Mike's Metal Works is relocating to Jamul...

Mike's Metal Works is relocating to Jamul...  The company is currently located in El Cajon, but according to this story in SD Metro they are planning to relocate into this facility in Jamul:

JAMUL — A 59.85-acre site at 3552 Fowler Canyon Road in Jamul, which includes a 38,000-square-foot industrial building where airplane parts were made during World War II, has been sold for $1.7 million. The buyer was Property Evolution LLC with Michael and Jacqueline Hancock of Jamul as managing partners. The Hancock family operates Mike’s Metal Works, a steel fabrication firm operating in El Cajon. The company plans to relocate to Jamul. The company specializes in stainless steel and aluminum fabrication, including structural steel architectural railings and stairs.

The seller of the property was Fowler Canyon Limited Partnership, with James and Judith Asbury of El Cajon as managing partners. About 25.79 acres of the site will remain as open space.

Pacific Coast Commercial represented both the seller and buyer.

In the 1940s, the property was the site of airplane parts manufactured by the Fowler Aircraft Co., founded by Harlan D. Fowler (1895-1982). An adobe house where the Fowler family lived still stands on the property.

Here's a map to the site, which is not far from the golf course:


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I had no idea that such a site or building existed in Jamul, and I've driven on Fowler Canyon Road, so I've been quite close to it.  You would think this would bring some jobs to Jamul, and perhaps even some new residents if some current employees want to relocate closer to work...

Why won't the State Department tell us who these hundred-or-so “special” people are?

Why won't the State Department tell us who these hundred-or-so “special” people are?  After all, this is the most transparent administration evah!  Why would they hide something so innocent?  That might just make someone think there's something fishy or corrupt going on!  Hmm....

NGC 1097...

NGC 1097...  From APOD, of course.  Hi-resolution version.

Geek: the Josephus Problem...

Geek: the Josephus Problem...  Nick Berry does his usual entertaining and accessible explanation, this time of the classic Josephus Problem.  This time it involves a monster with a peculiar cooking ritual.  I especially liked the little bit-twiddling hack at the end...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  You just can't make this stuff up...

The web site was the easy part.  That doesn't bode well...

House Democrats in swing districts are furious - and panicking.  They don't want to “own” ObamaCare any more...

No wonder they didn't want to release enrollment numbers!  The ObamaCare implementers already looked like fools.  Now they look worse.

The ObamaCare girl: not a citizen, didn't sign up for ObamaCare, and wasn't even paid.  Sheesh...

Kristen Powers is really, really unhappy about losing her cheaper, better policy.  Oh, it's so much fun when a progressive policy ends up biting a progressive in the butt!

There is the potential for amusement in ObamaCare.  Taranto is most definitely amused...

A sober writer (Jacob Sullum) reminds us that there's no such thing as a free healthcare lunch.  Not even if The One promised it.  Make that especially if...

The Krauthammer thinks that the ObamaCare debacle could be the beginning of the oft-predicted collapse of American progressivism.  Oh, please – pretty please with truffle sauce on it!

The most trusted source for information on ObamaCare amongst the American public is ... Fox News.  Oh, my.  That's gonna leave a mark...

“Pre-effectuated enrollment.” The Wall Street Journal's editorial board is not impressed.  Nobody else is, either...

Some serious talk about conservative alternatives.  Haven't seen much of this in the mainstream press, so it's nice to see something, even if there are many points I don't agree with.  Face it – at this point, damn near anything would look a lot better than ObamaCare...

“The Affordable Care Act appears to be misfiring in every imaginable way, and Democrats are having second thoughts about serving as human shields for White House ineptitude.”   Pass the popcorn, please...

An encounter of the elk kind...

An encounter of the elk kind...  Were I in that fellow's position, I'd have been a lot more worried about my physical safety than he appears to have been – elk are powerful animals, and they know how to use those antlers...

Is this what's coming next?

Is this what's coming next?

Foreigners experiencing America...

Foreigners experiencing America...  Here's another great collection of the impressions that foreigners have upon living in America.  For some of them I have a personal flip side:

A Bangladeshi: “America is literally HUGE. My home country is roughly the size of Florida, one of the fifty states.”  The flip side: sometimes I've been amazed just how small an entire country can be.  One can drive across the entire country of Estonia – anywhere – in just a few hours, often on terrible roads.

A Russian: “President doesn’t automatically become the richest person in the country.”  This is a great reflection of the assumption of corruption that every Russian I know has.  Not just Russians, either – people from many countries are like this, because it's what they're used to: Indians, Mexicans, Saudis, and many more...

An American, on his South Pacific friends: “They also assumed that you could run into ultra famous people.”  When I was first exploring Estonia, in the early 1990s, this happened to me repeatedly.  The typical experience was that I'd walk into a small-town shop, the clerk would figure out I was American, and would immediately start asking questions about movie stars with the assumption being that I knew them personally.  When I tried to make them understand that I couldn't possibly know them, the most common reaction was disbelief.

Nationality not identified, but Scottish name: “In Nordstrom, when a sales assistant says 'Can I help you?' s/he actually means 'Can I help you?' and not, say, 'You’re distracting me from my phone. Can you please leave?'”  The flip side: as an American I've often been shocked at the poor service I've received in other countries when visiting shops and restaurants.  My thoughts, upon being the victim of this, are always “How the heck do they stay in business, with help like this?”   But it's so prevalent that you have to accept it's the norm...

A Swede: “Bank checks are still used and mailed in envelopes.”  The flip side: I was astonished, when first doing business in Estonia, that our employees would actually travel to a bank with their bills in hand, and work face-to-face with a teller to transfer money (what we would call electronic funds transfer, or wiring) to pay them.  Checks existed, but were something rare and completely inaccessible to ordinary people.  There were many differences in how our financial systems worked – leases, rentals, checks, credit cards, consumer credit, etc., etc., to the point where I found it was safer to assume that nothing worked the same way there as in the U.S...

Three months of work went into this ...

Three months of work went into this ... which pretty much leaves me speechless.  Two people, far apart, made this “screenlink” dominoes video.  It looks like it's all one giant domino trick, but it's actually a number of smaller tricks carefully edited to look like one big one.  In this case, two different people made the smaller clips, building on each other's work sequentially...

To Breathe as One...

To Breathe as One...  Longtime readers know that I have visited the little Baltic nation of Estonia many times, and that I have quite a few friends there.  I'd call myself an “estoniaphile”, but that word just looks too awkward.  You get the idea.

One of things about Estonia that I cherish is the key role that song – people singing – played in their most recent revolution, when they gained their freedom and independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Now there's a new film (To Breathe as One), about the song festival (the “Laulupidu”) held every 5 years since 1869 in Tallinn, Estonia.  The most recent Laulupidu was in 2009, and included an American children's choir from San Francisco.  The video at above and right is the official trailer.  I ordered the DVD, and I can hardly wait to receive it...

Not a comforting thought...

Not a comforting thought...  Via my mom...

Wow!

Wow!  Full screen for this one.  You know the drill...

ObamaCare debacle update...

ObamaCare debacle update...  Now, don't worry.  I didn't forget you!  There's just a lot to talk about today:

ObamaCare website development manager clueless about security risks.  Somebody is hiding something – but who and what is not so clear...

Introversion isn’t Obama’s problem, his inability to tell the truth is. Well, that's part of his problem, to be sure...

Project Veritas uncovers (in the video at right) corruption and fraud in the ObamaCare “Navigator” program.  It ain't purty...

72 of the mandates that are key reasons why ObamaCare-compliant insurance policies are so much more expensive than those available previously...

ObamaCare's enrollment numbers aren't real enrollment numbers.  Because honest, transparent reporting is for the little people, and certainly not for the most transparent administration evah...

Will shitty ObamaCare ads get young people to buy insurance?  These are amongst the ads being discussed.  Seriously.  I'm not kidding...

California leads the way ... in policies being canceled due to ObamaCare.  Awesome...

When you've lost Feinstein...

You think ObamaCare looks bad now?  Just wait until you see what January brings...

NSA blowback on NIST having an effect...

NSA blowback on NIST having an effect...  One of the sideshows in the larger NSA scandal is the revelation that NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) had apparently cooperated with NSA in deliberately weakening the cryptographic standards that NIST produced.  This cooperation by NIST was quite shocking to many people, in many fields, myself included.  NIST produces an amazing array of standards, in things from metrics (the measurement of things) to cryptography to railroad gauges.  Until these recent revelations, most people I knew (including me) thought of NIST as an above-the-fray, apolitical, transparent, and honest institution.

