They use some sort of virtual machine technology that I’m not familiar with. You create an “AMI”, or Amazon Machine Image, which is an encrypted disk image, and upload it to their servers. My mind is scrambling to think what could possibly done with this scenario. Some of the search engine startups in the bay area outsource their real time number crunching here because the infrastructure costs of EC2/S3 is much lower than buying/hiring/managing a physical outlay for servers.

On another topic, I’m doing some research on my block specifically. My interest has sparked a discussion on socketsite. Apparently what is going in across the street is an 81 unit BMR complex, or in English, a 14 story condo building for middle class families. “Affordable housing”. That means I might be able to afford it. :)

At work, I’ve ended up diving head first into SAN virtualization. I didn’t want to go this route for a another few months, but we’re evaluating SAN technology, and the research needs to be done quickly. This stuff isn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and in fact it is pretty straight forward. LUNs here, WWNS there, sparse volumes and mirrors over there.

I finally heard back from David Snyder at SPUR, and he’s going to put me in touch with the transportation communications intern there. The idea is for me to do “online advocacy” for transit, something that I’m already knee deep in by nature. We’ll see where things go. SPUR’s membership fee was a whopping $65, but it is for a good cause. These folks seem to know what they are doing.

The car has been up for sale for almost 2 weeks now. I put it up on cars.com for $21750, but the only contacts I’ve gotten are other sales agencies wanting to list my auto for another $50. I hate to lower the price, it is already low compared to other cars for sale in the area, but every month it sits is another possible parking ticket or accident, plus deprecation and the insurance payments I have to make.

Speaking of parking tickets, the two citations I got from DPT came back after I wrote a very polite letter to the them. Their reply? Pay the $100 or find a cop to verify that the tags are current, have him sign off on the tickets, then submit $10 per ticket ($20) for “administrative fees” to have the citations written off. I about flipped my lid when I read that. The DPT brings in $40m a year, so I have little concept of why I must pay fees to have my fine waved. Such is the law, and such is yet another complaint letter for me to write. I’m getting good at writing them these days.

Finally, I went to the MacWorld expo this week. I ended up buying a keyboard cover, 2GB of RAM for my Mac Mini, and laid out the cash for an academic version of Adobe CS2 + Acrobat 8. It’s about time really, I’ve been suffering with The GIMP and I’d like to greatly improve the designs of my various blog sites. Now I have something more to learn, but it’s graphics, so it should be fun!

It’s worth taking a look at a the Chron’s take on VG, as well as their photos. I’ll summarize their article with my own comments.

On Valencia/Gurrerro and 14th/15th street there used to be a block of projects built in 1943. They were torn down for many good reasons, namely poor design (central squares with no purpose), outdated plumbing, electrical, as well as rodent and gang infestation.

In 2005 the project was flattened, as all good government housing should be, and replaced with something only slightly better: suburban housing. $66m later, we have 230 units, complete with modern electrical, backyards, parking, and one way streets. The last two items making this a suburban sprawl in a 5-acre block of the Mission.

Suburb sprawl in the city?

Now this is a mixed blessing for the Mission. Having 230 new units available to lower middle and lower class families is certainly helpful, and you should go take a peek on Craigslist to see if perhaps you qualify for such housing (I don’t). Problem number one: condensing all the city’s poor into one area. At least leaving a quarter of the units available to middle class families, those making around or above the median income of SF, which is about $80,000, would help mix up the culture of the neighborhood.

Second, parking and streets. I don’t have any numbers on this, but walking around the Valencia Gardens revealed an awful lot of concrete for people to store their cars. Now if they are lower middle and lower class families, why are they wasting money on cars? The Mission is a very transit rich area, and if we are short on low cost family housing, why waste it on one way streets and parking pads? At least fill in space for a garage if you must have parking; no doubt part of that $66m could have built a garage.

