ViaSat, the Carlsbadistan based, manufacturer of all kinds of super stealth communication apparatus just signed a deal with the US Army to provide $477 million worth of troop tracking tech, according to a story in the San Diego Business Journal.
A July 21 company statement said the contract, which is for indefinite delivery and quantity, involves technology called blue force tracking, which allows the armed forces to view regularly updated troop positions on screens in vehicles and aircraft, to differentiate between friendly and enemy forces. . . ViaSat also received the first order for $37.7 million, to fund deliveries of the initial production terminals and other ground networking equipment, the statement said.
Guess we’d offer up the “indefinite delivery and quantity” of pretty much anything for $477 million.
In his North County Times column this week TK Arnold remembers his friend and Carlsbad City Treasurer Harold “Mac” McSherry.
Maybe an hour after police found his father’s body in his State Street office, Travis McSherry, the eldest son of Carlsbad City Treasurer Harold “Mac” McSherry, posted this on his dad’s Facebook page: “I’m angry and confused. I don’t know why you felt that was your only way out. But you were loved and you will be missed. RIP. I love you, dad.” That pretty well sums up the feelings of most of us who knew McSherry, who took his own life after facing increasing pain from a brain tumor. . . We’re angry, because Mac was such as integral part of our lives, and he had no right to rip himself away from us.
He will certainly be missed. For the rest of Arnold’s thoughts please click the link.
The Screamin’ Primas are apparently a tribute band to a “rat pack” era performer of whom we had never heard. Oh, we’d heard his legendary songs like Jump Jive and Wail, Just a Gigolo, and That Old Black Magic, but we’d never heard the name Louis Prima. Now, thanks to TGIF Jazz in the Park on Friday, July 23, 2010 those who make it to Poinsettia Park will know his music just a little better.
Last year, their TGIF debut offered a wacky version of Prima’s late 1950s Las Vegas Night Club show featuring his acclaimed singer-wife Keely Smith that captured all the energy, emotion and excitement of the original.
Wacky jazz works. We guess. Show begins at 6 PM in Carlsbadistan’sPoinsettia Park. Don’t be late.
Sofia Costa, a physical therapy student at the University of St. Augustine in San Marcos, California has only been surfing for one month and she has already saved the life of one longtime Carlsbad surfer.
At approximately 9 AM July 16, 2010 Costa was surfing with friends at Carlsbad’s Cherry Street when she saw a lone board floating in the water.
“I saw a board just floating there for a while and I asked someone, ‘Hey where is the guy,'” she said. “I paddled out there and another surfer met me there and we saw him there in the water. His board was holding him up.”
The surfer was completely submerged and at the end of his leash. If Costa and the other surfers hadn’t taken action the man would have died. “We both helped him up and we put him on the board,” she said. “Then we called all the other surfers to come and help us out because we couldn’t hold it that much longer. We got all our boards together put him on one and floated him. We just all came together and helped him out.”
Carlsbad Police, Fire, and California State Park Lifeguards responded. According to friends on the beach the surfer, who appeared to be in his early 50s, may have had a seizure while surfing. He was transported by State Beach Lifeguards to a Carlsbad Fire Department Ambulance for transport to a local hospital.
“I think I just got initiated into the surfing world,” Costa said. Thanks to Costa, it looks like another surfer will live to surf another day and we’re pretty certain she will be welcome at any surf break for life.
Beginning Monday, July 19, 2010 the Carlsbad Stand-Up Paddleboard Club will be expanding their special stand-up paddle and kayak rentals for parents paddling with kids under 12. From 8 AM to 12 PM Monday through Thursday rentals will only be $10 an hour.
The Carlsbad Stand-Up Paddleboard Club is located at 4509 Adams St., in Carlsbad (not at California Water Sports near the freeway). For more information click the link.
In an official press release from the City of Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis officially confirmed the death of City Treasurer Harold “Mac” McSherry and reminded us all of the kind of man he was:
“Mac approached his role as city treasurer very professionally, always working to make sure city funds were safe and earning the highest rate of return for our taxpayers,” said Mayor Claude A. “Bud” Lewis. “He was a man with a tremendous intellect and immense curiosity about the world and was also very generous with his time giving back to our community. He will be greatly missed by his entire City of Carlsbad family.”
