i’m in san francisco for the microsoft launch activities and while waiting to check in to my hotel i thought i’d just wander around.

getting off the plane i decided to take the bart system to downtown rather than the typical taxi (and now that i have, not sure why i ever took a taxi).  i wish i lived in a city with major public transportation all over the place.  the ride was $4.95 (versus a $40 taxi) and got me there in about 10 minutes. 

getting off the bart i noticed the station (powell station) was flooded with ipod advertisements all over the place — like every sign was ipod, the column pillars were ipod, the benches, everything.  you’d think there was an ipod conference.  as i climbed the stairs i realized potentially one of the reasons why…at the top of the stairs of the powell station is an ipod store.  even high above union square though — ipod nano all over the place.

i guess this struck me as in all other major conferences i’ve gone to of microsoft’s, the city is usually plastered with marketing of that conference.  granted launch isn’t as large (attendee speaking of course) as others, but why not put out the word?

sfo is a great place and if i could convince my family to move, it would be one i’d consider — beautiful and cool (weather speaking) — remember i’m from phoenix.  i wandered all over downtown aimlessly just observing.  i noticed a homeless man pressing the coin return button on a newspaper stand violently/consistently about 20 times in a row…then he’d check the change bin…repeat 5 times…maybe he knows something we don’t? i thought.

i also saw a bunch of photographers taking pictures of trolleys and people — something i would imagine isn’t uncommon in other large metro cities.  i really enjoyed all the social gathering and just business of the city…it was great to see that.  there were some other weird things i saw (like a toilet/public restroom in the middle of the sidewalk that i must have walked past several times on previous viits), but in general, if you like people watching, sfo is a great place to be.

well, i’m off to some pre-launch stuff and can’t wait to see steveb tomorrow.

some tests of java versus .net v2

from the tests:

This indicates that on the whole .NET is a more efficient platform, with perhaps at least one area for improvement – native type memory efficiency.

java vs. .net 2.0 results

i was putting together a flyer promoting community user groups and i had some color in it — nothing fancy, just red and blue (note: the flyer was ALL text, no photography or anything — picture word doc with some text in color).

so i waited to the last minute and kinko’s would be the only one able to get it done in time (aside from another place about an hour from my house that i wasn’t willing to drive).

color copies: $.89/each — are you friggin kidding me?  for the 1500 copies i needed, that is $1335 for paper.  okay, so they’d give me a bulk discount — $.59 = $885.  i asked for the company discount and it wasn’t much less.  point being that i could have bought 2 color printers for less than it would be to print out these copies (sure paper and toner in the long run, blah blah, but i’m trying to make a point here).  i decided i couldn’t justify it and opted for the b&w copies — how much you ask? = $45.  that’s right, color copies were going to cost me at best 16X more than standard copies (same paper mind you).  unbelievable in this day and age. i remember when kinko’s first started offering color copies and they were roughly $1 — now probably 10 years later, that price has only dropped 11 cents.  unbelievable.

Here you can get 5¢ Color copies- books, post cards, envelopes, newsletters, flyers, bulk mailing DocuCopies

[UPDATE (27-JUL-2010): I thought I'd check in again, here we are 19 months since my last check.  Kinko's still has pricing at $.59/sheet standard color copy and $.39 for bulk (online lists bulk at over 5,000 copies now).  That's still outrageous.  Those same 5,000 copies would cost $1,650 LESS at DocuCopies where they offer .05/copy for the same job.  Amazing.

[UPDATE (27 JAN 2009): Since this post has caused some discussion, etc. I thought I'd do a check up on Kinko's pricing.  I called my local store with the same specifications as my original job 3 years ago.  Updated pricing: $.59/sheet standard color copy and $.39 for a bulk discount of 1500 copies.  So that is still $585 or 13 times the cost of B&W copies.]

i also used their “print online” capability for a different one (that i would get color — there were only 4 of them) — convenient seeing how i live in the boonies and wouldn’t have to drive just to drop it off and have them tell me to wait 45 minutes for 4 copies.  i hate consumer companies that take the cable company appointment approach (you know, “we can be there between 8–12 or 1–5).  i know other customers are waiting — but it seems to me, you’d be able to get the small 4 copy guys out of the way and make them happy so you can get on to the 3000 copy, fold, binding, box jobs that those customers know are going to take a while — needless to say, i put my order in at 8am and as of 3:30pm it still isn’t done — 4 color copies people.

that color printer is making more sense by the minute.

well, we just finished yesterday with the .net rocks roadtrip visiting phoenix.  it was great to host these guys and i appreciated palermo4 setting it all up for our community.

after the show, which was well attended and a different audience than our normal phoenix crowd, carl and richard invited us into the “boat” to record a show.

a few of the smart guys from terralever where there to chat about integrating asp.net web services and applications into flash applications and some of the challenges faced with that implementation.  We also had noah in there who was trying to get richard’s job, which was pretty funny — he had a good pitch though.  one of our new visual basic mvp’s, steele price, also stopped by to chat along with a few other pretty smart devs (or at least that’s what they tell me) ;-).

in between the recording of interviews, i had a chance to chat with richard/carl about random stuff and podcasting.  the conversation was certainly geeky at times, but i learned a lot about how they make their show the best.  these guys really are professionals and take this seriously.  from noise cancelling, to edit points, to subtle queues, they really have it down.  truly the original podcast.  we chatted about podcasting and how i felt everyone is a podcaster now, diluting the real value of the meaning of podcast feeds (i.e., information to you).  i think there are some out there just to be out there — but .net rocks is really a professional show.  the beauty apparently is (not only the content of course) in the post-editing to make the show the quality, in both content and audio, and jeff is the man for their show.  he does a great job with the voodoo that he doo.  i didn’t get a chance to meet jeff, but i have a better appreciation for the time he spends editing.

all-in-all, it was a great experience, and i really felt richard/carl are great, sincere, down-to-earth guys…even if richard is canadian ;-) — but i had a great time geeking out (still trying to explain it to my wife) till the wee hours of the evening…thanks guys! oh yeah, and the clementine renditions were pretty good too!

while at our local .net rocks show tonight, this guy (noah) showed up wearing this shirt: