Happy New Year!

I've finally decided to go with Cascading Style Sheets, though I'm sure I'll get burned by the next browser releases (who knows what kind of support to expect from any of them??) WebMonkey has a great tutorial on their site that really did well in helping me learn the basics of CCS. It may be a bit premature, but I'm going to add the CCS button to the web pages of mine that are implemented via CCS, so if any of those pages look really plain or strange, chances are it's because the browser you are using either doesn't support CCS at all or has it's own way of interpreting the CCS rules. So far, I haven't seen too much of a major difference between IE 4.0 and Communicator 4.5... But, meanwhile, while I get the stylesheets in place, there will still be some noticable differences between the pages that shouldn't be there. Hopefully, though, the pages will remain navigation-friendly.

I have, in my mind, a more definite idea for DigiBzZ, but I don't have as much time now to work on it, so it'll just be some addition links for a bit longer.

The job is going quite well, for those who've wondered.. I spent all day looking for a new place to live and I may have found a nice house in Coppell, not very far at all from work. I can't remember what my title is, but it has the word "technician" in it (maybe Network Technician, I'm not sure..) Regardless, this last week has been a blast. Heavy training starts tomorrow, but I'm ready to learn all this stuff. Basically, it's a matter of doing it a few times to get the steps down. Not really learning anything I don't already know in theory, but rather just getting the particular system down... This last week I spent getting used to the 'cubicle environment' (it's a first for me), but they're large in size and not squished together. We will be moving into a different building sometime in the future, and we'll be able to spread out even more. The size of the company's whole campus is tremendous. I think there's something like 2,500 employees onsite, and this isn't even the home office. I think they said we're providing support for something like 50,000 computers (PC, mainframe, laptop, and tablet users).

That's about all that's going on here. 'Til next time!

Well, I think I'm getting the pages a bit more uniform across the site. And, here are the latest additions I've been working on:

DigiBzZ Forums

Just added tonight. I hope this will be a permanent feature... However, as you will see, for some reason the obligatory advertising banners aren't loading. I'm hoping this isn't because the source that provides this service isn't out of business. I should find out soon, if they answer my email. But, I like the service and if it sticks, I'll keep it. No rules or particular subjects to post about. (No porn is all I ask...)

Banner Ads

Still messing around with this... I'm not a big fan of banner ads, but I'm getting bored with my pages, so I'm messing around with adding some quazi-dynamic stuff with JavaScript. I'm hoping to be able to afford to change my site host soon to be able to get CGI access so I can deploy my own Perl scripts.

Frames

Much to my own chagrin, and much to my friends' suprise, I'm having to add <FRAMES> to my site. I'm limiting these to the Digital Presence page, so hopefully all you other <FRAMEHATERS> won't be too bothered by them. :) For now, this is the only way I can have changing banner ads (using JS and a constantly (irritating) refreshing page). After I add the frames, you shouldn't even know they're there, and you will definitely be glad that the whole pages doesn't refresh.

Otherwise, it's been a slow month. Had great holidays. Didn't drink a single intoxicating beverage all month... Starting work Monday... Hey, these are all good things! (I have to keep reminding myself that.. ;)

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and a good start to 1999. Oooh: 1999. That looks weird. Let's see: 2000. Augh. It's sinking in... I'm old! I remember thinking how old I'd be in the year 2000, and I'm just about there...[sniff] Ah, well. I'm still younger than almost everyone I've gotten to know this last year, so that's not bad (or, I have old friends..)

Say good night, Gracie.

    Goodnight Gracie!

I'm still in the process of updating the Digital Presence page, but it's getting there (slowly but surely). You may see some commercial additions to the page. I found a javascript script for banner ads, but the most I want to do with that is my own private banners... (I personally don't like banner ads, but I thought I'd see how to implement them.)

Well, the most important news that has happened recently is: I got a job. Hehe. I finally broke into the IT market. Watch out, Bill Gates. I'll have your job soon! (As if I'd want it! Blech... UNIX WILL ALWAYS RULE.)

I'm still wanting to publish this site with the search engines, but am too critical of my own work to feel it's ready. If anyone out there wants to give me an encouraging word, I'd really appreciate it. As if I don't post my email address around the site enough, here it is again: write me, pu-leez!

I've added a new feature for the site called BuildingBlocks. It's a collection of HTML and JavaScript templates that will help anyone who doesn't want to rely on WYSIWYG editors yet needs a little help in web page developement. I personally couldn't live without some of the templates, so I thought others might like to use them as well... I'll probably expand the types of templates available as time goes on, getting into Perl and CGI scripting, as well as UNIX shell scripts. Let me know if you benefit from the BuildingBlocks pages, because if I know that someone else is using them, I would be careful to not suddenly take it offline, which I've been known to do occasionally. (Last time I removed some links from my homepage, I heard about it for weeks.)

Note: I've done a poor job of keeping up with where/who I've gotten some of the nonoriginal scripts from, so if you want credit for scripts you have contributed, email me.
(Sorry 'bout that!)

Also, I've been working on my links page, so if you don't like drastic changes, brace yourself. I haven't finalized whether or not I am going to change my homepage or just the links page, but I'm leaning toward just the links page because I'm starting to really like my homepage design (I'm fixing to add a random "quote of the day" script as I continue to collect some pretty funny/bizarre quotes from the 'Net...)

For those of you who haven't had to put up with me for the -what, 2 months?- that I've fretted about getting a job that I really want, well, my 2nd interview is tomorrow (oops: Today! I better get some sleep!!), so I owe you one for putting up with it all. Don't forget the party!!

Well, it's been along time since I've updated the Site News, but there's been alot of changes and some controversy about the addition of certain features, so I thought it'd be a good time to talk about it all:

Added another Alpha site I'm messing around with. You can check it out and let me know what ya think, if you care. Otherwise, as usual, the Alpha sites are for those who are involved with the actual site developement and are completely useless to anyone else, unless you just want to track the building of another wonderful site by Chris.

If you having already noticed, I've added quite a bit of JavaScript to much of the site. Hopefully, everyone who visits here can benefit from the additions and life will go as usual. However, a certain browser, whose name I won't mention because of ongoing quazi-feuds on the subject between myself and a few longtime friends, doesn't like to fully support JavaScript and some JS implementations will go unnoticed by those who use that inferior browser. (*Oops!* Did _I_ say that?) So far, it's mostly the image rollover scripts that I can't figure out how to modify to satisfy the lame browser. Luckily, this isn't a major fiasco, and no important content will be missed. And, in all fairness, the incompatibility is a reflection of my own inexperience with JavaScript (although I've yet to find an answer after asking tons of people and searching high and low throughout cyberspace...)

Last, but not least, I've taken many of the links to off-site webpages off my home page. It got to where it was taking almost 50 seconds at 57k baud to load the damn page, and that's after it was completely streamlined. So, I've moved the links to, of course, the Links page and kept my fundamental links with images on the homepage. I want to refurbish the Links page, but haven't gotten around to it, so please be patient. I want to re-incorporate the cool images I created for the off-site links, but need to figure out a more efficient way of doing so. I imagine I'm headed for a catagorized listing and that will take a few days to organize...

Thanks for you continued patronization of the website and feel free to leave feedback if you think I'm overlooking something that would be a great addition to the site (or if I'm muddling up the site with features that are redundant or just a waste of everyone's time..)