Blog – Page 181 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

July 28, 2022

OpsLog – LM&O – 7/27/2022

o of course my medical zoom meeting went long. I blew out of the house with 40 minutes til train time, traffic was a bitch, but I came into the lot with ten minutes to spare. And the parking lot was full. Came in lugging my computer and called out hello and everyone gave me rousing hellos back. Given my last few weeks, this was a very nice glow to get. And the guys knew how to set up – the track was all clean, the jobs were signed up, and everyone was ready to go. I set the clocks […]

July 28, 2022

Feedback (DOG EAR)

‘m not a big fan of feedback. Feedback lead to the first iteration of this site (Joomla) having to be abandoned (because of weaknesses over time in the app used to allowed it). Now that I’m on WordPress, I’ve disabled it (but I’m still getting it – not sure how they are getting in on one book review). Let’s face it; all content providers see their feedback area as being a coffee shop with polite conversations about the raised topics. And instead, they become roadhouses of belligerence and idiocy. I don’t even engage in these sorts of discussions on Facebook […]

July 29, 2022

On Sheet – Inglenook

ame across this the other night, a neat little switching puzzle you can probably do on your own railroad. I know the Tuscarora could do it so I’ll give it a try when I can and let you know how it goes. Okay, so the puzzle works this way. You need a mainline track with enough room for five (5) cars on the main to the left, and three (3) cars and an engine on the right. You also need two sidings that can each hold three (3) cars. Overall, it looks kinda like this: […]

July 31, 2022

We have always lived on Mars (take 2) (Review)

o this was one a coworker handed me, a short piece of fiction of a failing Mars colony from Tor Books. Imagine a Mars colony totally cut off. Earth no longer communicates. Dust covers their sky – they’ve not seen the moons or stars or anything. The colony has no resources to expand. All they can do is carefully monitor life support, sending out old folks to die while replacing them with occasional births. Everything is dusty and worn and bleak. So Nina, one of the young women of Mars, turns out to be special. With her suit ripped in […]

July 31, 2022

OpsLog – TY&E – 7/30/2022

t had been an easy light engine movement from Youngstown up to the sand and sawmill spurs. A minor problem – none of the tracks seemed to be carrying any current so I had to resort to strategies of a four-year-old and push my train around manually (Superintendent, please note!). Eventually all that 0-5-0 switching was done, the clock ticked up to go time, the head-end brakeman tossed the manual turnout, and off we rattled with four covered hoppers and five empty flats, down the long grade. We rolled through Youngstown right on the dot, with me checking my turnouts […]

July 31, 2022

Thoughts and Prayers (Review)

stumbled across Thoughts and Prayers by author Ken Liu in that wonderful The Years Best Science Fiction, presumably the year being 2019 (oddly, it’s not clear). Anyway, just giving you the name of the story means I’m giving you a knee-jerk reaction. You are either agreeing with what you think I’m going to say or deciding that I want to pry your gun from your cold dead hands. Even though the latter might be a little true, no, this story goes deeper than that. Told in the interesting format from various characters involved, we learn that an older sister / […]

August 4, 2022

Intruder Alert (DOG EAR)

eird little thing happened recently. Years ago this site was developed under Joomla. It was fine for a while but then I added feedback, so users could converse on my wise postings. That turned out to be a terrible idea. Most people would chat on FaceBook (where I place the link to the blogs). And worse, I started getting bot postings, where I’d be flooded with 30+ postings a day. And these weren’t real posts – they were limp responses about “I love your blog” or “I’m following you now” (no mention of the subject at all, of course) as […]

August 5, 2022

On Sheet – The Art of Operations

o I’m reading Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War. The applications of this are very interesting – just about every management style, political book or hobby how-to (from archery to gardening) makes an interpretation of The Art into their aspect. So let’s take the opening description, the rule atop all other rules, and apply it to hosting an operations session. After all, in this regard, you (as the host) are “the general” and your operators are your troops. And let me say that I apologize for any miss-interpretations in advance. I’m not that good a Taoist. So, the primary rule states […]

August 7, 2022

The Year’s Best Science Fiction (Vol 1) (Review)

‘m kinda cheating here. I’m in the middle of an Ark Royal book and I had to give Art of War a break (interesting, but they are milking it through explanations to justify a bookish length). So really, I began The Year’s Best Science Fiction (Vol 1) , by Jonathan Strahan, after last Christmas (when my who-knows-me-best wife gifted it to me). And she got it off the old books graveyard shelf, given that it was Yule 2021 and the year in Year, here, is 2019. But collections of short stories can be the bomb. You can read them in any order, […]

August 11, 2022

Pretty Pictures (DOG EAR)

here was a time when I easily posted these pieces to Facebook. I’d simply copy the link and the picture-letter (in this case, the “T” to the left) would pop into the link, nice and professional. People could tell this was one of my pieces by that distinctive monk-work. Then Facebook started to fuss with me. Sometimes it would work. Sometimes it wouldn’t. When it didn’t, it would use the site’s general front-page graphic (which says “Manuscript” but, because of compression, would read “Anus”). Can you get more negative-media than that? Oh, I could click and coax and repost, and […]