What am I doing here

Currently uemployed software developer, I have decided to explore the world of Microsoft Sharepoint, and possibly other software adventures.
I have tried this before but I was using virtual pc on my laptop to create the server envoirnment to host Sharepoint but it was dog slow and after I configured the root site I could not access it in a browser.

I presume it was some security issues. Anyway I was 2 months unemployed at that stage and the I got a little down and left it at that for a while.

However, I rent some land so when that money came in I decided to have another go. I got a cheap PC with 4 gigs of Ram to act as a server and went for an MSDN subscription from Micromail. I have often toyed with the idea of using a blog to document my adventures in development to record those really irritating little things that are never mentioned in the books, blogs or documentation (especially the documentation) that take days to resolve and track down and only happen when you have forgotten what you did the last time to resolve them.

So this is it, a start. Not sure if I will keep this up but here goes anyway.

So I restarted this week with some interruptions for this and that. So I have installed Windows Server 2008 and discover that HyperV only works on 64 bit machines. I have spent the last two days getting the server up and running.

Trying to get it connecting to the internet so I can authenticate Windows and get updates. I spent most of the time messing with DNS, the problem being that my broadband uses dynamic ip and assigns dynamic DNS servers, they do change though not often. Eventually I discovered that putting the server in the DMZ of the router seems to get it working. I have no real idea why though.

The next trick is to get the laptop working as a client on the server. There seems no option other than making it a member of the domain, it has gotten a lot more complicated than when I last had a serious look at server management and networking (about 10 years ago on NT4 and Red Hat 5.0)