The annual Java One conference in San Francisco is still going on, and if there are a lot of sick tech geeks today, it’s because they just discovered that dozens of attendees caught norovirus, the same fast-spreading illness that has afflicted cruise ships for the last several years.
People with norovirus (CDC page) experience vomiting, fever and diarrhea for up to 48 hours. It’s not fatal but when you’re in its grip you may wish it was.
Here is the current state of affairs in SF.
Gas = $4.41 / gallon
Parking ticket = $50 (minimum fine, sfgate story)
“Raising parking fines will lead to more abuse on the streets,” said Luis Estrella, a San Francisco parking-control officer for the past eight years who said he was punched last year by a firefighter who got a $50 ticket.
Downtown meter violations, for example, will be fined up to $60, and parking in a street-cleaning zone will set drivers back $50. The city now makes about $90 million a year from parking fines. The increase would bring in an estimated $13 million more in the new fiscal year.
We’ve all heard variants of this story before, this time the details are flowing from the courts. If you haven’t seen Pacific Heights and you are a renter in SF, you need to check out this older film. The film’s tagline is: “It seemed like the perfect house. He seemed like the perfect tenant. Until they asked him to leave.”
Now this story from the Chronicle yesterday, SF Landlord Couple plead not guilty…
A San Francisco landlord couple who are accused of waging a campaign of terror at a South of Market apartment building to drive out their renters are the victims of a lawsuit-happy tenant and did nothing wrong, their attorneys said Friday.
This gets interesting in this notable exchange where the landlords attorney ask for a reduction in bail.
“There were no actual threats of injury,” Whelan said, adding of Nicole Macy, “She’s clearly not a safety risk to society in general.”
Peltz said cutting out Morrow’s floor supports put him at risk of injury. He also said the couple had made death threats against tenants.
There was a developer who would burn his own buildings to the ground to get around the permitting process in SF a few years back. This doesn’t seem beyond comprehension that these owners would start to dismantle their own building to get their tenants out.
h/t to SFGate.
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Watch out at the corner of Market & Montgomery this week as software geeks with links to Linux may wanna lure you into a shifty Ubuntu User Group and other types of “free” love, with service contracts.
These traveling “Technology Strategists” ( i.e pasty & oft hefty men with telltale pony tails and glasses) will be circling the entrances and lobby of the Palace Hotel looking for blood this week as part of the Open Source Business Conference. Everyone from Googlers, to those folks at Kaplan who make those SAT prep classes to Microsoft’s minions will be vying for leads & likely sitting through numerous OpenOffice.org style imitation Power Point presentations…
expect a few jokes , like these to be going around:
% sh
$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!$ mkdir matter; cat >matter
matter: cannot create
LOL!!!!
Anyhow hear part of the software spiel via podcast or check out the Conference Website
http://www.osbc.com
A selection from today’s Missed Connections on Craigslist. Sounds like someone loves WordPress!
Pavlov says! - w4m (hayes valley)
Hey Science guy,
I’ve not even been gone a month, but now every iota concerning the field of science reminds me of you. I’m not sure if I actually think that, or you have so brilliantly conditioned the ones who are fortunate enough to see you into thinking that way.
Either way, it was bad enough I liked you from the moment I saw you. Somehow I got a new job and even hearing the fact I’ll be working with WordPress somehow gives me a Pavlovian, female version of a stiffy.
If you ever figure me out and you want to let me know that you have. Maybe we could have a secret code, before we both get ready to explode… if you want me to love you, just tell me to “WordPress”…
Oh…I’m a nerd; I think I hide it well. But hey, you’re more of one than I am and that’s why you’re so cute and wonderful.
Till I see you again.
Thursday night’s big literary event is the book party for Sex for America, the Stephen Elliott-edited anthology of fiction and nonfiction melding those two American obsessions, sex and politics.
Reading are Liz Henry and Michelle Richmond — both former bloggers on this site — Charlie Anders, Michelle Tea, Daphne Gottlieb, and Mistress Morgana. Click here for time, place and cost.
When I interviewed Stephen Elliott earlier this month about his Progressive Reading Series and he mentioned the Sex for America party, I asked him if Liz Henry would be reading the same piece about fucking in the Texas State Capitol that she read in 2005 at LitCrawl on the same program as me. He said “Oh my God, Liz’s story is so freaking good. That’s the one.”
