susansthoughts

~~Welcome to My Page~~
Here's the Page
or

What Not to Put on a Web Page

I wanted to put out a web page. I wasn't entirely clear why I wanted to, but I knew that I did. HTML is fun to fiddle with, graphics are fun to play with, but at first I didn't have a clue what I actually wanted to put on the page. So I started looking at other people's home pages, I looked at books on coding HTML that also gave advice on what to put on one's page, (and what not to put), and I looked at some sites like Web Pages That Suck and Mirsky's Worst of the Web, and gleaned various pieces of advice, such as:

	1. Don't put "Welcome to My Page" on your page. One of the books I looked at on how to code HTML said "Don't put 'Welcome to my page' on your page", because people already know they're welcome, so I tried to think how to start this without putting that on first, and really, it seems sort of stark without some kind of greeting. So my second idea was just to say "Here's the page", as an homage to my seven-year-old son, who has started saying "Bon appetit" at mealtimes, and I discovered that he thought it meant "Here's the food." I'm not sure what the HTML books would say about that either, though.

2. Don't ramble. Well, I've already broken that rule.

	3. Don't put your family's photographs on your page - nobody else is interested in them. Well, I've found, actually, that I frequently look at other people's pictures, and if people don't want to look at mine, they don't have to.

	4. Don't put nude pictures on your page. Sigh, all right, I won't. (Actually, I wasn't planning to, anyway, as this was not intended to be that kind of page, and my page site provider appears to frown on them, anyway (and especially in the family neighborhood)).

5. Try not to make your text almost the same color as your background, even if you've found a color that you really, really like, like this one. (It's teal! - my favorite.)

6. (Here's a rule I didn't get from anywhere else - I just made it up.) Don't not put your name anywhere on your page (unless, of course, you don't want anyone to know what it is, but I don't (not want that, that is.)) (Is that clear?) Anyway, it's Susan (my name, that is).

10 9 8 reasons to create a web page
1. I need a URL of my own, so when I sign other people's guest books with "Cool site! Come visit mine!!" - I actually have a site to direct them to. "Cool site! E-mail me!!" just doesn't have the same ring.
2. If I buy up a lot of domain names like www.reallykillersite.com or www.reallyreallycoolsite.com, I'll have something I can do with them when I discover nobody wants to buy them.
3. I need someplace to put all those cute gifs I've stolen from other people's pages.
4. I need a place to display my son's art work now that I've run out of wall and refrigerator space in my house.
5. I need a reason to use the scanner we bought because it was such a fun toy, but then had nothing to use it for. (see 4. above).
6. I need a reason to use the digital camera we bought because it was such a fun toy (and then had nothing to use it for (see above).
7. Because I can.

(All right, 7 reasons.)

This site is self-referential. So is this sentence.

(Overheard by me at a hotel near the Grand Canyon, July 20, 1997 (well, since it was actually addressed to me, I suppose "overheard" is not technically correct)):
"Look, Mama! A stuffed vulture! This must be a good hotel!"

Frequently, when I work on my web pages, I have some of my favorite - well, pretty much my only - alcoholic drink, which is cranberry juice mixed with white wine. I usually drink it out of my son's Tweetie-bird cup, but a friend suggested recently that maybe the Sylvester cup would be more sophisticated. Now I can't decide. (This text's font color is cranberry-juice-referential.)

Updated August 29, 1997	I have one. Here's what I think about it.

Updated August 10, 1997	The only unifying link to these pieces of humor is that I thought they were funny. Some of them are things I found on other people's home pages.

	No, not the countless some I've received - the one I've decided to give.

Updated July 17, 1998	Ooh, they're really dribbling in now. (I get one at least every six months - I haven't checked, but I bet that's some kind of record.) These are the ones other people have given me.

Updated March 1, 1998	These are the questions I get asked frequently, and other things that I randomly think.

Updated July 3, 1997	For the idly or avidly curious.

Updated July 3, 1997	Gabriel is my 7 8 year old son. (No, I didn't get his age wrong before - he just got older.)

	Cynthia was my husband's sister. She died last year. We miss her.