What seems like a very long time since I first heard about and ordered the new Drupal book, Pro Drupal Development, it finally arrived at my doorstep. So far, I have only read Chapter 1, "How Drupal Works", and glanced at the remaining pages of the book but I'm very impressed. The book is written in a very easy, well organized, and informative writing style.

I usually spend my weekends writing a few drafts for articles that I'm going to post for CMS Report. The idea is that I'm not competing with the hectic pace I usually find myself in during the weekdays.  Well, I found myself distracted from the usual writing endeavor for two reasons: 1) Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007 and 2) the snow finally melting leaving a nice warm weekend to be outside.  Needless to say, not much time was spent with the computer.  However, let's talk about Microsoft and something they finally did right.

A focus lately has been on the fact that you can run Windows inside of an Apple Mac through virtualization.  What the commercials don't talk about is that you can also run the same type of software, such as Parallels, to also run the Linux OS inside your Mac.  Since Microsoft Windows and Linux are the primary operating systems I use at work, the ability to run the two operating systems together is of interest to me.  In fact that interest is so great that for the first time in a decade I've been considering to buy a Mac at home.

During the past five years I've been dual-booting between Windows and Linux on my PCs both at home and work.  However, there are inconveniences with dual-booting due to the the constant need to reboot your machine to get to the other operating system.  This better method is virtualization and something Apple has been promoting the past year or so to lure in Windows users to their computers.  Now Microsoft's free Virtual PC has arrived and I think it is about to change my world.

Did you hear the reports about all that money to be made from online advertisements?  In 2006 alone, Internet ad revenue was estimated at $16.8 billion USD.  You have also likely heard of bloggers making thousands of dollars in just a short amount of time through online ads. If you believe this is another post about making money from online ads or how to optimize your site for the search engines, you are going to be disappointed.  I'm not here to tell you how to make money online but when you shouldn't be making money from advertisement on your site.

Dries Buytaert had mentioned that when the Drupal developers came together at the Open Source CMS Summit he hoped they could make a video using Jeff Robbin's catchy Drupal Song.  I'm not sure the status of that video by the developers, but as a fan of Drupal I decided to beat them to the punch.

My son and I have become addicted to The Drupal Song.  In fact, when the song is playing in my house we quickly become The Drupal Boys.

All I can do is shake my head in the direction education has taken in the United States. I've written about this topic in the past, a little here and on another blog of mine. In one of those blog posts, I wrote the following.

American society as a whole seems to have less value for education, especially in the sciences and math, than when I was growing up. Maybe I’m more sensitive to these numbers since I am a scientist at heart…but isn’t anyone else disturbed by this trend? While I feel there should have been something done to help reverse this downward spiral sooner, I’m glad at least that it is finally getting some some well deserved attention by the Bush administration.

College students in the United States are not showing up in those university programs that are focused on physical science, computer science, math, and engineering. There are a number of politicians, parents, and students that will blame the public school education system for the current state of education in the United States. I have some serious doubts whether fingers should really be pointed in the direction of the teachers or even school system. I think in many ways, those fingers should be pointed right back to the parents and their children. Perhaps life in America is so good that by the time the student becomes a young adult, life hasn't prepared them to face the challenges and disappointments they need to do well in the sciences.

A recent eWeek article reported that a United States "policy think tank" found that in the past decade, information technology boosted the U.S. economy by $2 trillion dollars.

"For the United States alone, what we found was that because of the digital revolution, GDP is $2 trillion larger today than it would have been had growth in the post-1995 era proceeded at the 1974 to 1995 rate," said Robert D. Atkinson, Ph.D., president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

 "We need to recognize this phenomenon and adjust our thinking to make IT a centerpiece of our economic policy--from planning and forecasting to tax policies that incent future growth."

When I first started developing this website, CMSReport.com, it was my intention to also take "the opportunity to provide a series of how-to articles on building a Website using Drupal".  I wanted to help those getting started in using a content management system for their site by suggesting some tips and ideas that could make their life easier.  As time wore on, when it came to my own site I found that except for a few well written posts I failed miserably at this goal.

I'm pretty good at tasks such as developing, innovating, documenting, and system administration.  However, some people can't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.  Unfortunately, I'm one of those people.  I have difficulty developing and documenting at the same time.  This isn't unusual as one of the most talented programmers I know struggles with documentation and will ask me for help in writing instructions for his own software.  My point is that when you find people who is blessed with being able to document their own work you need to let others know about that person.

I suppose it's expected, but the media's focus of a possible Daylight Savings Time (DST) computer meltdown is just too predictable.  Take for instance this CNET News article, Daylight saving change proves thorny for businesses:

With the early move to daylight saving time taking place this weekend, businesses not yet ready for the change are finding themselves in a race against the clock.