Man… Nimby and Ace within a month of another…
(and then there’s that whole stock market crash thing). This is too much!
(via Laughing Squid) Farewell To Ace Auto, San Francisco’s Most Unique Event Space
On the website, Bill the Junkman writes:
it’s the end of the junkyard as we knew it
Well, it looks like the end of Ace junkyard as we know it. Our landlady is not going to renew our lease (and no amount of consciousness-raising, hippie-poi-ball-swinging or fire-oriented fundraisers is going to help, sadly). Things are looking pretty damm bleak right now. It been 25 years and the last 15 after me and most of you found each other have been especially fabulous. While many think I am the generous one, in fact, quite the opposite is true. I given you junk, you have taken this junk and turned it into amazing art, exciting happenings and and ton of fun ad good memories. Thanks to all of you, my life has become much richer. This a richness no amount of money could ever buy, because of all of you and what you create from the junk I give away.Here my heart, mind and soul is filled with wealth from the friends I have found, and the parties and events here.
This past Saturday, night someone said to me “For every door that closes, another one opens.” So let’s hope our next adventure is even more memorable, after all, it’s just the place that’s closing, you and me all still here. One more thing: over the years, you guys have helped me get rid of so much junk, now I need to ask one last favor of all of you. I’d like you to send me pictures, video, stories, etc about this place. Show and tell me about the art or project that we helped you with. It been a hell of ride, thanks to all of you for the love and aloha you have given me.
Bill the Junkman
Belinda, Mistress of Junk
belinda at dammit dat org
(images from aceautosf.com and Laughing Squid)
The cover article of Cole Hardware’s Hardware Hotline for October 2008 starts out like so:
Shake up SF: Be prepared for a quake
October 21, 2008 marks the 140th anniversary of the 1868 Hayaward Earthquake, the first great “San Francisco earthquake” and one of the most damaging earthquakes in the nation’s history. The average interval between the past five large earthquakes, on the Hayward Fault, is 140 years.
Hmm, maybe I should go buy a flashlight or something.
I’m in New Jersey, seeing family.
On Tuesday my dad had a 7 hour open heart surgery… aortic and mitral valve replaced and a double bypass. Friday he needed to have a pacemaker installed, which is apparently a common complication of double valve surgery. He came home from the hospital yesterday feeling very tired and “beat up”. Today, after some rest he was feeling much better. He was walking around the house gingerly today. Wow.
30 years ago he had open heart surgery, the one this week was #3. Way back, he was in the hospital for 3 weeks, was brought home in an ambulance, and needed to convalesce for more than a month before getting back to his life.
Wow, that’s a lot of posts. Why do I blog again? Oh yeah. “I blog for me.”
I’m enjoying Grand-Illusions.com more and more. I think I most enjoy the calm yet loving interest that our presenter has introducing each product in each video. He loves his job… it isn’t a job at all.
Qtpfsgui is an open source High Dynamic Range image program. I gotta try it sometime soon. Grr, I don’t have any images in my collection that I can just shove through it… I need a set of exposure bracketed images taken from a tripod.
I came across this livejournal post a couple weeks ago. In it, Brad Fitzpatrick links to a letter (local copy) by Senator Kohl of Wisconsin saying how cell phone providers should be ashamed of how expensive text messages have gotten
…Since 2005, the cost for a consumer to send or receive a text message over each of your services has increased by 100%. Text messages were commonly priced at 10 cents per message sent or received in 2005. As of the end of the month, the rate per text message will have increased to 20 cents on all four wireless carriers…
I wrote the following comment on Brad’s blog but since he hasn’t made me a “trusted commenter”… here’s what I originally had to say on the matter: (read the comments, my stance has changed)
I went to att.com to verify the claim that text rates have increased. Not only could I not verify it, but I found so many incredible new features, I think I might get a new phone to use them…. AT&T Navigator (turn by turn GPS directions for <$10/month), unlimited internet for $15, 200 texts for $5 (that’s 1/2 the cost of my current $0.05 alacarte texting, maybe I’ll start Twittering), live streaming video from my phone for $5/month…
What is your senator talking about?? It would seem that your senator is a panderer and/or can’t figure out how to use the AT&T website.
Apparently I’ve been stumbled-upon.
They sure like them funnies.
Super-Cache is working fine. Though I’ve gotten a few core dumps today. Figuring out what’s causing that will be a bother….
update 3pm: cores still dumping :-(. Just hit 30,000 views of “Motivational Posters” today. It’s funny how the rest of the site isn’t being visited at all; short attention span theater, eh?
update 9-23-08 10am: I upped the Super Cache settings to Garbage Collection every 5,000 requests, set a few pages to be Directly Cached files (Motivational Posters, The Amazing Power of Makeup, homepage). And there hasn’t been a core since last night. 41,000 hits to Motivational Posters so far today, 2,500 to The Amazing Power of Makeup.
update 9-24-08 2pm: I normally use about 1 gigabyte of web traffic per day. This Stumble-upon has brought that to 150 gigabytes/day and 150 thousand page requests/day for the last 2 days. Dreamhost allows me 7 terabytes/month so I should be fine for bandwidth. My Apache Analog stats says that I’ve had only a couple hundred failed file serves out of the approximately 6 million file requests in the last couple days, which is shows Dreamhost is handling the traffic fine.
Since upping the Super Cache Settings, I’ve gotten just 1 core dump at 23:59 last night. I’m guessing that garbage collection and bad luck conspire to cause a core dump every now and then.
In the September 16th SF Chronicle, Charlotte and I read with horror…
The headline in the paper paper was “College aid for illegals in jeopardy”. Online, it’s “Undocumented students’ college aid in jeopardy“. Apparently, the e-paper world likes “undocumented” better than “illegal”.
A state appellate court has put a financial cloud over the future of tens of thousands of undocumented California college students, saying a state law that grants them the same heavily subsidized tuition rate that is given to resident students is in conflict with federal law.
In a ruling reached Monday, the state Court of Appeal reversed a lower court’s decision that there were no substantial legal issues and sent the case back to the Yolo County Superior Court for trial.
“It has a huge impact,” said Kris Kobach, an attorney for the plaintiffs and a law professor at the University Missouri at Kansas City. “This is going to bring a halt to the law that has been giving in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.”
He said it is a big win for California taxpayers who have been subsidizing education for undocumented immigrants.
The suit was filed in 2005 by out-of-state students attending California colleges. They challenged the state’s practice of allowing illegal immigrants to pay significantly lower tuition than they pay at the University of California, the California State University and the California Community Colleges.
In a related issue, September 17th cover story reads “Adult offenders shielded by SF” (read more here: S.F.’s sanctuary city story so far)
Ok, the short form, if you’re an illegal immigrant and comit a felony in San Francisco, don’t sweat it. Just tell them you’re under 21 and you’ll get in under the “no undocumented juvenile left behind” program. San Francisco knows how hard it is to be a drug dealer on The Streets of San Francisco. They give you training with some of the finest juvenile drug offenders in the state in a no-pressure, no-security setting. And give you time to plan your next scam.
Mayor Newsome is trying to change this but we want no part in his right-wing plan!
Charlotte and I were walking down the street the other day and saw a sign painted on the sidewalk “Sanctuary City only for the rich”. Um, yeah. Whatever. You illegal juvenile felons don’t know how good you have it here.
(and then there’s that whole stock market crash thing). This is too much!
