This afternoon, I had some spare time to work on my website. After spending the last few hours tinkering with code, uploading files, creating folders, editing pictures, coding, decoding,HTMLing, CSSing and who-knows-what-else-ing, the end result is what you see now: a darker headplate with gold text. Whoop-dee do.

I haven’t typed or changed a line of HTML since I was in college, and even then my university webpage was pretty basic. The most sophisticated feature of that webpage was that the links to the websites of my favorite sports teams featured the teams’ logos.

About three hours ago, I downloaded a few different blog themes (here’s how brain-dead I am right now: I almost spelled it “theams”), and tried replacing the images with some of my own. I tried incorporating a picture of my mother’s dog, Mike, into the header. Didn’t work; I couldn’t frame the picture the way I wanted. Then I tried changing the the background to a picture of myself, staring off into the rocky hillsides of the Washington Monument State Park near Boonsboro, Maryland. Didn’t work; I couldn’t get the picture to stay still while I scrolled down through the blog entries.

So I stuck with the default style—but I screwed that up, too. I somehow deleted the header altogether, so there was white text on a white background for about an hour. I eventually fixed it, and changed the color a little. I think it almost looks an eensy teensy bit better than before.

The words and ideas are the same as before, so what’s the big deal? It’s the same material, right? It’s just as dull or interesting as before; it’s just as endearing or offensive as before. Still, I whiled away hours trying to make it look bright, shiny and eye-catching.

…

Two weeks ago, I drove to an ATM and withdrew $200 from my checking account. The machine took its sweet time dispensing the cash, and then gave it to me in fives. I was pissed off and surprised enough that I actually had to think about how many fives make two hundred dollars. (It’s forty, right?)

So, I began counting out the fives, and wondered how I was going to fit this fat wad of cash in my wallet. Maybe I could put a rubber band around them and keep them in my hip pocket. Then I could whip out the fat wad of cash at the grocery store, and peel off a few fives to pay for my bread, milk and lunch meat. Like a gangsta.

Of course, whilst I daydreamt and counted out the money, I failed to notice that the beeping had stopped. You know, the beeping that lets you know it’s time to take your card back, or else the ATM will eat it. When I finished counting the cash, I went for my card, but it had been pulled back into the abyss.

The machine tricked me. It gave me all that cash to distract me, and now it has my card and my PIN number. Who knows what it’s going to do with that information. Even worse, it can always say, “Hey, I beeped for you, but you didn’t take your card back. That’s your problem, tee eff bee.” Scumbag.

…

I read an article this morning about squirrel monkeys at the London Zoo. Apparently, they’ve been snatching camera phones from visitors who stand too close when trying to take snapshots or video, because the phones are bright, shiny and eye-catching.

The zookeepers successfully trained the monkeys not to grab for the cell phones, even though their enclosures are “barrier-free.” Some of the staff donated old cell phones, and put a substance on them that the squirrel monkeys found disagreeable. I guess putting up a sign saying “Stay Back” was too complicated. But it worked; the monkeys stopped trying to take the cell phones.

Actually, these zookeepers may be on to something. Perhaps The Great Zookeeper In The Sky is trying to wean us off cell phones.

One Response to “Technology makes life easier.”

1. Vincent Viscariello Says:
   April 10th, 2006 at 3:22 AM

Still tinkering with the site.