Wildfires in San Diego hit close to home for some at Opera
Published October 23rd, 2007 5:27 PM EDT By Daniel GoldmanIf you’ve been following the news, you no doubt have heard about the wildfires in Southern California. More than 700 homes and business have already been destroyed.
In San Diego County more than half a million people were told to evacuate from their homes.
We, of course, have an Opera office in San Diego.
Our very own Lawrence Eng (one of the brains behind Opera marketing) and his family have been ordered to evacuate from their home in San Diego. Many of you know Lawrence from his activity on Choose Opera, the Opera Forums, or through his private correspondence with many My Opera community members.
I hope everything turns out well for Lawrence, his family, and all the others affected by these wildfires. What a difficult situation this must be.
Stay safe!
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Stay safe, Lawrence. And here’s hoping your home is still there when this is all over.
I’m writing this about 6 miles from the Santiago Fire in Orange County. Fortunately it’s a lot smaller than what San Diego is dealing with, but we’ve had lots of smoke, and I’ve got some co-workers who live in areas that have been evacuated. Every once in a while several of us will go over to the conference room at the corner of the building and look out at the smoke rising from blackened hills. I’ve been posting blogging the fire from a distance (sometimes less of a distance than I’d like) since spotting the smoke plume on Sunday afternoon.
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Good luck Lawrence. I live in San Diego, but fortunately I haven’t had to evacuate, and probably won’t have to. The air’s smoky and no good, though.
Also, you’ll notice I’m writing this in IE7. Sorry, but Opera’s poor site compatibility (especially when it comes to Yahoo! Mail), which hasn’t improved in my experience w/ 9.5a1, drove me away. IE7 has great site compatibility, and w/ the IE7Pro add-on, has the excellent features (which I admit are mostly copies of your innovations) I want.
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I listened to the BBC World Service earlier this evening (from the Netherlands), and when I heard about San Diego I immediately thought of the folks at the new Opera office. What a nerve-racking situation this must be.
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Thanks, everyone.
I’m pleased to report that I’m writing this from my home in San Diego. A few of the areas that were evacuated earlier have now been reopened, so I’m very glad to be back in my own living room, especially knowing about the thousands of people in San Diego who have lost their homes, along with thousands more who are still in evacuation shelters. Many people in San Diego don’t even know if their homes are okay.
The situation in San Diego (and other parts of California) is still very serious, but the community is sticking together, and we appreciate the support and concern shown by the rest of the nation. Some fires are being controlled, more resources are coming in, and the weather is starting to be more helpful, so there’s hope on the horizon.
I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. I really want to go up to SF this week to celebrate at our launch party!
PS: the other Opera employees in San Diego live closer to the coast, so they’re okay.
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One added note: our office is safe too. It’s pretty far from the affected areas.
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Correction, netster007x: Sites have great IE7 compatibility.
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Yes, sites do have great IE7 compatibility. That’s why I switched for now at least.
Did you mean Opera compatibility?
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Thanks, Lawrence, for your reports. I’m glad things are not so bad (for you and Opera) as I feared.
Enjoy yourself at the launch party!
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He means that (most) sites are written explicitly for IE7, which has poor adherence to standards unlike Opera and hence why Opera seems to have poor compatibility. Opera 9.5 is focusing on site compatibility as well as other things but it’s currently an ALPHA version which means that it’s meant for testing purposes only, 9.24 is the latest stable version.
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It probably is largely IE’s fault that sites don’t work well with Opera. To the user, though, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Opera and many websites don’t work well.
I know 9.5a is a testing version, it’s just I’ve heard many claim it enhances compatibility w/ many websites. In my experience it doesn’t.
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I’d say it’s the webdesigners fault, because they code their pages for just one single browser (unfortunutely the worst browser out of all) and don’t care about the rest.
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Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer) is only the enabler.
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For those who are curious, Google has a map that shows the locations of the fires.
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Lawrence, glad to hear it!