I was going to remark, half the exhibits look like bombs to an untrained eye, not to mention the military vehicles museum who has two nukes on exhibit and the entirety of electronic warefare, a lot of bomb shaped objects mixed in with ACTUAL BOMBS. some small things to chuckle at in uncertain times Thanks, Andrew Mattera
On Apr 21, 2026, at 12:05, Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
When the bomb threat happened, Jeff and Corey sprung into action and managed things with skilled leadership, I am glad they were there to make the decisions, manage the police and all of the initial panic that happened while we were being asked to evacuate without a lot of explanation.
My first thought was, how are they going to find a bomb in a sea of "looks like a bomb" vintage computing artifacts, boards, wires, half-finished things, etc? I also wondered if this was Lee's way of getting out of giving his talk, ha ha....
The exhibits were very well done, and I want to thank the OSI team for having me join with them for the 50th anniversary of the Ohio Scientific computer.
It seems like the consignment program was a success. It may have been a little cumbersome for some, but I had no problems listing my two items.
The show was a success because of how it was run, plus a great bunch of people...despite what happened at the end.
Bill
On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 11:54 AM Jeffrey Brace <jeffrey@vcfed.org> wrote:
Sorry for not responding earlier.
This is the first chance I had to send a response after a long day of breaking down Sunday (was there until midnight), a followup cleanup on Monday (9 hours) and getting back to work today.
I only want to share some of the details to avoid speculation, rumors and to avoid impeding the police investigation. The facts: There was a phone call placed to Wall Township Police Department that had spoofed InfoAge's main phone number. The caller said that there was a bomb in a particular building and that he was going to shoot up the building. He had a particular accent. He seemed to be a former volunteer at a museum (not VCF), but that could be inaccurate. It could be a random person. Swatting seems to happen a lot lately. The police had mentioned recent frequent swatting incidents in the township. I had given them two possible suspects of disgruntled former volunteers, but it is highly unlikely that it is them. I gave them an additional suspect after listening to the conversation. The police used K-9s to search all the buildings to make sure everything was safe. It took a long time because there are many buildings and many areas to cover.
The police continue to investigate.
I'm grateful that everyone was safe.
I'm disappointed that the last talk was interrupted and Lee couldn't talk.
I'm proposing a follow-up to the YouTuber roundtable by streaming to VCF's YouTube Channel to allow questions.
In addition I will have a follow up livestream of Lee Felsenstein where he can give his talk.
There is no proposed time or date yet as everything needs to be settled and I need to finish cleanup and organization of the different areas.
Lee *did* sell all of his books and really enjoyed the show. It was a good opportunity for him to meet others in vintage computer history that he had never met like Joysce Weisbecker, Bill Mensch, etc. A few of us volunteers supported him in getting picked up/dropped off the train, and safe during the bomb scare.
I'm grateful that I could communicate real-time with most people through Whova and through the VCF Discord channel. I'm grateful that Rick Lewis could help me as I was answering a lot of questions from the police throughout the event.
That's all for now. Feel free to ask questions.
Jeff Brace
On Mon, Apr 20, 2026 at 10:43 AM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Too early?