I wonder if burglaries also went down during the outage, since the bad guys couldn't tell if their targets were at home or busy being the Mayor at the local bowling alley.
Which might also be an effective recruiting tool. I used to sit next to someone who used to hit the restroom at 1pm every day, like clockwork, and come out reeking of whiskey. Also kept a bottle of Wild Turkey on his desk that slowly diminished. He wasn't fired, so I assume he was good and got his stuff done.
If anything, I think this is a sign that geeks are gaining power. I mean, old cars, golf clubs, pens, and other obsolete stuff that business people like can be collectable and worth a lot of money. Old computers being worth a lot of money would indicate that nerds also have a bunch of surplus wealth that can be spent on nostalgia.
(of course, this assumes that it is being bought out of nostalgia. I can imagine situations where it would make sense to spend $1500 for a keyboard for it's utilitarian value, if the keyboard really was that much better for me than other alternatives. If that is the case, it really makes no statement about the rise or fall of the nerds, though it would say something sad about the current state of user interface hardware.)
It's a super dump, but you can get a studio for $1k/month at Trinity Plaza on Market St. Expect to lose your deposit from what I'm told, but hey it has a pool, and plenty of meth dealers, and it's right at Market & 9th so it's central to everything.
But seriously, for $1k -> $1,200 you can actually find a decent studio on nob hill. I just helped my ex-girlfriend move into a beautiful and very well-laid out 450 square foot studio for $1,100/month at Clay & Leavenworth with all utilities included.
Very clear and indisputable impending global destruction with a short window before the event. (Think Asteroids or Aliens). Also, children who fall into wells or survive airliner crashes. Nothing else will work.
I had a phone interview with Marc sometime in 2007, I think just after TC40. During the interview they made me aware of Mint.com, so I spent the afternoon playing with Mint & Wesabe.
By the end of the afternoon I had begun using Mint to track all of my finances and had only managed to get Wesabe to recognize 1/3 of my accounts. Wesabe had a fantastic team, but Mint was the clear winner, so I decided not to go forward.
