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...