I'm a dork -----

but maybe not enough of one......

I decided, after thinking about a lot of stuff, that I would try to launch a new website using Google's pagemaker. Part of the idea was to actually figure out how to use a WYSIWYG webpage designer.

I know, I know, that SOUNDS easy -- just drag and drop and all that -- or NOT!

Here's the problem I guess -- I first used a "personal computer" in about 1981. It was a big box with 2 5.25 inch "floppy" discs -- that's it, just those 2 discs, no hard drive, no photoshop, no word processing program, no windows -- do one thing at a time from the "dot prompt" which was literally a little orange dot on the screen.

My first adventures were to learn (all self taught, mind you) how to program in Basic. I remember well those first attempts. Basic is so, well Basic! Open the program and type: A = 1; B = 1; A+B=C; run when the number 2 popped up on the screen you'd have thought I had just invented sliced bread, velcro, postit notes and the safety pin in one (key)stroke. It was amazingly exciting.

Such were the adventures of a self taught, math moron personal computer programmer.

I used that Basic program for quite a while until the technology advanced and we actually had a PC with a hard drive -- a 20MB hard drive (yes that's 20MB!) and we couldn't imagine that we'd ever fill it up. And the new program was dBase. It was even more amazing. I built entire business applications in it. I loved the mental challenge of MAKING the machine do what I told it to.

After the advent of the world wide web, I dabbled further. During a 6 month period when I couldn't work because of a back injury, I taught myself how to write HTML code and put up a website. I loved this combination of using graphics, words and being able to tell it where to put every pixel.

So, here's the problem I have with a WYSIWYG webpage designer -- someone else has the control -- I think I will be forever stuck using my old HotDog HTML writer even though it is SO limited in features for spell checking, cut and paste, etc., but I understand it and I get to decide where everything goes.

like I said --- I'm a dork!