Blog – Page 118 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

January 14, 2018

Yowamushi Pedal (1-3) (Review)

kay, seen the show. And now, for Christmas, my wife bought me the Manga (first three volumes) of Yowamushi Pedal. So for those who are old, manga are Japanese comic books. They are read in Japanese fashion, right to left, which takes some getting used to. And for those who might scoff at me reviewing “kiddy comic books”, I’ll point out that Manga is big business in Japan. The top seller (One Piece) pushed over 12 million copies over the counters last year. And when you scroll down the list, you realize that we are talking about millions and millions […]

January 17, 2018

Advocate (DOG EAR)

never started out to be a bicycle advocate. It just sort of happened. I didn’t even think about bikes in my twenties. One day in my early thirties, my brother peddled over to my house and while we were chatting offered his bike over for a spin. “Well, I don’t know. It’s not really my thing blabbady blah”. So I rode. And I rather liked it. A few days later I started talking bikes with the two ride-to-workers, getting some ideas. For the next four years I was riding four miles in every day. After I got canned from that […]

January 24, 2018

OpsLog – LM&O – 1/24/2018

o now I know what having a stroke is like. Usual session. Everyone came. We cleaned. Trains went on the rails. People signed up. In the back office I booted my computer and readied the fast clock. Odd, it booted up at 15:1. Normally the club runs at 10:1. That was a problem a few years back but I easily corrected it. And then it was hot, and then we were running. Just like a chess game. 202 went into the siding at Zanesville as it had for at least a hundred times. Silver Bullet 2 stormed by on the […]

January 25, 2018

Book Burning (DOG EAR)

here comes a time in every book’s life when you flip to the final page and read to the bottom. And then you think, “Wonderful.” Or possibly, “Thank Christ that’s done.” But either way, we get to the end of all books (even if we blow the canopy early and bail). The question then becomes – what to do with those leftovers? Yes. For the books that made me smile or spoke to me in my loneliness, that connected to my soul in some way, I keep. There is a straining set of shelves in the Florida room I place […]

February 15, 2018

No feedback (DOG EAR)

es, it’s been a while. My computer cratered and it’s been the work of a half month (one week for the shop to scrub and rewindow my box, then one for me to reinstall and reconnect everything). I’ve got a ton of book reviews in the hopper (I’d lose myself in reading to escape my Tron woes). But it got me thinking about other things. Like the feedback I’ve gotten off the bottom of my entries (yes, if you scroll down, you’ll notice it’s no longer there). The reason for this is many-fold. First, it’s not because I don’t like […]

February 18, 2018

Doom of London (Review)

eah, I gotta love Project Gutenberg. Now that I have a Brompton bike, I can commute by train and bus pretty much every day of the week. And this means I get a lot more reading done. So, sure, sometimes I slip a paperback into my bag. But sometimes I’m between books without a clear desire for anything. Happened this time. So I downloaded The Doom of London, which was part of three-short-story set. So this short story (set in Victorian London) follows a man and his weather. The man, our narrator, is a clerk for a gentleman of business. […]

February 22, 2018

Fatalism (DOG EAR)

thought I’d pissed off the Russian mob and had suffered a contract hit. You’ll remember how I mentioned I shut off my blog comments because of all the entries being placed on it (sites get a lot more traffic the more places they are featured, which is a faulty algorithm that drives disreputable behaviors). I’d decided that the last time my site got hacked it was through this mechanism and, if anything, my feedback mechanism was getting stone-aged. Once I started getting volumes of Russian traffic, I decided to mitigate the risk and shut it down. And three days later, […]

February 24, 2018

OpsLog – FEC – 2/24/2018

t was a bit of a struggle getting over to Ken’s Florida East Coast– we fought through a pointless battle on the Beachline (five miles of bumper2bumper and no cause for it) (there, Bruce, I mentioned that). And Ken’s was understaffed – five people dropped the night before leaving him a little short. I posted the club list – last moment stuff – didn’t get any takers. So, with Bev on the yard (one person doing the job for three), Ken on the panel, the shed held only Me, Bruce, Andy, Monty and John. But we were the gold crew. […]

February 25, 2018

Dark Matter (Review)

t’s been a while. I’ve read pointless SciFi, stale SciFi, and dated SciFi. After a while I was only reading SciFi to relax on the train. Nothing was challenging me. And then I read Dark Matter. The story starts out brilliantly. A middle-aged college professor is enjoying a “family night” with his wife and son. Going out to fetch ice cream from the shop a few blocks away, he sees an old acquaintance in a bar. In talking to this man, we get a glimpse of the purpose and gift our protagonist possessed, that is, before the day-to-day world sucked […]

February 28, 2018

OpsLog – LM&O – 2/28/2018

razy night at the club. Not only were we a bit short-handed but we had VIPs, namely the superintendents for the FEC of who I’ve blogged about on this very train blog, Ken and Bev Farnham. Figured it would be a good session – Cody on the panel (a firm hand) and Frank in the yard (rock solid). I rolled the Zanesville Turn out (or tried to – the DS pushed a long-range warrant against me so I idled in the yard for a bit). But once I hit the rails, everything was fine. The switching was orderly but I […]