Real Life

I’m taking an “elementary“ computer course for my degree requirement and found out that the syllabus will concentrate on web design and HTML. Pretty good timing, huh?

I could do this student thing forever. It amazes me that there are actually people out there who are not the least bit curious about finding out new stuff–who in fact, are afraid to learn anything new; who’d rather sit in front of the television all day and let it do the thinking and adventuring for them, because it would be too threatening to attempt anything else.

In Orwell’s 1984 they broke Winston Smith by threatening him with the one thing in the world he was most afraid of–rats. The way to break me would be to sit me in a room with nothing but a toilet, a bed, and a television set without an “off“ button. No other humans, no books, no writing implements, no music, no computer, no web access…. just the unyielding gaze of the glass teat, day after day. After a week of this I’d be ready to stick my head in the toilet and drown myself. And yet, there are people out there who voluntarily live like that, with the one difference being that they also have access to snacks. Continued…

I’ve transferred this to a template I got off the net, but it’s written in CSS rather than pure HTML like the last one, so I’m a bit at sea trying to tweak the code to get rid of the lines above each interactive link on the right-hand menus. I can get it to work for certain links and not for others, but I don’t know how I did it…the code looks the same for lined and unlined links on my template. It’s maddening. But it is a gorgeous interface, much more subtle than the last one I came up with. (I still want to learn HTML, though, so I can design my own site from scratch and change it when the mood hits me…like when I need to practice creative avoidance.)

I also managed to relocate this onto my free server space to get rid of that Blogspot banner ad on the top. The difficult there mainly involved downloading and learning to use Fetch, and once I fumbled my way through the instructions and accomplished my first upload to my site’s new home I figured it out. Read on, Macduff…

I’ve now added some links–choosing which is the hardest part–and changed font size, style and color. I think the result is a little more readable and easier on the eyes. (I’m having WAY too much fun with this.)

Three fox kits decided to come by and play beyond our patio doors yesterday. They were teenage foxes, not quite full-grown, lanky and awkward, but unlike real teens totally unselfconscious. They acted like teens at a mall, too, getting in each other’s way, separating and then running to catch up, stopping to check things out or grab a bite to eat (in this case, a mouse), and finally vanishing into the woods up the hill.

I hope they stay off the streets and out of trouble.

I’m going to search for more bells and whistles for this site, and maybe attempt putting together a home page later this week. If things work out I may include a link to this site, as well. Or maybe not–there are advantages to anonymity.

File this under “And you want to do WHAT for a living?“

My Significant Other just pointed out that I had misspelled the title of my blog. I’ve corrected it. Oh the humiliation….

(…just had to run and doublecheck the spelling of ‘misspelled.’ One can never be too careful.)