I stand corrected. I was able to find a desktop version of TurboTax but I didn’t find it from the www.turbotax.com website. Instead I found it from the www.intuit.com website. Go figure.
Update: I decided to give TurboTax one more chance before going to a professional but not the web version. Instead I order my old, familiar friend, the desktop version. Hopefully the experience will be much better and I can get our taxes done.
I know I have said this before but this time I hope I really mean it. I plan to start making more technology related posting to this blog. And to start things off I will share my rambling on using a CMS verses building a web site by hand.
I am in the process of setting up a web site for a new software company. Originally I wanted to use DotNetNuke to manage the site. It’s a great solution that has evolved since original releases of IBuySpy. However there are some database issues I have with DNN. Specifically the software company’s hosting provider only provides a single database so multiple applications hosted under the one account must share the database. Unfortunately DNN and another application already hosted attempt to use the same table names. Now there are ways around the problem using tricks like assigning different owners to the tables,
etc. And from what I have heard DNN v2.0 will have table name prefixes and other enhancements to prevent the problem. But DNN v2.0 has not been released yet.
I have tried Rainbow. It’s similar to DNN in that it originated from IBuySpy but it is different in that it is written in C#. DNN is written in VB.NET. Rainbow doesn’t appear to be as well supported as DNN either. Good news is that Rainbow does not conflict with other applications hosted under the account. And it has support for skins. Unfortunately there are not a lot of skins available for Rainbow, and it took me a day to create my own skin. And I have been having problems with building a good menu system for pages that
appear off of a root page or tab.
I like the features these products offer but at the same time I’m not quite happy with the end result of the web site. In some cases these products are overkill for my needs. So the software developer in me keeps saying “Write your own.” And I’m starting to listen. There are some definite
pros for writing my own web site or even creating my own CMS for that matter. But the biggest con is the lack of time I have right now. So I struggle with the debate as to whether or not I should use one of these fine products or write my own. If only I had a week of time to crank out a new web site with all the features I need. The ability to edit content online, the ability to define page layouts and support different module types, a built in blog engine, and maybe a blog engine that ties back to blogger.com (another time saver for me). I could drop the online editing features of the blog engine and the content and do something quickly with ASP.NET. But at the same time I like the ability to edit online for those rare cases when I am without my laptop.
The struggle continues. Feel free to post your opinions if you have one.
WASTED 2004 started over the weekend and for the first time Melanie and I were not there for the start of the trip. But we are heading out tomorrow. Be sure to check the WASTED site at http://www.wastedboarding.com/ for daily (or almost daily) posting.
Ambrosia Software, Inc. – Bitwise Operator: The Plain Truth About Piracy “It’s a rare day when a shareware programmer gets firm statistics on the extent of software piracy, but just recently, I got that chance.”
Commentary: The Upcoming GNOME Monarchy of Mono - OSNews.com: “Unix was originally all about not being… Multics. If Mono is to follow a similar nomenclature (just for the kicks), we have to talk about Mono’s upcoming ‘monopolization’ and ‘monarchy’ in the next generation of the Unix programming land. Your see, if everything goes well, in 2 to 3 years most new Gnome user/desktop applications will be written –hopefully– in Mono and C#. “
Articles - Avoiding the Spam Trap: Get your message delivered!: “If you send emails to your customers, I have some bad news for you. Not all of your emails are making it to your intended recipients. Between ISP spam filters, spam-blocking email servers, spam-killing email software, and email content filtering everywhere in between, the chances are high that your messages just aren’t making it past all of these roadblocks.”
A lot has happened since my last posting. As usual my life has been very busy. I took a sick day from work on December 22 to snowboard during the day and watch the Lord of the Rings. Three years in a row. I’m sure Melanie is glad the movie was only a trilogy.
For my birthday and Christmas Melanie gave me a couple of new Xbox games, Tony Hawk’s Underground and Project Gotham Racing 2. Both rock! THUG’s story mode is very addicting and PGR2 is much better than I expected. And I really like the Xbox Live support in PGR2.
Melanie and I spent the holidays with her family. Lots of food and good cheer. And tons of presents. The Davis’s really get into the gift giving thing during the holidays.
And lastly, Melanie and I are staying in NYC for the New Years. We are hosting a small wine tasting event Wednesday night and ringing in the New Years with some friends.
Attention @thecave.com E-mail Users: There was a serious problem with the SmarterMail today that forced my new hosting provider to reset the passwords of all the e-mail accounts. I have reset the password to the value provided in the e-mail I sent out last week. If for some reason you do not know your password please reach out to me by e-mail or phone and I will get you going again.
I apologize for the outage this afternoon. The timing could not have been worse. Less than one week with the new provider and already one serious problem. Hopefully this will not be a sign of things to come. And in defense of the new hosting provider, the support staff reacted quickly to the problem and helped ensure no loss of e-mails.
Again, sorry for the problem and please let me know if you have any other problems.
thecave.com is moving to a new hosting provider tonight. I anticipate problems such as posting a blogment and e-mail users will need to check both servers over the next few days. I will work on resolving any and all problems as they come up over the next couple of days. I apologize in advice for any inconvenience.
Over the last year I have been using VMWare to host multiple guest operating systems on my laptop. This has made me a much more efficient developer as I can have clean copies of multiple environment to build and test my applications. It also gives me a safe way to evaluate beta software without fear of hosing my host operating system.
Microsoft has recently released Virtual PC 2004, a product that is similar to VMWare. For grins I decided to give it a whirl. What I first noticed was that VPC is not supported by Microsoft on host operating systems other than Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP. However it ran for me without a problem under Windows Server 2003. I found the user interface to be more amateurish compared to VMWare, and the UI is less intuitive. For example to mount an ISO file you must drag and drop the ISO file onto the CD disc icon in the status bar of the Virtual PC window.
There were no surprises in setting up a new guest OS. However, it seems RAM is the only configuration item available during the setup of a new virtual machine. I did not see settings for controlling network access. VMWare definitely shines in this area. I found it interesting that formatting the new partition within the virtual hard was a slow process using VPC. VMWare can format the virtual partition in a snap. Installation of the new guest OS seemed slower under VPC than VMWare as well.
As for running the guest operating system I have not noticed any major differences between the two products aside from the better VMWare UI shell. After my 5 minute review of the Virtual PC I have to say I still prefer VMWare. VMWare appears more professional and is easier to use for someone like me. I will need more time with VPC before I decide if it is an appropriate replacement to VMWare for my needs. And since I don’t have the time it will be VMWare for me for a while.