Sunday, April 20, 2008 11:59 PM

Ten years of HTML!

It's impossible for me to imagine, but it's also very true - I've been writing HTML for 10 years now! April 20, 1998 was a Monday, and that afternoon, I sat in the smaller of the two computer labs on the second floor at Point Park University, and started work on a little HTML file that was an extra credit project for the Information Literacy class I was taking at the time. It was a rather basic page. The most complicated things were some links, a list, and two pictures - one, a blue swirly background and the other, a picture of Richey Edwards, which I centered on the page. (I also got cutesy with the picture. I put this under it: "This is Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers. He has been missing since 1 February, 1995. If you see him, please tell him to phone home.") But, I was pretty darn proud of myself when I got it to look like I wanted it to, and the links actually worked! The file never went on the web, but it was the basis for the "About Me" page [http://vlcampbell.richeyedwards.net/aboutme.html] on my "Vivian's World" website. That page, (in it's original form - it's been changed a bit over the years), was the first page I ever put on the web. Then, I decided to add a second page, of my poetry... and my website creating took off from there.
(Okay, full disclosure time. I actually started writing the HTML for that first file five days before, while I was waiting for my bus to go home after that class I just mentioned. But, that was just writing on paper, in a notebook. On the 20th, I wrote it in Notepad, saved it on a floppy disk, and looked at the file in a browser. That's when it seemed like real computer work, so that's the anniversary I'm choosing to celebrate!)
Now, I could probably write HTML in my sleep! Well, simple HTML, anyway.
I still have that first HTML file. It's on my flash drive thingy now. It's interesting to see where I've come from in my website creation skills.
Anyway, I couldn't let the 10th anniversary of my very first attempt at writing HTML go by without using it to mention the anniversary here.
And so I have.
And so that's all for tonight.

