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What can you do about this page being so slow? That's a question we've been asked by half a dozen customers in the past 6 months, and as it turns out, we can do quite a lot.

We've been getting several inquiries related to document management in Drupal, and occasionally about OpenAtrium, a Drupal distribution we've used as a base for several projects that needed strong group collaboration functionality.

Heerad asks:

Heartbleed. The end of XP. Zero-day Internet Explorer attacks. April was a tough month for security on the Internet -- are the days of safe browsing over?

Probably not. But it is time to make sure you have good password management processes -- or learn how to do it if not.

Years ago I wrote about Smarter Password Management, and how to more easily create secure passwords. It's time for a brief update, as the environment has changed a bit.

After using the latest Ubuntu Long Term Support release (14.04) on my laptop for the past few weeks, I upgraded my home workstation on Friday. And hit a few upgrade challenges I thought worth jotting down for posterity (and the next poor sucker who can't find an answer on Google).

Everybody is writing about Heartbleed this week. The reason? It probably affects more people than any other vulnerability we've ever seen. If you ever log into any web site, anywhere, your password might be revealed -- and that is just the start. The biggest problem?

Ha. Just got another message from a client who has been the victim of several comment spam campaigns:

Why is it that there is no top-notch Drupal shop in Seattle? There are several small shops here, and several large companies with branches here, but no really top-shelf, world-renowned Drupal shop based in this great city.

Previously we learned why a custom web site is not a car. But it is a lot like a building.

"Make me a building. How much is it going to cost?"

"My budget is really tight, can you get the project started and show me what to do to finish it?" -- Yet another request from several different prospective customers.

"I just want a web site to do memberships, events, and e-commerce. How come you can't tell me how much it's going to cost? I just want to know the price, like when I buy a car."

I've long been a Bitcoin skeptic, not necessarily seeing the point of it. While I've kept passing tabs on its progress, I did not think it was viable, or worth much beyond pure speculative game play, a forum for making bets that today are up quite a lot.

Clients love fixed-price projects, because they have transferred the risk of the unknowns to the vendor. Even so, if the vendor cannot fully handle those risks, the entire project might fail.