I'm actually living in Sacramento now. . . commuting to Stockton when I need to. I have houses in both cities, rental properties in Sacramento, clients in Stockton. I've lived in both cities for about 30 years each. . .
The bank that was robbed was the branch I most frequently use. I know both of the tellers who were kidnapped. The final shoot out occurred just six blocks from my Stockton house. My neighbor across the street said the gunshots sounded as if they were only a block away. No police officers were injured, 20 are out on administrative leave due to officer involved shooting, and 14 police cars are out of service due to severe bullet damage. Many civilian cars, homes, and businesses suffered bullet damage. The hostage who was killed, Misty Holt-Singh, worked in a dental office.
The scary part is that, on a normal 16th of the month at 2:10 PM or so, just after lunch, I would normally have been in that Bank of the West branch making a deposit! That date's the employees' mid-month payday at the dental office I manage under contract, and I cut a check to the partners and make my contract payment as well. . . which I deposit, after lunch, on my way to my house to feed my cats before leaving town. On that day, though, I was ill, so I remoted in to do the payroll except for the payroll liabilities, and had one of the partners print and sign the checks. Did I dodge a bullet?
As to violence in Stockton. I've had a murder on my block, and the once Mayor of Stockton lived two doors away from me. One block away to the east from the place where the shootout occurred on Otto Drive—which is actually entrance to an excellent middle-class neighborhood—is the neighborhood where the most drive-byes occur on Cody Drive, including several that have made national news. Here's a link to an incident I described from last year my girlfriend and I experienced in the strip mall where Harbor Freight Tools is located:
Incident on a Sunday Afternoon in Stockton.
It possibly could actually be Stockton's fault. Joan Darrah, a previous mayor (not my neighbor), a mouth-breathing Liberal idiot, when presented with voting on supporting the construction of a World class amusement park at the Mossdale Y of I-5 and I-205, said, and I quote, "Stockton doesn't need 1600 new minimum wage jobs! It needs better paying jobs," and voted against it. Another time, when backers had $275 million in hand for the construction of the World Wild Life Museum at the Stockton Deep Water Port, along with the promise of the donation of largest and finest collection of mounted specimens in the world, and after seven studies which all concluded that such a museum would draw hundreds of thousands of visitors, annually promote the construction of dozens of new hotels, restaurants, and create hundreds of jobs from minimum wage to management level, with the money backer promising to PULL OUT if the city council ordered another study (!), Mayor Darrah said, and I again quote, "Why would any one want to come look at poor dead animals?!” She then and there proposed another study, allocating $75,000, to compare whether building children's soccer fields on the site might not bring more tourists to Stockton, than the museum. The city council approved the soccer study, the money backer pulled his $275 million, and the owner of the animal collection withdrew the offer! I believe Seattle got it. Finally, our Congressman had worked hard to get a firm commitment—over seven other suitors—from the US navy to donate the Battleship USS Missouri to Stockton to be docked in the turning basin at Rough 'n' Ready Island. All Stockton had to do was accept it and build parking and access facilities, estimated cost of $7 million, which supporters were willing to raise privately. The mayor, in her ultimate Liberal wisdom, said, "Nobody is going to be interested in coming to look at a rusting hulk representing war mongering!" She added something about needing to "memorialize peace instead" and she and her idiot liberal cronies VOTED against accepting it.
The same city council has voted against offering tax incentives to attract business to Stockton. It's "unfair." The county board of supervisors is not much better.
ALL OF THOSE JOBS WENT ELSEWHERE THAN STOCKTON! Jobs these young men might have had!
And then they wonder why Stockton has the highest underlying unemployment rate in California? And a crime rate knocking on the ceiling? For a couple of years, Stockton and Detroit see-sawed for position as the #1 foreclosure Capitol of the US. Detroit won, they're bigger. . . but it wasn't for lack of Stockton's officials trying hard. Enough downers.
On the G5 tower. No on the power supply. It's a 990 Watt special switching PS from Apple but they're available on the secondary market. Unfortunately, you really can't do much with a PowerPC with VMWare. It's not an Intel processor. There were PCI Intel boards you could slap into them (Full MS Windows compatibility), or software emulation for Windows which worked OK (About 60% of the speed of a contemporary PC) if you absolutely needed some Windows apps. There were some Linux distributions for PowerPC processors, and a UNIX . . . but none of them virtualization.