Saturday, April 19, 2008 8:07 AM

The Spring Festive Season in review

Well, when I last wrote about my day-to-day life, (not the extraordinary event of finding Amanda, or the anniversary of Dr. King's death), it was almost the beginning of what I call the Spring Festive Season - Easter, the Pirates' home opener baseball game, and my birthday. I was hoping to stay awake like Jesus did on Maundy Thursday/Good Friday. Instead, I copied the disciples - I fell asleep soon after I finished writing. Anyway, here's what I've been up to since then.
Easter Day wasn't as bad as it could have been - my father wasn't as unbearable as he could have been. Of course, it probably helped me that I didn't have to spend as much of the day with him as I could have - I didn't sit with him in church, (I was singing with the choir), I didn't see him all the time at Lenny's house after church, (we were in different rooms a lot of the time), and he didn't drive me home from Lenny's, (my cousin Paul did). The one really awful time was after dinner, when my father and my cousin Dorothy were arguing about the Internet. Admittedly, Dorothy was wrong in that she wasn't really listening to what my father was saying. She was saying that the Internet is great, in part because you can do things like email people in other countries. Which is very true, but he was saying that the Internet has caused people communication skills to get worse. Which isn't exactly true. Yes, too many people don't know how to write properly, (which was part of my father's point), but that isn't really because of the Internet. Anyway, at one point, my father made the grand statement, (really, he said it like he was making a proclamation or something!), that everything he needs to know can be found either in a book he has in his house, or somewhere other than the Internet. Oh, good heavens!!! What absolute, utter, crap!!! Actually, knowing my father, I bet what he was really thinking was that everything he needs to know, he already knows it! Anyway, me and Paul had some nice "cousin time" when he drove me home. It was really neat, because until a few years ago, I'd hardly spent any time with time at all in my life. One, or both, of his sisters was shooing him away, (now, Joy's gone, and Dorothy can't be friendly towards him, let alone, sisterly), or he just wasn't around for a long time. He's just a few years younger than me, and he's turned into a pretty nice guy, after a long time of being not so nice.
When we first got to Lenny's house, I apologised to him for acting weird and leaving early, on Christmas. I explained to him that I had been so stressed out by the demolition of the butcher's, the week before the holiday. Later, I told my father that I had apologised to Lenny, and he reminded me that I had also been stressed at Christmas, by getting ready to move. Somehow, I had forgotten by that. Probably, because I ended up not doing it. Anyway, I felt I owed Lenny an apology, so I'm glad I gave him one. He seemed to appreciate it, also.
The Monday after the Dr. King death anniversary, was the Pirates' home opener. And for once, it was a beautiful day! Sunny, and rather warm for early April, although, it was a bit breezy, so I needed my sweatshirt jacket. The game itself was very long through the regular 9 innings, but then, it went 3 more innings, before the Pirates lost! Fortunately, I don't care too much how the team does in April. It's just great to see a baseball game in person again!
There's a little treat for me after Pirate games if I watch them on TV. Kent is an after-game studio analyst for FSP, the cable network that shows the games locally! So, I'll get to see him on TV a whole lot this season! Now, if I could just see him for a bit in person - it's been way too many years!
And that brings me to my birthday. I got really three days of celebrating it. Last Saturday, was the day for me and my father to have my traditional birthday dinner - spaghetti and cake. It was a decent enough day, except, (you knew there would be an "except", didn't you?)... One time was when I was showing him my MySpace page, and I pointed out my little Welsh flag. He said I should have Scottish and Lithuanian flags on the page instead, because I have ancestors from those countries, (from his side of the family). Well, I also have Italian ancestors, (Mama's side of the family), but he's too self-centered to think of that. I would put up the flags of all three countries, if I were to display my ancestry, and I would put the Italian flag first, since I'm more of that than anything. Another time was when he insisted that the Kingsley House used to be on Shady Avenue at one time in the past. No, I said, it was on Auburn Avenue, (where it was when I used to go there as a kid), then it was near where the busway is, and then, it's current location. We argued this for a few minutes. He absolutely insisting he was right, and me insisting that he was wrong. Which he was. But, he was so sure he was right, that he wasn't even listening to me. It occurred to me a few days ago, that what he had been doing, was confusing Penn Circle, (which is the actual name of the street where Kingsley used to be, but I couldn't think of it at the time), with Shady Avenue, which is on the other side of the busway. I think if he had listened to what I was saying, he may have figured that out.
I wonder if it says in one of those books he has, where the Kingsley House used to be?
There were a few other crappy "father" moments, but I'm not going to mention them. Two from one day, is probably enough.
The next day, a bunch of people at church wished me happy Birthday, and Mary Pat even gave me a little present - a plastic Easter egg with candy in it. I don't care if it was left over from Easter, which it probably was. She thought of giving me something for my birthday, and that's all that really counts!
For my actual birthday, me and three of the nicest non-members of St. Andrew's (they come to for special events, but never for our regular services, because they're members of other churches), Linda W. and Phil and his wife, Mary Jo, met at Ritter's Diner at 9PM. We had planned it earlier in the month. They treated me to dinner and a slice of lemon meringue pie afterwards. The waitress put 2 candles in my pie, after Phil told her it was my birthday, and the waitress, Linda, Phil and Mary Jo, all sang Happy Birthday to me! Linda gave me a beautiful candle as a present, and we stayed there, talking away, until just after midnight. It really was a very nice way to end the celebrations!
We're kind of planning on getting together again - same place, same time - for Phil's birthday next month.
The only bad part of the whole day was that I had to air out all my clothes after I came home from Ritter's because they still allow smoking in the place, and Linda smokes and she was sitting right next to me.
I've already spent part of the money I got for my birthday from Mama and my father, (which, along with a card, is all I got from either of them - thank goodness my father didn't waste his money on anything else!). I bought a microphone for this computer, so that I could record a bit of my voice for a thread on the fd forum. I thought that was such a cool idea for people to record their voices so that we can hear what they sound like! And, I finally bought two older Manics things to complete my collection - a DVD single from 2004, (I didn't have a way to play it when it first came out, so I didn't buy it!), and their album from last year. I've had all the tracks from both the single and the album for awhile now, but I wanted to buy real copies of them. After all, Nicky has to be kept in makeup!
And speaking of everyone's favourite Welsh transvestite... I've been listening to the bootleg recordings of the last four concerts the Manics played in April 2005 - the two shows I would have liked to have gone to, (Edinburgh and Leeds), and the two that I did go to, (the ones in London) - three years to the day after they actually happened. I didn't have the recordings of Leeds show and the first London one until this year. Today is the last day to do this. It's been fun reliving the shows. It's brought back very lovely memories of that trip to the UK, (the last time I was there), also.
So much so, in fact, that I finally did something I should have done months and months ago. I emailed Matt! I did it right before I started writing this. I've haven't kept in touch with him much since we went to the first London show together, and he hasn't heard a peep from me since Christmas 2006! I've been a very, very bad friend to him since then. And that's really inexcusable and unforgivable. But, I hope he isn't too mad at me, and that we're still friends, anyway.
Well, I've done a lot of writing in the past few hours. So, I'll end this now.
Bye!

