Early this morning I received this email in my inbox:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to "voluntarily" collect Colorado sales tax -- a course we won't take.

We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states.

Carl Wiedemann did a basic session on basic Drupal usage as a live demo. These are my notes from the presentation, such as they are. He had a drupal instance set up where he:

We'll explain how high-level user needs translate into Drupal concepts. We'll start building a simple Drupal site with common features such as news, events calendar, downloads, and contact forms.

Do you want to learn a ton about Drupal? Do you know what a node is? Have you ever heard of a tpl file? Does the idea of creating an ecommerce site from scratch without (or with) having to code a single line appeal? Can you see yourself hanging out with a whole bunch of cool, nice, and geeky people (about 200 so far)? Interested in creating custom work flows? Ever heard of Apache Solr? Do you want to? What the heck is a Skinr? Or Studio? Explore APIs. Learn about SEO. Discover beautiful Drupal design! How do you use media? Agile Project Management best practices. AHA!

Sound fun? Are you going to be near Metro Denver this weekend?

Anybody who knows much of anything about me knows that I'm a Drupal Evangelist and know a little bit about nonprofits. Drupalcamp Colorado is fast approaching on June 27th and 28th and I'm submitting a panel proposal.

Drupal is free but free doesn't mean it doesn't have a cost.

This session will take time to discuss Drupal as a tool in the nonprofit's tool box and whether it fits well within your organization's strategy.

• How can you easily evaluate the value of Drupal in your organization?

It seems that once a year we get one heck of a dump of snow in Metro Denver.  Spring has sprung and we’ve had crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips making their presence known.  Shrubs and trees have been leafing out.  The temperature has already hit nearly 80F/26C.  We’ve been out in shorts and t-shirts.

This morning, the snow started.  The snow kept on going throughout the day and actually forced me to turn around about a third of the way to Boulder from Westminster.  There were cars spun off the highway and many accidents.  I spent quite some time on the highway at a full stop.

The storm is bad enough that the Governor has declared a state of emergency.