Meanwhile in Sunnyvale...

So first of all summer is over. It is raining for 4 days in a row now and there's a 4-8 inches thick snow in the Sierras. And it's cold! I had to find my hoodie. And switch on the heating in the mornings!

Yesterday brought a little excitement to our life. Sunnyvale is in the top 10 safest cities (compared to cities with similar size) for ages. You can forget your keys in the door for a night and a half a day, and no one robs you. Or you can forget your garage door wide open for a whole night having your Lotus in there, and not even a single screwdriver will be missing.

But since yesterday local news is full with a guy who shoot 10 people, 3 of them are dead. It is a mysterious case. Friends say that this guy was always cheerful and happy, but 2 days ago something flipped and he was not friendly for a day. And then he shot some of his colleagues at a meeting at his workplace 4am. Well if I had to go to meetings 4am on a regular basis, well my switch would flip, too :) Well, nobody knows yet what happened, but I believe news stations didn't have such a story for decades so we'll get full coverage. I feel sorry for his children, though. Police reported that after 28 hours manhunt, they shot the suspect, and he's dead.

Sunnyvale PD had to dust the armored SWAT vehicle (see above) for this case. I bet it wasn't used for a long time now! There were helicopters hovering, they've closed Homestead Rd. They've used K-9 units to find the guy. I bet those dogs faced some difficulties catching the smell in the rain... Anyway it was really a manhunt. I think they've found like 4 weapons of the guy, whose name is Shreef Allman. So he was armed and dangerous. I pretty sure it was in order to shoot him on site...

More information here.

Unlike the Hungarian police. I bet it works like this: a call comes in to 112; A colleague of mine stormed into our meeting at shoot 6 of us, 2 dead 1 is dying, please come, hurry! Police reply: did you catch they guy, is he still there? No, he ran away. All right, then I send an ambulance, and let us know if you captured the guy and we then go to the scene. Otherwise you get a letter after 6 months that they have closed the case and they have identified no criminal charges...

On unrelated news, yes Steve Jobs died. I bet he's a hero in man people's eyes. And he did save Apple Inc. and did revolutionize how we consume digital media today with his iPod, iPhone and iPad. He discovered a great business model by not just selling the device and OS but the content for it. I guess this is where Windows Mobile and Blackberry desperately failed to realize. I don't support DRM protected content, and that someone else decides if my applications is good enough to sell or not. I believe in the freedom of content and the power of an open source society. But he did bring revolutionary changes!

The Internet is already full with some memes about Jobs' death. Apparently there's no 10 year rule any more:

And a sea-lion was found on US101 this morning. It's a 10 lane highway. Why would a sea-lion want to be there?!

So many excitement and happening in just 2 days! In this peaceful town in the heart of Silicon Valley. But seriously! Sunnyvale is in the middle of Tech Heaven. Intel, Real Media (yeah I know, but they were revolutionary too! Before YouTube you were watching all the streaming videos/musics in Real format! Remember, dammit!), Yahoo!, Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu. Just a small list of big companies heaving their HQ's here. But you only hear about Cupertino (Apple), Palo Alto (Facebook, VMWare) and Mountain View (Google) in the news from Silicon Valley. Maybe San Jose (Adobe), too.