A new feature has been added to the site, it’s for anyone that wants to use it and it’s totally free.  I call it Short Links, and basically it’s a web site redirector.  We all know it’s a pain in the rear to send those really long links to friends and family because they get wrapped and all munged up in the email and then don’t work.  Then you are trying to copy and paste in notepad and put it all together or explain all this over the phone when mom calls and is clicking but not working.  Yeah, we’ve all been there.  So, what you can do here is enter your long web site link, hit the button and get a short one back.  The short one you can send to whoever you want and when they go there it will re-direct them to your long link.  It makes life easier all the way around.  Simply go to our Tools section and click on the Short Links item from the list and go crazy.  I hope you all enjoy this new feature!

I am sure folks that have been here before will notice that our main landing page is now our blog posts.  Originally I wanted to have a static “Home” page to kind of explain what we are doing here.  That was nice in the beginning, showing that this is more than just a blog, there is a lot of content accumulating on this site.  After awhile though, I wasn’t sure if the never changing (almost) static page wasn’t doing more harm than good.  Kinda made it look like we didn’t update much around here.  So, I figured I would put the posts right out front.  This provides some easy to find content for passers by, and kind of pressures me to write more!  If you have an opinion, let me know what you think.

Just a note to make sure everyone thinks about and remembers the forums.  We have a nice forum setup here at Solarum dot com, and a good base of users, so let’s all get in there and get some good jibber jabber going!

I wanted to write up something about the latest WordPress release, version 2.5. I have updated all of the WordPress powered sites that I manage which is more than ten and the upgrade went flawlessly on all sites. Each upgrade was the same, no variances. Why do I mention this part of the process? Well, because I have seen many instances (*cough*Win*cough*dows*cough*) where the same upgrade went very differently (and sometimes even failed) on different computers, even though they had been built or imaged or the application installed off of the same baseline. So, when I can install all of the WordPress upgrades and every one of them not only works, but operates as expected, that’s a big deal to me. This has been the norm in the past as well, not just in this last upgrade. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been checking out ways to do things easier and faster, plus just plain get around faster in Windows. I have been putting together a list of shortcuts that are handy to have and I thought I would share them with everyone! As I find more I’ll be adding to the list, so check it now and then. For now I have a pretty good start I think, so go take a look …

Well folks, I thought I would share some good stuff that is happening on my end of the ‘net. After using my last computer for about 3 1/2 years, I decided it was time to upgrade. This is no small task for me, mainly because I am picky as hell but what can I say. For starters, I have always built my computers, again because I am picky and I want them my way. I have been doing this for more than a decade and this time I wanted to simply buy one. This meant that I had to do a lot of research to find a good quality machine that was going to live up to my expectations and also not break the bank. After lots of reading and digging I finally settled on Alienware. Now, Alienware has always had a reputation for building top notch machines and I must confess I have always wanted one. Even though the HP Blackbird looked like a mighty fine machine, I just couldn’t justify the cost. That plus did I mention I really wanted an Alienware???

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