My site may be moving from a Unix-based server over to a Windows 2003 server. To the end users, that shouldn’t make a difference, but to me, that means a few decisions.

Do I continue to use pMachine, which I just recently migrated to and took so long to configure to my liking? Or do I migrate to dasBlog, the best .NET-based blog package? I’ve had people tell me dasBlog rocks, and with pMachine being a PHP/MySQL package… well, I’d rather run on .NET, if you know what I mean. That’s where my expertise lies, and with the ability to use .NET to extend the blog, how can I pass that up?

On the other hand, do I want to deal with that?

Not to mention that, to my knowledge, there’s no pMachine-to-dasBlog conversion utility. When I moved from GreyMatter to pMachine, I was able to import my entries so things weren’t lost. Moving from pMachine to dasBlog, I may not have that luxury.

Which means, of course, that I’d have to write one myself. It wouldn’t have to be robust, since it’d only have to work once, but what a pain in the ass! Do I need to even take something like that on? Or would it just be better to run PHP and MySQL on Windows and call it a day?

The featureset, functionality, and extensibility is there in dasBlog, where it’s harder for me to do stuff in pMachine. My stuff is already in pMachine, though, and I’ve done a lot of work to make it just so… Something to think about, I guess.

A bit ago I mentioned how Lockergnome is sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt in newbies regarding security and the World Wide Web. I mailed the editor of the newsletter and he said he’d post my rebuttal (since the original author didn’t have a functional email address) in the next issue of the newsletter.

I just checked the next issue, and my comments aren’t there.

I remember a time I subscribed to that newsletter and actually got some useful information out of it. Whatever happened to Lockergnome, man?

Today’s my first day back at work (that is, actually at the office) since the winter storm fiasco last week and let me tell you how nice that is. I’m not very social at work or anything, but being in a place designated particularly for work is much better for focus, and hearing the other guys in the department doing their thing… well, it’s more social than sitting at home trying to get the cat to stop climbing my back.

First thing this morning I got here and there was a minor database-related crisis on one of our intranet servers, so that took most of my morning hashing that out. Stupid SharePoint Team Services…

I scheduled my last test for my Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer certification - “MS070-300: Analyzing Requirements and Defining Microsoft .NET Solution Architectures” - this coming Monday. I’m more uncomfortable with this test than I have been with others; they really are testing for “Software Engineering The Microsoft Way” and coming from a more real-world perspective, this inconsistent theoretical crap is really tough for me. I end up answering the questions the way you would in a real-world situation, but those answers end up being wrong because they’re not Microsoft answers.

A couple of friends of mine here at work have taken the test and they say it’s easy enough. Here’s hoping they’re right. In the meantime I’ll be studying my ass off.

I rented some movies this weekend and so far I’m not too impressed.

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle was iffy at best. Random plot interspersed with overdone effects scenes and implausible stunts that destroy your suspension of disbelief. My dad told me as much, but somehow I didn’t pay attention. Pass.

The Silencer, a low-budget movie about a hit man, was not only poorly acted but poorly written. In fact, I don’t know where one problem ended and the other began. Was it bad because the actors read lines like they were on cue cards? Or were the lines themselves so bad that it didn’t give the actors much to work with? Does it even matter? Pass.

I have another movie, The Art Of War, but I haven’t watched it yet. We shall see.

I should probably work at work, huh?

I should never have looked at the brain dump for the test I’m taking. Now I’m more nervous than I was before. Bah.

I’m rocking with the high speed Internet now, baby! Went down to the Comcast office and picked myself up a cable modem and driver kit, and now things move faster than fast. More human than human, friends.

I’m anticipating this will have a positive effect on my desire to do computer-related things at home (like update the blog, etc.) but will probably be not so great for my social skills.

At least Windows Update won’t take all night anymore.