Blog – Page 7 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

March 10, 2011

Metagame (review)

A friend of mine sent this to me with guarded praise. “It’s not great, but it’s interesting”. Quite a rave. And let’s just be clear that when I read, my editing light is lit. I love well-crafted prose, and the horn goes off when something jostles the story flow. For example, in Metagame, we have “R-shaped streetlights” (an issue of case, I think). A smiler: “Lily let go of D_Light’s hand, no longer needing him to guide her; he, however, did not let go of hers.” And this jolly description: “Even so, D_Light thought he could make out a large […]

March 10, 2011

OpsLog – FEC – 12/10/2011

“I need three guys,” the FEC superintendent emailed. “Extra operators for this Saturday.” Christmas is just around the corner, all manner of obligations, and the sessions sometimes suffer. With access to our club base, I got four at short notice. It’s interesting to take club operators to a stand-alone layout. Club ops are usually informal and easy-going. Home ops tend to be a little more by-the-book. The FEC is fun, but its also a fully-signaled main line effort, lots of industry, lots of switching, lots of following orders tight and right. So the worry, when I bring my pals over, […]

March 12, 2011

Keen Prose 1

I’ve started the “Keen Prose” thread, where I’ll post phrases from authors whose pen’s I’m not fit to lick. It’s the word choices and phrases that bring smiles, and convey buckets of meaning in the tightest structure. “On the following morning, whilst Major Sands was sulking, like Achilles, in his tent…” The Black Swan Rafael Sabatini Footnote: I’ve always loved Sabatini – next to Wells, he is the author who’s work comes across as poetry to me. And Major Sands in The Black Swan is the smoldering dufus who is being outwitted and outdone by the flashing hero, Charles […]

March 12, 2011

Zoom boot!

After a long day, once I’m home, its easy to feel impatient when firing up the computer for fun with games or the net. But my computer’s boot felt sooooo slooooow. Even at the train club, I’d boot up my computer so someone else could use it to dispatch and they’d comment, “It’s taking forever”. And these are old guys; they know what forever means. Funny thing, but I was listening to “AOL Anime” on radio.com and the had a tech blurb about Soluto, a freebeeware that allows you to look at what’s booting up with your computer, the ramifications […]

March 14, 2011

Opslog – Longwood & Sweetwater – 3/14/2011

My old consolidation is popping and hissing on the Altamonte industrial branch lead. Five inbound cars behind the tender, then the tracks fan out into dual and triple industry placement. The back car (car five, we’ll agree) goes to the door of the Swift meat packing company. And that’s down a spur behind a casket company. What a combo that is. It would be an easy trailing-switch/backup move, if not for the fact that the casket company has a shipment of casket handles in a box car plugging the spur. Okay. I whistle back, push car five past the turnout, and yell […]

March 18, 2011

The Game of Life

I’ve worked for corporations for years, as evident from the high-water mark of shit just under my chin. Corporate life can tarnish one’s values and blacken one’s soul. I just try to keep my head down and keep plowing forward in the face of over-regulation, bureaucracy, off-shored stupidity and pervasive executive greed. But still. I can’t go into what set me off this time; regardless of the saying that ‘the mountains are high and the emperor is far away’, his spies are everywhere. A blog with my name is a blog with my name, right? So no details. But as […]

March 22, 2011

AAAAAA

Last night I read for a bit (The Egyptologist – review coming soon) and went to bed. Nothing special. But suddenly, doing! My mind was spinning. I didn’t even get the benefit of some sort of creative thought process, that guilty pleasure of laying in bed, knowing I’m burning my candle but marveling at the story, the game idea, the train deal, whatever, that’s got my brain afire. Not this time – I was just hypersensitive – I’d hear a motorcycle go past, then a plane, then a train. And owl started to hoot. The wife began to snore. By […]

March 23, 2011

OpsLog – LM&O – 3/23/2011

Harris Glen – a high bluff with scudding gray clouds, gloomy but for the occasional stabs of pure lightning. Circling vultures. Ominous. A grim place in any occasion, but especially for this railroad. Either ascent is steep, and the Glen’s only got a short passing siding. It’s the bottleneck, no question. In every session, that’s where the railroad balls up at. This time we had two sections of varnish east, two expresses, the coal train, two freights, and a trailer train that popped out of a spur, all demanding rights. Worse, I’d been latching warrants, meaning I’d clear one guy […]

March 26, 2011

The Egyptologist (Review)

The act of observing an event changes an event. And sometimes, the act of reviewing a book ruins it for the readers. This is true for Arthur Phillip’s novel, The Egyptologist – how can one review a book for curious readers yet put up spoiler alerts? Rest assured – I’ll do my best not to give away any of the succulent moments or the gripping ending. So here goes… The novel takes place directly in 1922, and indirectly in 1954. told entirely through correspondence. The primary writings are from the Egyptologist himself through his combination of his working journal and […]

March 26, 2011

Signal Maintainer

If you think you just build a layout and your work is done, think again. Problems under the Salinas control panel (which controls turnouts through the fruit packing area). First off, crummy Radio Shack DPDT toggles, which must be being assembled in some hellhole factory in China. After a while, they stop working – you gotta wiggle them and try to coax a current through them. Perfect for engineers focusing on their timetable or waybills, a turnout that dosn’t go over when you throw the control. And second, somehow (and I curse the day it happened) I somehow got acid […]