Christmas Day is the same day it is every year, that being December 25. And the day after is obviously December 26.

There are a few tech-related things you can expect to have issues with those two days.

1. Cell phone traffic will spike.

Everybody is calling everybody. Most wireless carriers can handle the traffic but don’t be surprised if you have to dial a number a few times just to get thru.

Tip: If you encounter problems calling, having a POTS line nearby will usually always go thru without a problem.

2. Video game console online services will crawl.

On Christmas morn’ there will be lots of hyper kids jumping for joy at the fact they received a brand new Microsoft Xbox. And of course they’ll all hook them up and try, repeat, try to get online with them.

Don’t be surprised if the connectivity isn’t exactly stellar in performance.

After Dec 25, all those kids will try again on Dec 26.

It will even out to normal on the 27th.

For those that say "But it didn’t crawl last year.." That’s right, it didn’t. But consider the number of Xbox users now compared to then.

3. General internet slowness

In addition to video game consoles a ton of people will be getting new computers or something that is internet capable.

All this traffic will be sure to bog overall connectivity down somewhat.

Being that all ISPs will have minimal staff in the US that day, don’t bother calling for tech support. Wait until the 26th.

Said honestly, your best option is to simply watch television that day instead of using the computer.

My recommendation: Stuff yourself, get fat and wait it out.

In order to write blogs you need a blog engine (the CMS software). Over the years I’ve used several and this includes but is not limited to MovableType, b2evolution, Drupal, Serendipity and several others.

The “big two” I’ve used most are MovableType (abbreviated MT) and WordPress (abbreviated WP). For several years I was a die-hard MT user and absolutely refused to use anything else because I knew the system so well. But then Dave decided to switch over PCMech entirely to WP from an in-house programmed CMS he wrote himself and hasn’t looked back. It impressed me so much that I switched to WP on my own personal blog.

Very recently WP released version 2.5. I upgraded to that version and can say in all honesty that it kicks ass.

Here’s why:

Faster menus

The design of the admin interface is leaner and meaner.

Grouped menus that make sense

The previous WP was very separated in the way the menus were laid out. In 2.5 there’s more grouping and it’s done in a way that works. For example, all templates/widgets are placed under the menu “Design”. This makes sense because it directly affects the design of the blog.

Dynamic automatic updating of plugins via FTP

This is in my estimation a SERIOUSLY cool improvement because you can update plugins in WP now as easily as you would in Firefox. WP will check your installed plugins to make sure they’re up-to-date, and if not will prompt you (like previous versions) to upgrade but it doesn’t stop there. You can then insert your FTP server information, WP will download the plugin, extract it, install it and clean up the old version information afterwards.

How cool is that?

Frickin’ awesome if you asked me.

Overall design is much better, cleaner

In addition to the grouped menus the overall design of the interface (which is what WP admins look at most) is improved. You can tell this is designed for writers first; something the WP team has always taken into consideration.

I won’t say 2.5 is perfect (no CMS is), but this is definitely a no-brainer upgrade.