Friday, April 4, 2008 9:55 PM

Where were you 40 years ago tonight?

As I'm starting to write this, it's 8:34 PM. Exactly 40 years ago, I was sitting in the front of the old Philco TV in the living room downstairs, (it's still there, in the same spot, btw), watching Bewitched, one of my absolute favourite TV shows at the time, (and this was several years before I knew that the star of the show, Elizabeth Montgomery, had the same birthday as me!) Sometime during the half hour between 8:30 and 9:00, the show was interrupted with the news that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead. I don't think I had any idea who that was, but I do remember thinking that he must have been someone important if they broke into a TV show with news about him. I also don't think I watched too much of the coverage that night, because I was only 8 years old (well, practically 8), at the time, and 9:00, (9:30 on Thursdays, which this was, because I got to stay up those nights to watch That Girl - it probably wasn't on that night), was my bedtime.
I've had arguments with Mama about this. She insists Dr. King was killed in the afternoon, so that they couldn't have been announcing his death after 8:30. But, of course, she's wrong. He was shot at 6:00 Central time, (7:00 here) and died about an hour later. Back then, news wasn't reported instantaneously, like now, so it took a bit of time for the TV networks for break into a show and report something.
(That last sentence was for the benefit of the younger readers of this, who don't remember those days!)
The only other TV memory I have of Dr. King's death was when the funeral was on the following Saturday.
Most of my memories of that time, however, are not from the TV, but from my own house and neighbourhood. At the time, we had four generations of females - me, my mother, Grandma, and Dee, (my great grandmother) - and Uncle Joe, (Dee's brother who was older than her), living in this house. So, my father and his friend Dick, came to stay with us for protection, (they somehow slept in the attic!), since the neighbourhood was mostly black, and there was a bit of rioting in other parts of the city, and even more so, in other cities, right after Dr. King was killed. I remember seeing Grandma talking on the phone about Daddy and Dick staying with us, and feeling scared. I also remember going with Dick to Sun Drugs in East Liberty to get Easter egg dye on the Saturday afternoon before Easter, and seeing the National Guard riding up Highland Avenue, from the Armory, in the direction of this house. I was scared then, also.
Hey, it was, in general, a scary time for a white kid in a mostly-black neighbourhood!
But, I also remember being out in the yard, with Daddy and Dick showing me how to hit a baseball. So, it wasn't all bad.
I don't remember how long they stayed. I've kept a picture in my wallet for years from that time. I took it with my Swinger camera, (does anyone know about those?) of everyone, including Dick, sitting around the kitchen table with my birthday cake in the middle of the table. (And as usual, there's no curtains on the window - Grandma's annual Spring cleaning!) My birthday was the day after Easter that year. So, that was 11 days after the killing, and Daddy and Dick were still here. But, earlier that day, Grandma had let me go to the zoo with the Kingsley House. So, either things had calmed down a bit by then, or someone talked Grandma into letting me go on the trip. I can't imagine Grandma letting me go otherwise, she would have too worried about my safety.
My father swears he had his head poking out the window one day, and a National Guardsman told him to put his head back in, or he'd blow it off! It's probably a very good thing that I don't remember that.
I was looking around the web this evening for things about the Dr. King and his death. I found a website from Memphis - I think it was a local newspaper. They had people's memories of where they were when they heard what had happened that day. I found it interesting that the several people wrote something, who were kids back then - say, from ages 7 to 12 - remember watching either of only two TV shows which were broken into with the news - either Bewitched, like my experience, or I Love Lucy, which apparently was locally shown on a Memphis TV station at 6PM local time, when Dr. King was first shot. But, no other shows.
Back in 11th grade, I had an interesting experience with this stuff. In Social Studies class, we were arranged in small groups, and were supposed to be discussing something - maybe the civil rights movement, maybe Dr. King's assassination, I don't remember exactly what. Anyway, I told the group what I've written here, and I don't think they believed me. Because, I went to high school in an entirely different kind of place than here - a suburban village, that is almost all white, mostly middle class or better, and where the few black people live on one edge of town. So, my classmates would have had no personal experience with any of this! I rarely felt so different from them.
Well, I'm going to end this now. I've been drinking some wine, and well... let's just say that it's getting a bit hard to type. Or think. (I'll look over this tomorrow, and I'll probably have to do some editing!)
I'm going to go get myself another glass of wine.
Bye!