In case you're curious what blogging software I'm using, it's called MovableType, and it's a free Perl/CGI package available at http://movabletype.org. Yes, I would have liked to have used a Java-based blogger, but I couldn't find any.
Thus far using MovableType (MT) has been a pleasure. Install was easy and they have a script that checks everything is configured correctly and tells you what to do if anything's amiss. Blog management is effortless, and the feature list is great. My favorite feature is the automatic RSS syndication so it's easy for third parties to read the meta-information about these blogs. Pull http://www.servlets.com/blog/index.xml and you'll get links to the latest.
MovableType "builds" a site upon demand, so the load on the server is minimal. The only reason you'll see a CGI operating on the server is if you comment on a post. MT also supports templating, so you can adjust the look and feel. I'll play with that feature later.
I'm left with only one problem maybe someone out there's already solved. When I transferred the MT data from the staging machine to the production machine, I could no longer login, and I had to recreate the configuration on the live box. The .db files were transferred successfully using scp. Why would they be tied to a machine?