Newspaper industry folks & curious legal observers alike are gearing up at SF’s Superior Court for the 4 years in the waiting, Bay Guardian Co. vs New Times Media trial, for which jury selection begins this Thursday.
For those not keeping track, Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann contends that for years “predatory” ad pricing practices from New Times owned SF Weekly & it’s then sister paper The East Bay Express were designed to put the Guardian at a disadvantage. No one likely doubts that the SF Weekly & Bay Guardian have a rivalry, but the question is, was the wealthier New Times chain operating within the law?
New Times ( founded in Phoenix Az and now also merged with Village Voice & LA Weekly as well as over a dozen other newsweeklies nationwide), have dismissed the claims made by Brugmann, and counter that he is just a feeble businessman unable to meet market demands.
Who Do You Love/Loathe?
leave yer answers in the comments after the jump…
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Comedian Michael Weiner — whose broadcast of right-wing cant is one of the highest talk radio shows nationally — is suing a Muslim organization for using clips from his show on their website. Weiner claims the group is using the clips, in which he says things like “take your religion and shove it up your behind,” to raise funds.
If you’d like to sample the invective and vicious ranting of the former Alan Ginsburg groupie, who uses the name “Michael Savage” on the radio, go on over to the Media Matters website for such hits as “90 percent of the people on the Nobel Committee are into child pornography and molestation, according to the latest scientific studies” and “[L]oving, kind lesbian” is “the type that stuffed ovens in Hitler’s concentration camps.”
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The same demographic that was targeted by marketers who put a scantily clad & wet Paris Hilton in Carl’s Jr ads to sell burgers is being hit again, using a locally raised celebrity.
This time though the tables are being reversed somewhat as the wet nubile blond cavorts for the cameras in order to get you away from the beef… go figger.
It must be the work of some sort of vegan sex cult… perhaps with Bill Maher as a consultant. Alicia Silverstone, who was born naked here in San Francisco is once again baring all, this time for Peta. 
The first market to get the ads of the dripping pool cavorting starlet is Houston Tx, (but we have a sneak preview streaming vid below).
If you are prepared for the type of analytical observation that has to be done to fully understand our local contributions to the national culture wars, then I’ll see ya on the other side of the jump:
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While mayoral candidate Grasshopper Kaplan runs around town getting arrested everywhere from Ed Jew’s driveway to back at the Hall of Justice, and generally specializes in creating a nuisance, he’s not the only mayoral candidate who’s discovered they are not welcome wherever they may wish to move about. 
It recently became apparent to Hunters Point activist Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai that she too is not on the “A” list, noticeable especially if one steps out of line against the local Democratic Politburo. While her candidacy and convictions are certainly sincere, (clip of last month’s announcement at City Hall below the jump), one has to wonder about her possible naivety.
Sumchai rallying against the Mayor’s redevelopment partners Lennar in a recent SF Bayview newspaper pic
The longtime Health and Environmental Science Editor of the award winning SF Bayview Newspaper was shocked that she was refused admittance to a press conference/photo op Nancy Pelosi was having at the Bayview Child Health Center with Supervisor Sophie Maxwell this week. Do you think Grasshopper Kaplan or even Chris Daly would have been welcomed?
Sumchai seems surprised by the rejection of a Democratic Party machine that in addition to criminal “fundraisers” & dubious “consultants”, includes numerous nepotism ridden relatives of elected representatives. She perhaps has no idea why they would somehow find her an undesirable at one of their incestuous affairs?
Sumchai has long campaigned against Lennar Corp.’s redevelopment of Hunters Point , and is she totally clueless that Lennar’s president of acquisitions was Pelosi’s nephew? Does she not know that when she’s railing against the quality of the local “environment” this might piss off our local “Commission on the Environment” President who just happens to be Paul Pelosi, Jr., Nancy’s Pelosi’s son and Gavin Newsom’s cousin?
The Lennar “land grab” at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is highly inconvenienced by attention getting activists like Sumchai, and why would she expect red carpet treatment at one of their dog & pony shows featuring the pretty darn powerful pork barrelling princess Ms. Pelosi ?(Uh, who do ya think is one of the prime architects of federal land giveaways and previously arranged for The Presidio to be privatized ?).
You can meet and discuss that sort of stuff with Dr. Sumchai at 3rd & Palou this Saturday from 10 am - 12 noon where she’ll be doing a live community radio broadcast and get her account of being barred from a Pelosi Press conference after the jump…
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