkettles with spinning piston / minimum-pull action! Come see the Stars of the Train Show circuit. Featured will be- One-Lap-Amtrak-Attack Wells! Mini-Me Case and the Pensy Coal Rocket! Tyke and Spike, the Lovable Mikes! And Bobby Martin’s GHOOOOOOOOST TRAIN! Ample feeding at the FeedBag/MoneyBag Trunk Diner! Comfortable seating (standing room only) in the Folkston Reviewing Stand! And kids can play find-the-hidden-jack-port in the White Memorial Scenery Park! Pet the plastic deer! Laugh at […]

October 3, 2019

The Speed of Read (DOG EAR)

o I’m doing that speed as best I can. Kinda. I’m still in the midst of Infinite Jest, a tale of tennis and substance abuse recovery. It’s a fine book, clever and insightful, but goddamn slow. When you are in the midst of ten pages of description of the most minute moves of a tennis game between two teenagers, and all the reactions of the people in the stands, and then you get pulled into a ten-page footnote, well, it makes for every distracting reading. Truthfully, this damn thing sometimes puts me to sleep. But I’m going to push through […]

October 1, 2019

OpsLog – FEC – 9/28/2019

he usual opener here. Ken asks if I’d like to dispatch his CTC paneled Florida East Coast. “Sure”, I say. Yes yes yes yes yes, I think. Love running the FEC – it’s a great layout and for the four hours we run, you are very busy – I’ve run CTC boards where you aren’t and it’s a yawn-fest but this one keeps you hopping. Truthfully, at the end of the session, we had four southbounds coming through Palm Bay and I was starting to get them mixed up (not helped by the crews who seemed rather “greedy” (by which […]

October 1, 2019

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/25/2019

hen I think of railroads in operation, I think of trains holding at the station, the crews watching the conductor who is watching his watch (all that watching) for their on-the-dot departures. Of course, if ops teach us anything, it often illustrates how railroads don’t work. Take last night’s ops (which I would have written last night had I had a computer that could reach my blogsite (I’m using the dispatching computer with no internet capability to write this)). The original idea I had was to push out of Calypso with the Harris Glen Local numberboards (we really need to […]

September 22, 2019

Goshawk Squadron (Review)

nother review from way back, this from one of my favorite fictional World War One flying novels, Goshawk Squadron. This book is from Derek Robinson, who would go on to English infamy for a later book, Piece of Cake. And this is pretty much a proving ground for what he’d do in Piece, that being create a squadron of misfits and unassuming youth and then fling them into war. The book starts with Major Woolley sitting in a deck chair, watching his squadron float towards the frosted landing field. Uncouth, foul, always angry, as his adjutant announces each pilot’s name […]