AlexRaiano.com | All Things Alex Raiano…

Here’s a listing of the WordPress plugins that I use on my three WordPress blogs(raianofamily.net, tivoblog.com & this sites).

Akismet: Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use this service. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days. Hat tip: Michael Hampton and Chris J. Davis for help with the plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.

Feedburner Feed Replacement: Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while creating a randomized feed for Feedburner to pull from. By Steve Smith.

WP-Polls: Adds A Poll Feature To WordPress By GaMerZ .

Contextual Related Posts: Show last 5 contextually related posts on single blog posts, increase exposure By Mark Ghosh (LaughingLizard) .

Recent Comments: Retrieves a list of the most recent comments. By Nick Momrik.

Google Sitemaps: This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. By Arne Brachhold .

Subscribe To Comments: Allows readers to recieve notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry By Mark Jaquith and Jennifer (ScriptyGoddess) .

WordPress Database Backup: On-demand backup of your WordPress database. By Scott Merrill.

WP-ContactForm: WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post. It currently works with WordPress 1.5+ By Ryan Duff.

WPG2: Embeds Gallery2 within Wordpress to share photos, videos and any other Gallery2 content seamlessly into the Wordpress Sidebar and Blog entries. Documentation, Support Forums. By Ozgreg with CSS design by Marc Lorenz .

Adhesive: Allows easy marking of sticky posts in WordPress 2.0. Licensed under the MIT License, Copyright 2005 Owen Winkler. By Owen Winkler .

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Shell and I picked up our car today. It’s nice to have two reliable cars!

Along with applying for our mortgage today, Shell and I also bought a car (2003 Honda Accord). I know this is not what you are suppose to do however, the ’98 Dodge Stratus that we own needs a lot of work and Shell and I decided that we didn’t want to put the money into the car. We spoke with the bank and they told us it would be no problem if we purchased a car along with getting a mortgage.

Shell and I decided on the Accord because it has plenty of room in the back seat, the crash test rating is good and the car gets decent gas mileage. Initially we were going to go with the EX model however, after we thought about it a little more we decided that the extra features weren’t necessary. I’ll post some pictures of our new car once we get it (hopefully Thursday).

Apple just released iTunes version 6.0.3.  According to the relase notes this version of iTunes contains mainly bug fixes and stability improvements.

The past six days have been spent with two people that I hold near and dear to my heart (my wife and my son). Shell and I have been on a lot of wonderful vacations (London, Paris, Rome, Out West, Cruise…) and gone to a ton of amazing places however, the past six days have been the best “vacation” I’ve ever taken. I took last Wednesday off to celebrate my son’s first birthday and when I came into work on Thursday I found out that the power at work was out and that it wouldn’t be back until Saturday at the earliest. Since I already had today (Monday) off, I’ve spent the last six days home with my wife and son. Each and every day we had a lot of fun. Other than spending an hour in the car on Saturday, it’s not like we did anything all that special. In fact, all we really did was just enjoy spending time with each other. The past six days made me realize that I should take time off more often….

Yesterday, Shell and I locked ourselves out of our house during a winter storm warning. Luckily for us, the car was open so we were able to hang out in the car until Shell’s Mom came to unlock our house. Instead of complaining about the situation we decided to have some fun by singing Sally The Camel and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. We hung out in the car for one hour! The moral of this story is that you shouldn’t lock yourself out of your house during a winter storm warning with a one year
old ;).

Today we had three couples come and take a look at our house. The first group of people already put a full price offer in so it looks as though we’ve sold our house! Now all we need to do is wait and see if the other people want to put in an even better offer. The first time we listed the house it took two weeks to sell it. This time it only took two days! Shell and I are obviously very excited!