This past week I turned over a new computer (mentioned earlier) to my folks. They were visiting me and brought over their old computer. I setup network sharing between the two computers and copied over whatever I could think of.

Of course I forgot some things. Apparently they had a pretty extensive contact book in Outlook Express and I had not copied it over and imported it into Windows Live Mail. Other than that the transition does not seem to have been too bad. I was unable to transfer, from their old computer, their TV tuner card so I have bought them a USB stick that does the same thing.

As I worried in an earlier post that the interface differences between Windows 7 and Windows XP would confuse the folks and this has, in fact, happened. The Outlook Express replacement, Windows Live Mail, does some things differently. The most egregious difference is the asinine use of the Alt key to bring down the file menu(s). Whose brainchild is this? What a truly terrible idea.

The most useful suggestion I received (back when I was soliciting suggestions for this computer) was to purchase a subscription to GoToMyPC.com. What a time saver that has been. I can simply remotely connect to their desktop and perform tasks for them. Plus I can see what is happening instead of constantly having to ask, "What is going on?" or "What are you seeing?"

Gabor Szabo says that Perl needs more "young enthusiastic developers." Apparently even the Germans are having difficulty finding Perl developers. At my previous job and at my current job we are having a hard time finding developers (not just Perl developers), but Perl developers do seem to be more difficult.

Unfortunately stating, "We need more young, enthusiastic developers" isn't a solution. Gabor goes on to say that existing Perl advocates should help companies find these developers. I'm not quite sure how that is supposed to work (and isn't this more a function for something like perlmongers or Perl Advocates?). If I work for a company that needs Perl developers I will attempt to find Perl developers, but it's not like there is some magic box that Perl developers receive that keeps "young, enthusiastic" developers in stasis. There is simply more demand for Perl developers than there are hirable Perl developers. Companies will either slowly move away from Perl or supply will eventually catch up with demand (due to any number of factors).