I’m sure I can remember a time, back in the day, when I actually understood how all of this internet voodoo was made to happen. This might surprise some of you, but your esteemed hostess actually spent more than a few semesters as a computer science major in college (it was a dark time). Back then (and by “back then” I mean, a few years ago) we toiled away on our COBOL assignments while the bold new world of CSS was just developing on the web (what? You still use table tags?).
My very first and most embarrasing online journal was at diaryland.com. Shortly after that I had a good long run at diary-x.com before it blew up (diary-x, not my journal). Somewhere in between I used Moveabletype at various dot coms. On to livejournal then, where I still keep a “friends only” version of my bloggy drivel. It was Livejournal that turned my coding skills (if I ever had any) to mush.
This website is powered by Wordpress. It’s written in a language that I pronounce like ffffp. It is, as far as I can tell, a bunch of echoing voodoo. I guess the old adage is true: if you don’t use it, you lose it. And I’m referring to my tech-savvy, by the way (everything else works fine, thanks). I can muddle my way through enough of it to change a header image or insert a new line of something or change the way an image border looks, but as far as making major changes to the core of my site or even writing a custom template, I’m lost at sea.
It makes sense then that I married a geek. I can break my website, he can fix it. We need each other, see?
And yet I have to admit there’s this feeling that I get, and get my goat it does, that I even require help on that rare occasion. Maybe it’s all those hours I spent in the basement labs of the CS building under the florescent lights, hunched over a glowing green screen, scratching my head in woe and frustration. I actually passed those classes. Once upon a time, I knew how to make these robots work!
It’s taken me the better part of today and a few odd hours in the past week to get this site working in the way I most want to use it. With every small victory I want to dance around the room and sing “I win at the internet!” And with every misstep and desperate email to my husband for tech support, I want to hang my head in shame.
The husband doesn’t gloat too much though. And I’m consoled by the fact that I at least can make fudge.