We've got a lot of choices these days about how you want to do things. It seems like with the blogging thing you can either choose to host it yourself and have all the headaches (and fun) of having your own server. Or you can go in for a hosted system like Blogger.com

Host it yourself. Pros: - complete control. - use whatever software you like - security is in your hands (this could be a con I suppose) - you can always get at your data - down time isn't some body elses fault

Cons: - Down time is a lot more likely - Stuck in THEIR software - They can always shut you down - Not as well indexed?