In short, Valencia Gardens is a good idea in a good part of the city to live, but horribly executed. Inward facing front doors and blank walls attract crime. A well worn sidewalk and access to the action of day to day humanity prevents crime. Motor cars and parking only leave more space for vagrancy to occur.

A plastic fence is slide open and closed to allow resident traffic in, street traffic out.

Valencia and 15th. Note the older, blighted buildings on the opposite side of the street. Which caused what to become blighted? Which will?

Note that beyond the corner of the block, there are no residential doors facing 15th. It’s a graf and tagging magnet!

It’s worth a visit, really. Trust me. I was looking at it for a good 15 minutes.

While I was at it I walked around some more to find some artists filling dilapidated alleys with their art work. not tagging, not graf, but their creations on parts of the city that few people driving about would ever see.

The Chronicle calls for the plaza to be filled in, citing it as another mistake of ’70s urban renewal. Years ago, the plaza was occupied by far more useful theaters, lost to the building of Bart and Muni Metro in the ’70s.

Coming out of Powell station was different today, however. The Emporium is set for their grand opening tomorrow, which really an very large extension of the Westfield Shopping Centre. With it comes swanky high-end shops such as Bloomingdales and a new Centure Theatre. When I came out of the train station and into Hallidie Plaza, I was greeted by people dancing, a live band, and not a single person urinating on the wall. For once, in probably my lifetime, the plaza was alive with people.

Will this change be only temporary? Time will tell for sure. Other stores have started to open up on the once heavily blighted block of 5th to 6th, and even the largest blighted structure between 5th and 6th, the long since abandoned St. Francis Theather, is due to become 156 condos. The boarded up Strand theater may or may not become condos, but with the growing commerce and excellent transit in that area, there may still be hope for it.

According to Randy Shaw, author of Theaters of San Francisco, Mid-Market, the area between 5th and 8th streets, used to be known as “The Great White Way of San Francisco”. It was called so because of the “non-stop stream of lights” and constant theather activity: almost 25,000 theatre seats. I see the opening of these new high end stores, and all the commerce and condos opening just steps away, as a renewal of mid-market in a new form. What that may take form as can hardly be as bad as what it is like now.

Also, Sam, I put you as a reference. Expect driving credits!

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[0]Geico is $172/mo, so I may at least switch from RapeStateFarm.

My latest set of books are both by Dan Brown, which my older sister graciously sent me. The first is the famed Da Vinci Code, which I felt was at best luke warm. The character development is so so, and the plot is somewhat predictable. It is junk literature, but easy to pick up where I left off.

The next is Deception Point, which is much more to my liking. It has action, intrigue, mystery, and politics! It is still junk in my mind, but some times I run over my lunch break doing the whole “one more chapter!” scheme.

On the San Francisco side of the pond, I’ve found this great up and coming grocery delivery service called Planet Organics. The way it works if you go to their website and pick a weekly packet for delivery. I’m doing half veggies and half fruit, but I can have all fruit, all veggies, or some other sort of combo. In addition, I can have regular items added to my cart. They carry the same or similar product as Trader Joes, and have outstanding customer service.

Every Tuesday, I come home from work and shortly there after I get a phone call from my front door buzzer. I let the delivery person in, they come up to the 9th floor and drop off a reusable plastic and/or polystyrene bin, and my shopping for the week is done. As far as pricing, they require a minimum $32 order. They have sales, but everything is pretty much full retail. No delivery charge, but that is really just built into the price.

The quality of the fresh food is outstanding. I used to eat out most weeks, and with the exception of going over to the cable car turnaround for some of Blondie’s pizza now and then, I can make food at home and eat like a king. The veggies and fruit must be picked only a day before being dropped off, because they are more fresh than anything I’ve gotten at any store, including TJ’s. It all also goes bad come Tuesday, but then I just get restocked!

In this daily reading, I got really excited about all the ideas this woman was showing me. I was even hoping to make it to a book signing at some point. Alas, she died last night at the age of 90.

So a moment of silence for one of the few great minds on urbanism lost.