I have been swamped with school work over the past week as two of my classes overlap. I have been able to create some new Windows Server 2003 environments during all of my paper writing, and I am psyched to use them. I have decided to develop in Windows Server 2003 because the web servers I use are running this operating system. My only drawback to Win2003 is that annoying Shutdown Event Tracker. If you are like me, you pass in useless key strokes to provide enough information to satisfy the request. I found an article on how to disable the beast here.

I am building these Win2003 environments as virtual machines using Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. What I have decided to do is to create a parent VM, with Win2003, its latest updates, and the bare necessities like all the uninstalled windows components I need, WinRar, TextPad, Adobe, et cetera. From there I create two new VM's using the initial VM as their parent. One has Visual Studio 2003 and SQL Server 2000, and the other has Visual Studio 2005 (Whidbey) and SQL Server 2005 (Yukon). At this point I have three VM's, and the reason for this is so I can easily back them up onto DVD's since they are suck a cheap medium for storage. Finally, I create one more VM for each development environment, using either the VS2003/SQL2000 or VS2005/SQL2005 the parent. By doing this, I have a specific environment for developing that is easily manageable. At any point, I can destroy the working environment and create a new one in a matter of seconds. All the latest development tools are safe and current on updates.

When this school work subsides later this week I will be able to begin playing again.