So I am going to break rules here, I am pretty sure, six ways from Sun-day (haHA!).

I am pretty sure I have never commented on this before, because, I agree with the 16,000 of you who will tell me it is in bad taste, but the first thing that always stands out in my mind about San Francisco? There are no black people here. Not that there are none. That is silly. I, however, come from Atlanta, a city with a 65% African American population. Moreover, I live in Midtown Atlanta. given the population averages, in my “hood” you are likely black and/or gay. In spite of its reputation, a city of straight white/asian/latino people is definitely a big change for me.

After a horrible travel day, I woke up early today and did some work on the day job. Registration for the cons opened at 2 so I kicked about eating the Turkey Hash at Mels and having way to much caff. I went to the center at 1:30 and happened to run into Josh Marinacci in the registration line. I went to lunch with he, his sister — who is doing video coverage of J1 as a blogger — and a couple other Sun peeps. The PRICELESS moment of the lunch was when Rachel asked “How does Sun make money on this stuff?” This seems to be a theme.

Tonight at the Glassfish party I met three other Sun employees who, while not shopping, are entertaining offers or interviews from other companies. In spite of doing well for a while now, I get the feeling a number of Sun peeps are looking for the door.

The feeling was echoed in a dinner I had with a couple of other notable Java bloggers this evening. I have it on good authority that there are a things I would call big news coming on Tuesday, but it would be premature of me to discuss them now. At the same time, from both the Sun and external people I see excitement about the “right” things.

Sun really dropped the ball with the MySQL buy. The lack of message control with the “Sun Closing Source on MySQL” meme was just a Charlie-Foxtrot. Truth matters little here, but after speding 3 years making the /. people like them, Sun pissed it away in one fell swoop. The-royal-we really needs to keep more on the ball than this.

At any rate, the first CommunityOne in the large facilities at the Moscone starts tomorrow. I got roped by the Atlassian guys into doing a lightening talk at their session SO…

I will have 2 copies of GWT in Practice on me, and 2 e-book vouchers. The first few people to mention this post and ask me get them! How’s that for a reason to follow O’J? :P