Blog – Page 82 – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 28, 2015

Moon and Vega (8/27/2015)

he reason I haven’t posted anything to this thread is because we’ve had no viewing nights all summer. Rain. Clouds. Haze. Even the Perseid meteor shower – we saw three falls through a cloud “keyhole”. Bah! Last night, I’d checked the sky earlier and saw the moon through a silken veil of haze – bah again! But while on the phone with a buddy at 10pm, I stepped out on the back porch and saw, to my amazement – EVERYTHING! Clear as a bell. I hadn’t had a night like this in months. I finished the phone call while shifting […]

September 3, 2015

Duality (DOG EAR)

first noticed this sort of thing in a movie back, I dunno, ten years or more ago. It was during a summer of destruction-from-space-with-a-big-rock blockbusters. Anyway, in one of them, here comes a gigantic rock that will take out all life for certain. A mission sent up to deflect the rock half-fails, breaking it into a big piece (big enough to end us) and a little piece (scary but survivable). And sitting there in that overcold theater, I knew, at that moment, where each was going. Of course the little one smashes into Earth, releasing a massive detonation of CGI […]

September 6, 2015

Great Pirate Stories (Review)

kay, less a review, more of a social rant. Pirates. Co’mon. What is this suburban fascination with pirates? How many Baldwin Park Freds do you see driving around with pirate decals (usually skulls and over-ornate crap) pasted over their Tahoe rear windows? Really? Like, so, you live in suburbia and have a green lawn and a good job and house payments, but it if wasn’t for all that, you’d be cannonading a Spanish Port? Really? So clearly you desire the blood of innocence running down your elbows, and your pockets stuffed full of church gold? That you’d rape children and […]

September 10, 2015

Gearbox (DOG EAR)

n a recent hey-let’s-all-go-out-to-lunch-together Friday at work, I ended up giving a Libyan fellow and an Indian mom a ride over in my Mini Cooper. Yeah, it was tight and everyone wanted a turn driving the rumm-rumm car about. We had our share of stalls (I won’t say by who) but everyone had a blast driving that little sports car (even overloaded as it was). But the thing that they enjoyed the most was the gear shift. Yeah, it’s fun. Instead of just driving, now you are part of the process, feeding in gas and slipping the clutch. Nothing feels […]

September 13, 2015

End of the Beginning (Review)

‘ve read this before. It’s Bookish Vu. A huge carrier force blasts it’s opponents on the approach to the Hawaiian islands. Pearl Harbor get’s flattened. A landing is made on the north side of the main island. The defenders do what they can to stop it but are largely swept away, in part because of their enemies’ air superiority. Then the last of the desperate fighting, the blood, the tears, all that. Where was that? Oh yeah – Days of Infamy, the first book to this two-parter. Then, it was the Japanese turn. So our cast of characters from the […]

September 17, 2015

Not for Fun (DOG EAR)

very so often, it happens. Instead of reading something I want to read (like that Japanese scifi Jesse Markowitz sent me), I’m stuck with something tedious. I don’t want to read what I’m reading right now. It was given to me, a self-help sort of thing (yes, I need self-help, but I need the relaxation time more). It’s a book written by a Pfud (PHD) and while he’s got an interesting concept, you can tell he’s packing it with filler to justify that a simple article can expand to make a book. I mean, some of the little side stories […]

September 20, 2015

Hiero’s Journey (Review)

his one takes me back to my days in college. Back then, the world was certain to end in massive atomic warfare. And the world would grow from it, different and mutated. And the mutations would be quick, varied, and exotic. Yeah, that was our thought, anyway, before we had The Road to show us what it would really be like. Still, it was like opening the box for Gamma World again and rolling up an RPG character who was a two inch tiger with psyonic powers, this sense of a crazy post-holocaust world. Hiero is a priest in what […]

September 20, 2015

OpsLog – WPR – 9/19/2015

‘m on the Denver platform, watching a standard gauge crew drive standard gauge rails through the midst of the Western Bay Railroad’s narrow gauge yard. Wonder if SP will be hiring? Frowning, I’m checking my watch – just got in from another train and am conducting Number 2 back to Alamosa. It’s almost 2pm, the platform is filled with passengers yet the tracks are empty. Where’s our train? My engineer comes up, a guy I’ve never run with but we exchange courtesies and decide who’s going to do what and confirm waterstops and so forth. Out in the yard. I […]

September 20, 2015

Moon and Scorpion (9/20/2015)

asn’t intending on going star gazing tonight but the sky was so clear (after the Mordor clouds we’ve had for weeks) that I figured I needed to get the dust off the scope. Did some moon-looking (of course, she’s up and showing half her face) – nice shots of some of the craters along the Apennines Range (where my heroes Tubitz and Mergenstein are currently at, if I’d ever get off my can and start writing again). Found a line of craters with their central peaks clearly defined, their central shadows forming clock-hands that must have been stretching for miles. […]

September 23, 2015

OpsLog – LM&O – 9/23/2015

sually this set of SP black widow F’s is on the point of 373 and 374, the intermodal service from Watsonville to San Luis Obispo. They’ve run up and down that route for years. But today I put them on the Zanesville local, running through the Pennsy highlands, working a cut from Martin Yard to Carbon Hill and back (with most of its work in Zanesville). So, yeah, out of place a bit. But fun. I sorted out the cuts on the lead track to the auto plant, and worked one side of the line, then the other, nice and […]