Our thoughts are with everyone at the City offices but mostly with the McSherry’s family and their close friends. For the rest of the release, follow the jump. [click to continue…]
A body, believed to be that of City of Carlsbad Treasurer Harold “Mac ” McSherry, was discovered last evening (July 14, 2010) by the Carlsbad Police department while performing a welfare check in McSherry’s State Street office.
Carlsbad Police Lt. Jay Eppel, quoted in the North County Times, would not release the name of the deceased other than to say that the person had “apparently committed suicide” and that the body was found after McSherry’s son asked police to check on his father’s welfare Wednesday evening.
Officers first checked McSherry’s house, but he wasn’t there. They then checked his office on State Street, where they found the deceased person, Eppel said. [Eppel] declined to give any further details. The county medical examiner’s office has assumed the investigation, Eppel said, and that office did not release any information Wednesday.
After being self-employed as a tax attorney since 1978, McSherry became Treasurer for the City in June 2006. He was 59 years old.
David Joseph Costello, 41, the North County Transit bus driver who was arrested for allegedly driving his bus under the influence after one of his passengers called 911 on June 1, 2010, was officially charged today on “drunken driving and public intoxication charges” according to a story on San Diego 6.
Costello was arrested after failing a series of sobriety tests, according to sheriff’s Sgt. Thomas Yancey. Authorities said the defendant’s blood-alcohol level was measured at .25 percent at the time of his arrest. The threshold for drunken driving is .08 percent. . . A North County bus rider was praised as a hero for calling 911 when she suspected the bus driver was intoxicated.
None of this should come as any kind of surprise to Costello’s friends as he has reportedly been cited “nine times since 2006 for alcohol-related offenses in North County.” But he was still able to drive a NCTD bus. Don’t blame NCTD, however. No, no. Costello didn’t work for them. He worked for First Transit the private, Cincinnati, Ohio-based transportation company that operates the buses for the North County Transit District.
Guess we can chalk this up as one more win for the “private sector.”
Blue skies over Carlsbadistan has been such a rarity lately that all the sunshine is kind of tripping us out. But then, seems we’re not alone. The beach today was packed like a holiday weekend. And everyone was smiling about it.
What purports to be the last legal hurdle between Carlsbadistan and a new high school will reportedly go before a judge next month unless all the groups can come to terms on some kind of settlement according to a Stacy Brandt story in the North County Times.
The property owners suing the district include land developer Bentley-Wing Properties Inc., the Rancho Carlsbad Owners Association and another group of nearby homeowners. They filed their opening arguments in Superior Court on Wednesday, challenging the environmental impact report the district approved in January. . . The lawsuit claims the district hasn’t adequately addressed the environmental and traffic problems that could be caused by the new campus the district plans to build on a 57-acre site near College Boulevard and Cannon Road. . . “All we’re saying is, ‘Let us help you,'” said Wayne Rosenbaum, an attorney representing the group. “Once you build this thing, it’s too late.”
Okay. We all get it. Bentley-Wing wants to make sure they can get the most out of land they own in the area and the residents of Rancho Carlsbad, a mobilehome park that’s pretty much in a hole already, are worried that the new school will increase their already high probability of being flooded. We just hope they can settle it before even more tax dollars are wasted in court. As Brandt says, they have a month.
If you have a Carlsbad news story, press release, event, rumor, or scandal that we'd be interested in (and there are a lot of them), please click the link to send them to The Editors.
Or just search the site to see if we've mentioned it before, right here.
ViaSat, the Carlsbadistan based, manufacturer of all kinds of super stealth communication apparatus just signed a deal with the US Army to provide $477 million worth of troop tracking tech, according to a story in the San Diego Business Journal.
RSS Feed-Posts
TK Arnold On Mac McSherry
by The Editors on July 23, 2010
In his North County Times column this week TK Arnold remembers his friend and Carlsbad City Treasurer Harold “Mac” McSherry.
He will certainly be missed. For the rest of Arnold’s thoughts please click the link.
[Link: North County Times]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }