Nothing says Valentine’s Day like working on PHP homework all day! I have three days left of training and then I should be back to more regular blogging. Work + Homework + Work + Baby = Not much time left for anything else.

I have to say I am enjoying the PHP Essentials training a lot more than I had originally thought. I am learning quite a bit and ended up working on my “homework” last night for a few hours. I have never had any formal training so it is nice to have someone start from the beginning to make sure I have a solid foundation. At the end of the month, I am going to also be taking the PHP Full Immersion class. If you are interested in getting some formal PHP training, I highly recommend PHP Architect training.

If you own a domain name or maintain a web site you have, at one time or another, wondered who is currently linking your web site. Wonder no more. If you have a Google account, you can log into the Webmaster Tools, add your site and view (and download) a table full of incoming links - both internal and external. Thanks Google!

A few months ago I read about Open DNS and thought “wow, I should really check that out” but then I never did. Finally I revisited it tonight, updated my router with the Open DNS servers, and wow - I can see a big difference in speed…and I am not over exaggerating. Doug - try this now. Ken - try this now (even though I know you won’t). Perhaps Dad M should also try this too. Not only is it super fast it also corrects common spelling mistakes on the fly. jappler.vom = jappler.com. To make it even better - it is free and you do not have to create any sort of account. Great service!

After several days of researching and reading about how to solve a MySQL replication problem, I found a great resource on MySQL I thought I would share: MySQL Tips.

What a weekend! My family came to town to meet and visit with me and then on Sunday, we watched the Bears make it through the NFL playoffs…and they actually played an excellent game! I am quite excited to see the Bears play the Colts in SuperBowl! Great job Chicago. PS. I still do not like Rex.

I know I generally post before my daily intake of caffeine, but this morning while going through my news via RSS, I had to do a double take when I read that there is now a microsoft firefox 2007 professional edition. As a web developer, I will be very curious to just where Microsoft goes with this new “version”. I have to say I am a bit scared after reading the full feature list because of this: “Microsoft Firefox 2007 will support many of the new Microsoft standards on the web to make browsing the web a richer experience and easier to develop for.” Yikes. Here we go.