Grammie is scheduled to leave in a few days and we’re desperately trying to take advantage of having an extra pack mule to help us move. So, I pack up all of our stuff (for the third time in as many weeks), and we shuttle the bags out to the corner to hail 2 taxis. Mom rides alone in one, following Neva and me in another after I give the address to the drivers. My driver races through the city, and I try to remind him that the other driver is following him, and he does slow down about 2 km/hr.

It is HOT! After venturing out to explore the parks and track down the grocery stores a few times, Mom, Neva and I retreat into the relative cool of the apartment. Neva gets an early birthday present of Barbie rollerblades, which of course necessitates the purchase of Disney Princess pads and a helmet. When she gets all geared up, we can hardly see Neva through the pink. We have been venturing out to the sidewalk in the relative cool of the evening for her to practice and she is starting to get the hang of the movements and can really take off now.

As my second full day in Bucharest winds down, I thought now would be a good time to take a moment and catch up on how things are going on our "Big Adventure" as it has come to be called. Our flights were fine, and Neva even made friends with another little girl in the airport. She was so excited to come tell me, "Mom, she speaks English!" Of course, we were in London, so our chances were pretty good, but it was reassuring for her to find a girl from Miami to play dolls with.

After an incredible day at Disneyland, we got up and on the road the next morning headed south on the 5. It was a bit nostalgic for the grown ups as we passed our old stomping grounds in both Costa Mesa and Dana Point on our way to Carlsbad. Neva perked up a bit once she recognized the giant Lego letters on the drive into Legoland and immediately asked if I had brought her bathing suit.

UPDATE: We finally have pictures!

Wednesday 3/17/10 was the kick off of our whirlwind tour of the Southwest. We had a good indication that the trip was going to go well when we arrived at LAX (me from SFO and Louisa and Neva from BOS) within 5 minutes of each other at adjacent gates - a serendipitous start to be sure!

After car rental (a Yaris, not our favorite, but at least no “acceleration issues”) we headed south to Anaheim and the Doubletree Disneyland, which ended up being a great hotel - not that we were there all that much.

Like many media and publising brands, InfoWorld.com came to Optaros looking to for new and efficient ways to better expose and organize content and encourage reader participation. It's no secret that traditional publishers are undergoing a sea change in their approach to garnering reader interest and eyeballs, while looking to cut costs and generate new revenue streams. It's a difficult, though increasingly familiar, story and a perfect scenario for leveraging the flexibility and economy of Open Source.

As a consultant specializing in enterprise Drupal, I often find myself answering a relatively small (and consistent) set of questions about the Drupal platform early on in any engagement. Many of the larger Drupal sites are media and publishing oriented, which makes these questions even more common across projects. As a result, I've started to compile a list of most common Drupal questions and the answers I've been able to provide. First up is the most common concern enterprises have about Drupal - scalability.

Dion Hinchcliffe from ZDNet has an interesting post out about communities in the enterprise. It's really almost two posts in one, with the title seeming a bit misleading until you get to the end. He does discuss platforms (and yes, Drupal is high on the list) but what was much more interesting was his discussion of how expertise in forming online communities may soon become a cornerstone skill for employees.

The post is a bit long, but definitely well worth the time - http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=195

Checking out the Pownce module, written by our own Kyle Browning. Only using version 1 so far but I hear version 2 is do out soon with support for all Pownce functionality. In the meantime, my blog posts should be showing up on Pownce, much to the chagrin of anyone following me there.