Some time ago I made the switch to using WordPress as my primary blogging engine.  I hosted it myself and had mySQL and PHP for the infrastructure. WordPress is a tried and true blogging engine so I was very impressed at its stability and performance.  One thing I didn’t like, which wasn’t really shortfall of the application, was my inability to customize and build my own themes.  The platform was PHP which made it very difficult for me since I really have no background in PHP.  I was “stuck” with off the shelf themes and the inability to customize the engine to my needs. The other night I came across an open-source app called BlogEngine.net.  This is available for free from CodePlex and is developed by a community of dotnet junkies.  They leverage things like user controls, master pages, and other features of the .NET Framework.  Exactly what I was…

As everyone gathers with their friends and families for the holidays, I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to you all. This is my absolute favorite time of year.  I start listening to Christmas music on Satellite and local radio as it becomes available at the beginning of November, and start to get a little anxious as it winds down in the last week of December.  “Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!” – Charles Dickens Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas!

I’ve had the MacBook Pro for one day now.  I got it up and running last night, installed VMware Fusion on it which allows me to run Vista inside the Mac OS.  I have to say that between Boot Camp, which is part of Leopard, and VMware’s Fusion, I’m pretty impressed.  Boot Camp was very easy to setup and in a matter of about 30-45 minutes I had Vista running.  Now with Boot Camp, you either boot into the Mac OS or Windows Vista. What does Fusion do? Fusion can actually read your Boot Camp partition and can use that as a virtual machine.  So, you can run Vista inside a window while booted into the Mac OS, or you can run it through Boot Camp where Vista runs natively. Another great feature of Fusion allows you to run any of the Windows applications installed in the virtual instance outside…

I can’t believe it myself, but I actually took the plunge the other night. One of the things that had always appealed to me was the quality and design of Mac hardware.  Who can complain about a 5 hour battery life?  It’s a defining experience compared to the 1.5 hours I get off of my Dell.  Of course with the extended battery (and additional weight), I can boost that up to 3 hours, and it only costs me an extra $200 … but I digress. Libby, a graphic genius by trade (and close friend) has always had a Mac.  I guess you could say, he was my inspiration for trying a Mac, or maybe it was our inability to share files. Anyway, I had been watching Apple’s refurbished items website and thought I came across a pretty good deal.  My choice was between the 13″ MacBook and a 15″ MacBook…

Microsoft released the long-awaited update to Exchange 2007 last Thursday.  SP1 includes many improvements and is a beefy download at 900 MB; assuming the bulk comes from the MUI packs. Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) has been designed specifically to help meet the challenges of any business and the needs of all the different groups with a stake in the messaging system. Exchange Server 2007 SP1 is a mission-critical communications tool that enables employees to be more productive and access their information anywhere and anytime while providing a messaging system that enables rich, efficient access to e-mail, calendar items, voice mail, and contacts. For the administrator, Exchange Server 2007 SP1 provides advanced protection options against e-mail security threats, such as spam and viruses, as well as the tools to help manage internal compliance and high availability needs. The addition of Standby Continuous Replication (SCR) is welcomed by…