I spend a lot of time online and have done for years and over that time many happy, sad, odd, nasty, fantastic things have happened to me online and off. This blog is about all of that and more.
Hey thanks for checking out my little blog. A bit about me: I'm a web designer for a Catholic Hospital
in Nebraska. I love my job and it's allowed me to learn so much about design and code etc etc. all at their expense, not mine, hehehe.
I have a daughter, she's nearly 12 and the pride of my life. You can check out her website at Sweetiepete.com.
She loves it when people sign her guestbook :) That's enough for this space. If you want to know more, read the blogs! :)
Okay, I have to profess my geeky love for PostNuke. And one of our hospital ISP's for installing it for me, that was unexpected. I had thought they were just installing PHP and Mysql for me but they must just be the coolest techies ever :) All I had to do was pick a good theme and modify it to Wellness Works colours and voila, brand new site that I think everyone will just flip over. And I have my friend Leigh to thank for opening up this little world to me. If he hadn't changed the Silver Rocket site to vbportal, (and done a mighty fine job of it as well) I wouldn't have known about it. See how the Net works? It's the little things like that that can help you out in life. I'm learning so much. And none of this was learned in college. Hmmm.
Now now, I'm not knocking college. Without it I wouldn't even have my job. But it just seems that for certain Web-type jobs, college doesn't even begin to cover the necessary stuff. Everything I've learned about design and coding, I've learned online, either by using the 'view source' trick or trial and error, or just by having very patient friends. You can't put a price on all of that. And I still have so much to learn so it is a neverending process that I'm really looking forward to. Want to see what I've gotten done so far on my WW portal?
Of course it's still in it's infancy and I have a ton of work to do on it, but I've only been at it for 3 days. I think I'm doing pretty good considering :) I haven't tackled the forum part of the site yet because I wanted to decide on my colours for the portal first. And my isp is still looking into why it won't send email passwords to new users yet, but like I said, I've only just begun! My boss is right, I *am* having too much fun.
Right, it's saturday and I'm not getting paid to work on it today so I think I'll stop and wait til Monday :) Leave me a comment here and let me know what you think of it!
All right I'm trying another counter. This one lets me ban IPs should I ever get nasty comments *cough*. So just going to check it out here. I'm dont being prolific for the day though - no more Blogs today :)
Does it bother you when your country gets bashed by others? I'll tell you I've never had such a worldly view of other nation's opinion of my country until I began using the internet. Especially in the wake of September 11th. I never knew so many people generally disliked my country and it pissed me right off. But I don't know whether I was more pissed off because a lot of them were entirely justified in their opinions, or because I was being lumped into 'arrogant american syndrome'. As a member of the Placebo boards (which are extremely international) as well as TCZ (which is based in the UK), I've been more aware of the perception of the US and that it's not all sweetness and light.
The things is, patriotism and the belief that the US is the most powerful nation on earth is and always has been pounded into our heads from practially birth. You see it on television, with characters making comments like 'Well You'd be speaking German now if it wasn't for us' in reference to how we believe the US saved everyone from certain doom. In reality, the US was perfectly happy to let Britain get the crap bombed out of them and it wasn't until our own interests were threatened did we enter the war. You see it every day when you go to shops called 'American Eyewear' or the 'Mall of America'. After 9/11, the flag is everywhere. How dare we get attacked. I cried that day and I had every right to feel a surge of patriotism and sorrow and a sense of unity with my fellow Americans. But after everything calmed down, I realised that it had really only been a matter of time before something like this happened. And while I still think it was awful, and that regardless of the crap other countries 'have to face every day', nothing like this has ever happened on American soil, indeed nothing of that magnitude had ever happened anywhere in the world before.
I guess my argument (if I even really have one) is that I'm not so much in disagreement that it was our own foreign policy measure and our own arrogance that brought on such an attack, my problem is that I find people in other countries believe every single American is a gung ho, gun-toting, arrogant asshole who blindly follows the leaders of our country because we don't know any better. I hate being stereotyped merely because of the country I'm from. I try so hard not to do it. I don't think all french people are Jerry Lewis-loving drunks now do I? I don't believe every British person is a flag-waving royalist. I don't think every Irish person is a red-faced, merry, superstitious leprechaun. Why do some of the people from those country believe I voted for Bush, own a gun and will sue McDonald's becuase the coffee is too hot?
I dunno it just bugs me. And I've strayed off-topic but that's all right. I would remain blissfully unaware of all of this if I wasn't an avid net-user. I don't know which is the better option.
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