I have a friend who may be willing to sell a second generation MacPro with 6GB of RAM (upgradeable to 32GB), dual Intel XEON 2.0 GHz processors, virtual Windows7 installed, I think, 1TB (?) plus another 250 GB (?) HDs I think. It cannot be upgraded beyond OSX.7.5 Lion that's installed on it. This MacPro used to run our 3D Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) RadioPanagraph and act as the radiography database server for the dental office. It's a quite powerful computer for a machine that came out in 2007. We sold it because we had to upgrade the office to OSX.8 Mountain Lion and later. He now wants to upgrade. Don't know what he wants. This vintage MacPros go for between $500 and $1000 on Craig's List or eBay.
Before I'd spend the money on that, I'd look at something like this:
You can buy a Refurbished 11.6-inch MacBook Air 2013 1.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 with 4GB memory and 128GB flash storage including a new one year warranty for just $719.00. That would be a better option. of course you can't tinker with the hardware but the OS is upgradeable for years to come, you can virtualize almost anything on it, it'll drive two 30" monitors (IIRC), Two USB 3 ports, support 42 simultaneous connected thunderbolt devices, 9 hour battery life, iLife suite, and iWork's, OSX.9 Mavericks. 2.38 lbs. RAM is not expandable.
My portable full computer is the 13" version of that. When I bought my refurb, it shipped out of Elk Grove.
Someone is looking out for you. Of course I would say it was the kittehs who saved you since I love them but either way, you could have been too close or a human shield or simply dead or all three. Thank God and thank the kittehs!
Typical liberal thinking, a war mongering death machine but you could have built the Harvey Milk museum of tolerance and they would have rubber stamped it on the spot. I understand the role these (I'd be banned if I used the word I wanted to plus it's lazy writing) folks play in denying job growth but I would say that is tangential and the criminals caused the death. I'm sure we'll hear how they were just getting their lives together and there will be a peace march for them and nothing for the poor dental worker who was going about her business.
I was wondering if you lived in Sacramento or Stockton since I thought you live in Sacramento. It's not that bad a commute between the two even during the commuter hours and if your commute is backwards, even better. I've dealt with rental property before and you're a better man than I because I want to strangle people who destroy property, late with the rent I can deal with, wanton punches in walls makes me angry and I'm the one who would end up in jail if I threw them out. The final insult was after deciding to sell, someone stole the main breaker and some small ones and they were rare. It cost me $500 dollars in parts and about 1/2 hour of work and I was lucky they didn't just cut the wires short; of course now they'd steal the copper as well. I had a friend whose remote place was broken into and they stole the windings from a couple of motors. You would make more money working at a minimum wage job than the effort it takes to do that and these metal brokers know what the deal is, I don't know why they accept it (I do know why, money but...).
I like the Mac air, that's not a bad price. I'd drive to Elk Grove if they'd let me pick it up but shipping is so easy these days it's not worth the gas. I will look into that option as I putter with my new Mac when I hopefully pick it up Monday and find out what makes it go. Thanks for the research, that is a good price and I could justify buying it when my wife knows I've got computers coming out of my ears and there's really no need for another but it is worth developing a new skill set although I've got an Iphone I paid ATT $1 for new. If you know computers, it all makes sense, it's the same but different. The sad part is I never use its capabilities except in Europe where I've freeped from it. I don't text or Facebook so to me it's just a phone, a very nice one but I could still be happy with the first one I bought in '89 where I think it was either $1 a minute or 25 cents.
And to make it perfectly clear, you dodged a literal and physical bullet. Buy a lottery ticket even if you're like me and never gamble. ...and hug those kittehs and thank God as well, I'm too close just reading about it.
I don't know what starts over something stupid like a computer architecture and I already know how good Macs are, I just never had management that wanted or needed them. These things mostly never have a winner but frequently two losers. Same thing with fighting in real life.
Funny thing is, I have somewhere still, a copy 2 PC board which gamers used to copy game disks but I don't game but the better part was being able to copy text files back and forth between a Mac and a DOS PC which I used to transfer files between a friend's Mac and my PC for our music. The same Mac that had the drive jam when he must have slammed the disk in and bent the mechanism.