I am so excited to talk about a new purchase I made, but I decided that there was something more important to write about! Mozilla Firefox has been my browser of choice ever since it came out. It looks nicer, more secure, better features, and it is more compliant with valid code (this is the most important to me since I am a web programmer). The 2.0 release of Firefox was just released, and to celebrate parties are popping up all over the world! I would love to spend some time talking about the new features of Firefox 2.0, but this post is geared more towards the parties...I will have to post again to talk about all of the new and cool stuff in Firefox.

The Mozilla group has setup a website that allows people to view details to all of the Firefox parties or to create their own party. Most of the parties will be held on the weekend of October 27, but the date is up to the creator of the party. There are already 521 parties around the world, and 4173 partygoers! I think that if you are throwing a halloween party already this weekend, you should just switch the theme and party with Mozilla. My favorite part of the site (why this article is found in the Map section) has to be the View Map page. They are using Google's resources perfectly! They have an interactive map image of the world, and have thumbnails showing details of all the parties. I was sad to see that both Buffalo and Rochester are party-less so far. If you decide to create a party in either of the areas, send me an invite! I hope everyone that can attend really enjoys their parties...and don't forget to leave a comment as to what party you will be attending and anything cool that happened at the parties.

Map Image: Firefox 2.0 Party

It has already been seven days since the "October Surprise" hit the Buffalo area and crippled the city (and surroundings). A lot of People still have not returned to work/ school, and many people around the area are still without power (over 100,000). The sounds of generators and chain-saws still are the 2 main things you hear when you are outside. I know I wrote about this storm on Monday, but I wanted to give a short update for people not in the area. In the winter, I am not shocked when I see snow piles/drifts at the side of the road over 5-feet high, but it does shock me when those pile are tree limbs and leaves! When you drive down the streets, you see these piles, and you see a lot of houses with piles of garbage at the road...those are the houses that had water damage from flooding in the basements. Buffalo has always been known as the city of good neighbors, and this storm proved it again. It is amazing to see so many people are willing to help out someone -- whether it is to help clean up a yard, let someone use a generator, or even to give someone a warm meal. Unless something huge happens, I will probably not post about this again. I only hope that everyone is with power by Sunday, and that the area can move on again after this weekend!

Google map image: Buffalo - October Surprise

I enjoy looking at company "Campuses", and comparing them to what other companies have. My favorite 4 have to be Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Dell. After starting to write today's post, I found out that I never wrote about Google's campus...what was I thinking?!?! I will have to write about it very soon.

Did you ever wonder where these massive companies actually started working out of before they got these campuses though? Eric sent me a link to where Google first started. When Larry and Sergey had to move away from Stanford, they ended up renting a garage for their first location of their company. They were very smart with their money (or the money they really didn't have), and this is one of the ways that they could have saved a little. In the area, rental was very expensive, so renting out someone's garage ($1700/month) was a very cool idea. I left the "search" arrow up on the map image to help you spot the house/garage.

Google map image: Google Garage