Visit Sellam's warehouse nearby in Livermore. Seriously. And visit the Digibarn (although Bruce is always very busy preparing for VCF). Visiting Stanford is also fun, plus the HP garage down the street. Visit the Intel museum. Visit any number of differently theme Fry's stores. And of course, WeirdStuff Warehouse. None of that is in San Francisco, so just venture south a couple of days early. Speaking of which: I always rented Hertz cars for my past VCF excursions, because only they had the GPS option, but now Avis has it too. Got a really good deal when making my reservation yesterday -- four days with Avis, plus GPS, in a Pontiac G6 for aroun $150. Hertz wanted $200 for a subcompact.