Microsoft Expression Web 2

Expression Web from Microsoft is not my favorite product at the moment. It is too complex, and does not provide features that I would have thought would have been standard. These have to do with NAVIGATION. Maybe I need to go back for retraining, but I for the life of me cannot work out how to intelligently do menus or Navigation. It cannot be THAT hard. Can it?

My wants are fairly simple. Firstly, I would love a hierarchical menu system. One that only opens up as far as needed for a particular page. Oh, and i would like it to highlight the currently selected page in the hierarchy. But there is a complication. I also want a selected page to be able to have a number of 'sub pages'. Well, these are really pages in themselves, but the same page is selected on the hierarchy. And this collection of pages needs its own menu, but just for those pages. I can insert something onto those pages by hand, but what?

With the Web Meta Language (WML) this is all fairly straightforward. But under ExpressionWeb this is too hard for words. FrontPage is easier to use. So far in my searching I have not come up with a decent windows programming for a Web Site.

It is no wonder that people start using a Content Management System after software like this... Maybe I need to start using SharePoint :-(

pfSense needs some work (At the moment)

pfSense really needs a much better User Interface. I am sure the back end is good, but the GUI needs a lot of work. From my point of view it is unworkable. Maybe I have been spoilt with firewall, but more work is needed.

1. It is possible to Alias ports/hosts and networks. But I cannot see any way to specify the port as being TCP or UDP or both. [It is there, but I think the UI needs improving]

2. The UI for selecting PORTS/HOSTS/NETWORKS are missing. You must know the exact text of the alias and type that. [UI Issue again. If you start typing the name of the alias it comes up.]

3. Also missing is the ability to group multiple HOSTS/NETWORKS into a single rule

4. Removed [WAS: None of that really matters anyway since the ALIAS is broken since it immediately breaks this back to an IP. In other words it is not SYMBOLIC.]

5. The NAT functionality is broken. You can only do NAT by port. You cannot change ALL traffic to 1.2.3.4 to go to 5.6.7.8 regardless of the port. [This may be covered under OUTGOiNG NAT or 1:1 NAT]

6. Similarly Firewall rules are on a per-interface basis. You cannot have a single rule for all ports.

All of these problems would be fixed with a GUI that created the pfSense internal configuration... Wow... A project for me.

VMware ESXi 3.5 on Dell PowerEdge 1750 and 2650

There has been much written on the VMware ESXi 3.5 HyperVisor that is now available for free. Much less has been written on Hardware Compatibility between with non-supported DELL Servers.

Firstly, the DELL POWEREDGE 2650 works without issue. I have two of these boxes, and they are fine with ESXi, straight out of the box. Well, out of the eBay box. Put the CD in and boot. That is all there is to it.

On the DELL POWEREDGE 1750 things are not as easy. I kept getting "unable to write image to the selected disk" errors when I got to 2% of the install. This confounded me, and I could not find any BIOS settings that helped. So then I went to the DELL Web Site, and found some BIOS upgrades. I upgraded the BIOS from A10 to A12, and tried to upgrade the PERC 4e/Di SCSI Controller card but I kept getting bad sectors on the Floppy Drive. So I just rebooted the machine, and guess what... It worked.

So now I have proved that Dell 2650 and 1750 PowerEdge servers work with ESXi.

One hint... If you are working with VMWare, download a copy of VMware Converter. It is available from their Web Site, and helps moving VM's. Some caveats. Sometimes it does not VM's (Particularly Linux) in a state that can be used, if going from VMware Server to ESXi. It cannot load VM's from UNC paths even though it says that it can. And it always reallocates NETWORK MAC addresses even if you don't want it to on copying.