Archive for January 16th, 2025

Random crankery (mostly gun books, a little gun stuff, a little electronic stuff).

Thursday, January 16th, 2025

I didn’t manage to get everything done that I wanted to get done during my extended vacation from work. In particular, gun crankery and gun books kind of went by the wayside, for reasons of time and weather.

The gun crankery is still coming. And a thought occurred to me the other day: I can actually do some quick gun book crankery, because I have three new gun books in the stack and can just point folks to those books online. Don’t need to pull out the bibliographies or take pictures. Yes, it is lazy, and yes, there will be less lazy gun book crankery coming. Consider this a stopgap.

More seriously, I do think these new books are worth writing about and promoting to my readers.

In order to avoid disappointing my gun book buddies, I’m going to put the gun books up front. After those, I’m going to talk about one new gun-related item, and one new non-gun related item, so anyone who wants can skip over the non-book parts (or can skip to the non-book parts).

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Obit watch: January 16, 2025.

Thursday, January 16th, 2025

This is breaking news, but: David Lynch. I wouldn’t ordinarily post anything this early, but I happened to be writing this obit watch when the news broke. Expect more tomorrow.

Bob Uecker. ESPN. IMDB. Baseball Reference.

Uecker proved himself undistinguished during his six seasons as a major leaguer in the 1960s. He eked out a career batting average of just .197, hit 14 home runs and drove in 74 runs. A career reserve player, he never started more than 62 games in a season for the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves, the St. Louis Cardinals or the Philadelphia Phillies.

“Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues,” he once said. “But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.”

The sight of Uecker perched at such a distance became so much a part of his image that, in 2014, a statue of him was installed in the faraway reaches of the upper deck of Miller Park in Milwaukee.

“I can’t think of a better place to put it,” he said. “It’s great for the fans and even better for the pigeons.”

Administrative note.

Thursday, January 16th, 2025

For the record, my plan is to update the various politician lists (city council, commissioners court, reps, senators) sometime after, but close to, January 20th.

I know some of these folks have been sworn in already, but waiting until after the 20th gives people a chance to get their web sites updated and things in order.