Sunday Grab-Bag

     -Once again, I have gone to a gun show (with both Turk Turon, Friday; and Tam, Shootin' Buddy and the Data Viking, Saturday) and returned without firearms.  I did buy metalworking items, a small display case for pens, and a book. DV scored a Smith & Wesson pre-Model 17 .22 revolver in excellent shape and Tam made progress towards owning even more obscure semi-autios, a .25 Pieper and a .25 H&R auto derived from the old Webley & Scott self-loading pistol.  The Indy 1500 was incredibly crowded both Friday and Saturday and the crowd was their usual big-city mixture of Random Anonymous Strangers, Bubbas, Women Of All Hues And Classes, Collectors, Oriental Tourists, Hunters, Plinkers, Guys Who Look Like Gang Members, Cops, Soldiers, Fake Soldiers (kid, they're laughing at your "uniform."), the occasional fellow with a generally disapproving expression and just plain folks.  While gun shows skew "white" and "old," the big 1500 pulls in a lot more kinds of people than you'd think if you'd never been there -- and we all got along, despite being cheek-by-jowl and having to squeeze though.

     -Many of science fiction writer Stanley G. Weinbaum's short stories are available online.  Weinbaum is notable for being one of the first, perhaps the very first of the "modern" or Campbellian SF authors -- except he did so before John W. Campbell became the editor of Astounding (later Analog) and died eighteen months after his first story was published.  ...And kept on getting published after he died, thanks at least in part to his sister Helen Kasson.

     -Bud Webster has written a fine series of biographical sketches of Weinbaum, R. A. Lafferty, and other SF authors, published in the Grantville Gazette and found here.

     -It is past time for me to do some old-tools articles over at Retrotechnologist.  Work may intrude today but I am thinking about what and how.