robert.admin – Page 89 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

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, […]

October 4, 2020

OpsLog – WVN – 10/3/2020

n these days of Covid, one has to weigh the risk of getting a disease with the fun you’ll have. Granted, I’m not about to jam into a bar just so I can get a watered-down drink and a reminder of how bad the current generation of music is. And my hair really, really needs a cut. But a chance to run on the Komars’ West Virginia Northern (in full masks and even cute blue booties (well, that’s for static but maybe it will help)) is a chance not to be missed. I was so excited driving over. I can’t […]

October 1, 2020

False Narratives (DOG EAR)

here’s this Texan thing – a guy living in the middle of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metropolitan area, surrounded by concrete all the way to the horizon and not within a hundred miles of a single cow, wears a cowboy hat. That’s the Texan narrative, the proud cowboy (even though, historically, their economy was more based on rice and cotton than livestock) and the cowboys that were wore everything from straw hats to bowlers. But they wear their funny headgear, 150 years out of date. But that’s how modern (and, largely, American) society works. Surrounded by more facts and truth than […]

September 27, 2020

The Three-Body Problem (Review)

p front: Fantastic book! I’m not sure how this one showed up on my shelf. I was looking for something to read and found this at the bottom of a pile (actually, I do think I know where it came from). But this is a review, not a confession. The Three-Body Problem is a story from China by Cixin Liu, one of the greats of Chinese literature. It starts off in our real world, during the horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. And all that seems normal enough (it its humanically horrible sort of way). Then we get a strange […]

September 27, 2020

OpsLog – TBL – 9/26/2020

understand that Covid-19 has crippled ops. My monthly sessions at three different layouts (and the thrice-a-year specials) have been annulled. For the first time in seven years, I won’t be going to La Mesa (which I had to fight my way to originally get accepted). Yes, Covid sucks. Today Greg Wells and I held our third session of the Tuscarora Branch Line. I invited everyone at the club to attend – we had room for another position to fill. But as with the last two sessions, I ran both dispatch and the coal movements since we were short-handed. Really, I’m […]

September 24, 2020

A nice review-review (DOG EAR)

while ago I read a delightful short story from a collection from a going-out-of-business and lamented-over publisher. The story was Gelato Parlour, and was a very quirky story about a gentleman of adventure. You can read the review HERE. So that was a while ago. But the other day I received a very nice email from the author, Rose Biggin, telling me how much she appreciated my review (the one thing about reading quirky short stories from other people – you might be their only review and she implies I was). But I had been enthusiastically supportive of her story […]

September 21, 2020

Candide (Review)

he driving idea of Candide comes from the titled character, a young man of some privilege who lives in a nice castle and has food, entertainment, a girl he’s sweet on, everything he could hope for. More in amusement than anything else, he chats with the court’s learned philosopher. Doctor Pangloss, with smug certainty, denotes that everything is here for a reason, and hence (by the chain of logic) this reality must represent The Best of All Possible Worlds. Hence the alternate title to the book, Optimism. And hence the coming irony. Of course, almost immediately, Pangloss has his way […]