Blog – Page 153 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 11, 2020

BuildLog – TBL – 8/10/2020

t was a long weekend of work on the Tuscarora Branch Line. After building the layout last week and staining the frame (over the weekend), I got track mounted on it, carefully including my feeder sections. A lot of effort here to get the track flat and make sure the turnouts still worked (my first go, I dislodged one of the wires). So tonight Steve Raiford and I soldered the feeders to a single terminal strip, in preparation for connecting up the booster. We were about done when a routine currency check noted that he had a short somewhere. Steve […]

August 13, 2020

The Robby Awards (DOG EAR)

he heat was sheeting off the three eastbound lanes running towards Bithlo, Florida. I was in the right lane behind a massive pickup truck with all its proudly stickered vulgarities. Suddenly the trunk swerved its massive tires left, cutting into the center lane. In horror, I saw a guy on a hog (with no helmet) making an equally uncleared and unsignaled shift from the far left lane. Both spotted each other and locked up (I had to stop because the wide back end of the pickup was still in my lane). Then, like pitbulls, they screamed at each other, unmasked […]

August 15, 2020

Trail of McAllister (Review)

an, I used to read these Western things when I was a teen, and Author Matt Chisholm is still pumping them out. But after my last slow thick book, a fast cowboy novel was just what I needed. So in this one, we open with five hard men chatting in their nasty little shanty. Turns out one of them “got him”, meaning he ambushed someone and shot him right off the edge of a canyon, leaving his body to fall into the river. As a reader, our first question is “who did you shoot?” And little by little, it is […]

August 20, 2020

Start the Presses! (DOG EAR)

t was the weekend of my quarterly chore, putting together the fall issue of the Journal Box, a newsletter I do for our National Model Railroad Association region. This is just an example of what happens when you are a known writer – everyone has resumes, cover letters, and assembly-and-print nightmares for you to do. Because, you know, you write and all. But seriously, if I’d been there and they’d asked someone else, I’d have been writing a “why didn’t they pick me?” blog. So, yes, better to complain from the battlements than from the base of the wall, I […]

August 24, 2020

Quarantine 1

‘m in quarantine. Saturday night (August 22nd), laying in bed, I found myself with a bit of night sweats going on. Also, I’d had a sore throat, on an off, for days. And that’s when it hit me. You might have Covid. Not a good time for this – the wife has pre-surgery coming up. I’ve got all sorts of hobby things going on. I don’t have time for a virus. But I don’t have time for a funeral, either. So I immediately sealed myself off in the den, sleeping on the floor that night. Found that my Doctor Sister […]

August 25, 2020

Quarantine 2

he second and last installment of a short two-part series. I got my results today and they were negative. Not bad – CVS Pharmacy took them at midday Sunday and posted them by Tuesday morning. So it’s interesting that, with a mask and precautions, I still caught some sort of low-grade cold. That’s worrisome since it means that, even with masks and hand-washing, you can still catch things. Also interesting – provided I have a computer to program with and books to read, I’m quite the happy introvert. Yesterday I stayed in a closed condo (with a view of the […]

August 27, 2020

Business Communication (DOG EAR)

uch of my last twenty years in business involved learning to write. Oh, not the whole thing about wine-dark seas and such; I already know how to wax descriptively. No, in this case, it was to write informatively. I was having to manage compliance issues across an organization situated across the globe. In this, email was the tool of choice; my requests and corrections involved too many people to one-on-one with a phone. However, to keep from having my email turn into a long thread of postings and counter-postings, I had to learn to make sure that information was conveyed […]

August 30, 2020

The Lost City of Z (Review)

knew a girl, once, who dreamed of hiking across Brazil and the Amazon. If I still knew where she was, I’d send her this book if only to give her the relief of lost dreams. If you like outdoorsy things, backpacking and camping, you might find this book interesting. So, in the early part of the last century, the English were sending out explorers all over the globe, driven to fill in those blank spots on the map. You know, that whole “Dr. Livingston, I presume” stuff. And one of the most famous at the time was Percy Fawcett, a […]

September 3, 2020

Summer Reading List (DOG EAR)

dear friend of mine wrote me Monday – she’s got two girls and for next year, they have to list forty books they might consider reading. Since she’s inert as a reader, but I devour books like a wood chipper, she asked if I could come up with some sort of list. Okay, I couldn’t come up with forty (challenge; can you?). But since they consider a book 150 pages and longer ones count as two books, I might have made the cut. Anyway, below is the response I sent her. See how many of these you’ve read and maybe, […]

September 3, 2020

OpsLog – TBL – 9/3/2020

ait! What? Ops on the Tuscarora Brach Line? Yup. Brought the layout home today. Since I got the randomized car sorting worked out the other day, I realized I was ready to go. Even though I didn’t have that tank car and covered hopper Greg Wells promised me a week ago, I just threw box cars into the mix and off we went. Ops for the local switch crew is programmed (with random car ordering). In all, I ran eighteen trains (but to be truthful, this really is five trains and five local / drill jobs that make numerous runs […]