Blog – Page 176 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

April 3, 2022

ShowLog – Deland – 4/2/2022

hunder is booming and rain is spattering me in the face. I’m standing just clear of the coupler, waving my operator back. Lightning flashes. Rain is starting to come down a little harder. I’m going to get wet. “Ten feet,” I call. “Five. One. Inches. Good!” Bill comes back and in the gathering rain and wind, we couple the truck to the club trailer and link all the safety hooks up. Rain is splashing against my back now. Finally we’re coupled. Bill decides he’s going to position. “I’m going in,” I tell him. It’s a long walk back to the […]

April 3, 2022

Drive (Review)

his one comes from the collection of short stories in The Expanse universe, all balled together in Memory’s Legion. It’s a collection of all the short stories and novellas the two writers who make up “James S.A Corey” have published in various platforms. But I’d not wanted to buy them for a device – I wanted paper. And now, thank God, I’ve got it! So Drive is the story behind Solomon Epstein and the creation of his ship drive that allows humans to spread out across the solar system in an easy and economic way (and not the months and […]

April 8, 2022

My Reading Room (DOG EAR)

ou might wonder about my reading room. Possibly you imagine a high-ceilinged, oaken place with towering bookshelves filled with leather-bound tomes. Well, using the magic of description, let me take you to the place I do much of my reading at. It’s an old shopping center along Corrine Drive in part of Old Orlando – the area of Colonialtown was build in the late 40s and remains (with the exception of sprouting, insufferable McMansions) pretty much as it was then. Anyway, this shopping center has been there for over a half-century. The sidewalks are cracked, the storefronts old-fashioned, painted and […]

April 10, 2022

Steamboats Come True (Review)

ound this in our little corner bookshop, an old textbook which i stained with coffee and Tabasco as I read it over many mornings at Juniors. But it’s a fascinating and very detailed account of the development of the steamboat. And if you think that Robert Fulton did it all alone in some sort of vacuum of engineering, no, he didn’t. When you think about it, the steamboat was one of the most technologically amazing crafts men of the time could envision. Think about it – America had just gotten through its revolution. The wilderness still besieged the coastal seaboards. […]

April 11, 2022

OpsLog – TY&E – 4/10/2022

ough day on the TY&E. There, I said it. It shaped up to be a great day – glorious outside, perfect for a garage run. And JW had a huge crowd show up for the session, always a good sign. Train instructions were issued, the experts waked the newbies through their jobs, we all dialed up and then the difficulties started. Look, not faulting JW on this. We’ve had sessions at the club and at my home layout where things go to shit. I’ve had the Tuscarora, darling of my heart, stab me in the back (several times) with others […]

April 14, 2022

Sound advice (DOG EAR)

was in the bookstore the other day and I saw a woman who appeared to be pregnant perusing a book on pregnancy. It wasn’t a for-dummies book, it was a fairly leaned tome, which means lots of words, not many pictures. But still, even though I’m a man without kids, I figured I should weigh in on this, just so she had my take on this whole “baby” and “birthing” thing. After all, I’m trying to help, right? So I went up to her and said, “Oh, you have one in the oven…?” Cringing yet? I’m giving you this allegory […]

April 17, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O (Night Ops) – 4/16/2022

t’s 8:15am in the Cincinnati rail yards. I’ve got some SP F3’s coupled to the 244 consist (and some geeps stuck in, since my slow-rollers wouldn’t even get them out of the yard in my test pulls while waiting for go-time). But lights are on, engines are rumbling, we’re good to go. At half-past, two blasts of the horn and I’m pushing hard, fixed on making Carbon Hill for my first meet of the day. The F-units, one time my pride, are really running bad. They seem to need a warm up session to get them moving. By the time […]

April 17, 2022

The Butcher of Anderson Station (Review)

nother quick review out of the Memory’s Legion collection of Expanse tales. This one concerns Fred Johnson, Soldier for Earth who ended up as levelheaded spokesman for the Belt, running Tycho Station and repurposing the Mormon’s generation ship out from under them (and, good for that since it turns out they would have been literally wasting the time of generations). So there is a side story about Johnson, how he was involved in a massacre on a belter station. As I remember, the show has the belters attempting to surrender and Fred ordering them in. Well, it wasn’t quite like […]

April 21, 2022

The Ethics of Media (DOG EAR)

he other night I was enjoying a quiet evening the way I like it – writing game code for my new effort, Pathfinder, the window open, the cool breezes flowing around me, the online radio quietly playing French soft rock. And that’s then the guy, the girl, and the motorcycle entered my world. They came down the street, making more noise than I make in a week. It was one of those suburban Harley’s bought from those urban-dad fake-factory stores, all noise, heavy as a tank. And even though they were rolling slow, the guy was revving his engine (because […]

April 23, 2022

OpsLog – TBL – 04/23/2022

irst thing: This will be the first of four ops sessions I’ll be attending this week. So get ready for my reports. I’ve not run my little crazy layout since January – three months. Just been busy with scenery on it, other things, life in general, you know. The big thing was my primary switcher, that Broadway Limited SW-7, had taken a dump. To reset it required something akin to a mix of safe-cracking and bomb-disposal: had to get the shell off (a major achievement) and then hold a button down while putting its trucks on a live layout. I […]