Startup Grind Buffalo May 29, 2014 at BNMC's D!G Buffalo - Leslie Zemsky Director of Fun for Larkin Square

The first ever Startup Grind Buffalo was held last night at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Co-Work Space called D!G Buffalo. I helped organize the event and took most of the pictures for this event.

What is Startup Grind, you ask? Startup Grind is an International Organization with over 100 chapters and is powered by Google for Entrepreneurs. It is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire and connect entrepreneurs. 

Here is a link to our Buffalo Page: http://startupgrind.com/event/startup-grind-buffalo-presents-leslie-zemsky-larkin-development-group/

And here is a link to the main global page for Startup Grind - http://startupgrind.com/

So now you know a little more, what happens at a Startup Grind? Its a speaker series that will be done monthly, with some of the top entrepreneurs in our area and a few from outside the area. It is a great networking event, with a fireside chat with our monthly guest. Our host and coordinator Eben Piazza did a great job with our first guest, Leslie Zemsky from the Larkin Development group. Leslie's title is "Director of Fun" and let me tell you her title fits her very well! We had over 50 people in attendance and the space at D!G was perfect. 

Thank you to all that helped, sponsored and attended. This event shows Buffalo is truly moving forward in every way!

Here are some pictures of the event.

Eben Piazza and Leslie Zemsky

So this new company that allows you to rent awesome cars for a day called Redline Rentals brought their Porsche 911, what an awesome car!

 Our registration was made smooth by Jessica at D!G and Drew who was great!

We had plenty of food and beer for everyone! 

Some of Buffalo's best and brightest were out to support our event! Thank you!

As you can see D!G's space is wonderful and a great place to hold an event! And Jessica Edwards is the Curator(Seen below) and she made the event so much better with all of her help and guidance! Thanks Jessica! 

Again, the great networking opportunities were endless and that is such a bonus! 

Drew and Leslie Zemsky who was fantastic and is truly an upbeat person in Buffalo!

Neil Carroll of Nickel City Graphics was our video guy and i cannot wait to see how it turned out!

 What a great crowd for a first time event! 

Eben opening it up!

Jon Spitz from 43North and Startup Weekend shared a few words, thanks Jon!

Leslie and Eben really made the fireside chat a lot of fun and we learned a lot from them both!

Thanks again to all that came and I hope to see more of you at next month's event. Stay tuned!

Here is the link to our Facebook Page, like us to stay updated about our upcoming events!

https://www.facebook.com/StartupGrindBuffalo

More informational links about our sponsors:

43North.org

StartUp Weekend

Co-Work Buffalo

DIG @ BNMC

Nickel City Graphics

3D Printer on Indiegogo KickStarter!

A great new kick starter that is kicking ass already! I bought an early bird special on this and will be giving an updated blog about what I find out!

Busy week of May 5th! Cinco De Holy SH!T

Busy week was the theme, lots of Lacrosse for Pete Jr, and Nick had track but since they are sometimes on the same days we had to split duties! Here are some shots of Pete's game against West Seneca West that Lancaster won 9-7. 

 On Monday we held the Get Wired'N Technology Conference where I was the M.C. for the event and I got some nice shots while running around, I also spoke and helped in all the planning and we had a good turnout of about 200 people for the event! I even had to eat a chocolate covered cricket from my friend Dan Stewart of Happy Grasshopper! 

Emma had her Spring Concert where she sang an old favorite of mine, Don Gato the Cat. Brought me back to my youth!

A crazy Windy game for Lacrosse Friday night! And we got beat 10-2 by Orchard Park. 

Late that night, I got to hang with some DJ Legends of the Buffalo Disco Scene as my Brother who came in town to DJ! It was great and I got some cool photos and videos.

Then on Saturday Morning, Nick and I had to work with our Boy Scout troop on an Eagle Project on Clark Street in Lancaster' Village. It was a awesome beautify your park project, it was a lot of work but it turned out very nice! You be the judge!

After that we had a Communion party with some old friends and hung out late and partied with a great group of people. Then Sunday I worked all morning on side project for a Doctor office and then had to take my wife and her Mother out for dinner with the whole family! It was a great week full of lots to do! 

Happy Mothers Day!!!

BarCamp Buffalo April 26, 2014

Bar Camp Buffalo - http://barcampbuffalo.org/ is back for it's 7th version!!



This time held at the Foundry - http://thefoundrybuffalo.org/

It started around 8:00 a.m. and ran until around 3:30 p.m. My guess is that we had around 100 people show up. They had Lloyds taco's for breakfast and lunch, which was great! As you can see there were a myriad of topics covered. I did one on Astronomy 101, which is one of my favorite passions and I had about 25 people in my session, which made me feel great!



Here is my laptop getting setup for my presentation! Lots of cool places and companies represented here!



Here I am doing my talk with my smart scope (Meade ETX-125) behind me!

There are plenty more pictures of the event on the facebook page for Bar Camp - https://www.facebook.com/BarCampBuffalo

The event was well run, went smooth and when I got there, I helped setup screens and projectors to make sure all 4 rooms were ready for all the presenters! I think it was a day full of learning, helping and growing, and everyone I spoke with had a great time! We all got T-shirts and stickers and I am looking forward to the next BarCamp Buffalo!!!

Lunar Eclipse - Blood Moon - Night of April 14-15

Tonight's Full Lunar Eclipse is showing favorably for almost all of North America including Buffalo!

But based on todays forecast it looks like we will be very cloudy and that it begins very late at night.The moon enters Earth's shadow around 2:00 a.m. and ends after 4:00 a.m. The full eclipse is around 3:00 a.m.

This is what it would look like through a 3 hour span.

The blood red moon! Caused by our own atmosphere coloring the moon with the Earth's glow.

And of course the science behind why we have Lunar Eclipse's  

Night pics of the Orion Constellation and Nebula!

These are my first shots using a Canon T3i with a 18-55mm lens, and between 10 and 20 second exposures using a cable release to keep the shutter open. I had to switch between AF and MF to get the right types of shots and I think for my first try this went very well.

End of Windows XP Support from Microsoft Today 4/8/2014

Today, after 12 years and 7 months, Microsoft's most beloved Operating System, Windows XP, has come to a close. This was my favorite by far, and I can go back to sometime in 2002 when XP came out and how unhappy I was with it. Why, you ask? Well I just mastered Windows 2000 and Server 2000 and along comes this Windows 98 looking desktop OS, that was different! Why should I learn another OS when I was working as an I.T. Professional in business environments. Well fast forward to many years later and this OS has done many businesses great deals, and awesome workloads and unparalleled power for very little money. I am sad to see it end for this awesome workhorse of an Operating System.

I have been asked by many, what do I do now? Upgrade the OS on my existing hardware and over XP? Buy a new one? Just keep going on XP? Well for one, you could just go get a new one with Windows 8.1 which is a good OS and I have been running it for over a year. You could find Windows 7 Upgrade software on sites like NewEgg and Amazon and upgrade your old XP to Windows 7 which is much closer to XP than Windows 8. Lastly, you could keep running Windows XP for a time, but as soon as a major zero day hole is found or anything that could compromise your network at work, you need to move off of XP. Closed networks like schools can run XP forever if they like as they never touch the internet. For the most part, you need to start moving forward in terms of technology and security and moving on from XP is not a bad thing, its a new thing and you should try to embrace new technology, especially if its tried and tested now. Either way good luck!!