Not so much any more.  I've worked directly with NIST on two occasions during my career.  One involved time standards supporting electronic trading applications, the other involved electronic metrics for calibrating instruments.  I can't offhand think of any reason the NSA would be interested in perverting either of those things – but these days, I'd take the possibility of that into account.  Others I know who work with NIST on a more frequent basis are feeling downright paranoid about them now.  So this news is welcome, though NIST is going to have a difficult time recovering its reputation entirely, I think.  But it's a start...

The future USS Zumwalt, DDG 1000...

The future USS Zumwalt, DDG 1000 ... the first ship of a new class.  To anyone who served in the Navy before about 2000, as I did, this is one very odd looking ship.  The super-structure is angled (for stealth), the bow is raked backwards (apparently to reduce pitching in rough seas), it has stabilizers (passive only, I think), and the entire design is very sleek and streamlined looking.

Contributing to the interest for me is that this ship is named after Admiral Elmo Zumwalt – who was the Chief of Naval Operations when I joined the Navy.  He introduced all sorts of reforms that our local commanders hated.  Most of these occurred while I was in training at Mare Island, in Vallejo, California.  His “Z-grams” (memos) went out to all sailors, and rolled back restrictions on things like haircuts, beards, and the wearing of civilian clothes on base.  That latter rollback destroyed an entire industry: the sailor's “clubs” that formerly could be found just outside the gates of any Navy base.  Prior to Zumwalt's rollback, sailors were only allowed to wear uniforms on base – no civilian attire allowed.  Worse, on some bases (including Mare Island), you could only leave or enter the base if you were wearing certain kinds of uniforms – and these never included ordinary working clothes.  So to go on or off base, you had to change clothes, typically into “undress blues” or “undress whites” back in those days.  It was a hassle, and unnecessarily so.  Worse, in those days late in the Vietnam War, any sailor caught outside the base in uniform was sure to be harassed by anti-war civilians (the vast majority of them).  The sailor's clubs were the solution.  These clubs would rent you a tiny locker, and provided a place to change your clothes.  Sometimes they had showers, too.  So when you wanted to go somewhere for the weekend, you'd work all day Friday in your working uniform, then change into (say) undress whites, exit the base, go into the sailor's club, rent a locker, change into your civilian clothes, and go about your weekend.  Jeez, what a pain in the neck!  But when “Zoomie” rolled back those rules, all that disappeared, and virtually overnight.  He was the enlisted guy's hero, for this reason, and many others.  We expected bad things to happen when he left the role in 1974, but in fact, most of his reforms stayed in place...

Another power-grab by The One's administration...

Another power-grab by The One's administration...  This time, through the EPA: all the waters are ours!

IKEA...

IKEA...  If you've ever been in an IKEA store, you'll be able to identify with this :)

The curmudgeon's guide to The Sound of Music...

The curmudgeon's guide to The Sound of Music...  Put your drink down first, then go read.  A sample:

The "Lonely Goatherd" puppet show is all about coerced mountain marriages, including coerced goat marriages, which send a bad message to children and anthropomorphized goats.

Ha!  Even the folks at NPR can be funny sometimes...

Ranger 7 lunar impact crater...

Ranger 7 lunar impact crater...  If you're ancient enough, like me, you might remember this series of early robotic exploration missions.  Ranger 4, part of the series, was the first man-made object ever to strike another body in the solar system. 

Ranger 7 was the first to return high-quality photos.  The Ranger series wasn't intended to actually land safely on the moon – instead, they were aimed straight at the moon and intentionally slammed into it at very high velocities.  On their final approach, they took photos and other measurements and beamed them back to Earth in real time (these images were turned into the video at left).  Then the Rangers struck the moon, making small craters because of the kinetic energy of their impact – and of course there were no more pictures after that.  This was part of the preparatory work leading up to the Apollo landing missions.

The Ranger series were tremendously exciting for me as a kid.  I knew enough science and math to understand what was being attempted and just how difficult it was.  By today's standards, the technology employed in the Rangers was laughably primitive – but at that time, it was real bleeding-edge stuff.  The very idea of getting something made by mankind to another world sounded to us like something straight out of science fiction, an impossible feat.  Remember, this was less than 40 years after Lindbergh's pioneering trans-Atlantic flight!

California leads the way...

California leads the way ... in pornography star protection!  No, I'm not talking about requiring condoms for the “performers” – the new requirement being proposed is for goggles.  And more.  Seriously.  Details here (including some explicit descriptions)...