Monday, January 14, 2008

Fun Monday

(I'm all a-flutter. I'm so excited to be participating in Fun Monday! Thanks to Ann for hosting.)

A Web site that's changed my life.

Well, there's a couple different ways to approach this. Since I'm feeling generous, you get them both.

About ten years ago, my husband sent me a link to this quiz: Porn Star or My Little Pony? My devotion to The Brunching Shuttlecocks was instantaneous, intense, enduring. How can I ever forget The Complete and Utter Idiot's Guide to Making a Baloney Sandwich or The Björk Song? When I need laughs, I need hardcore nonsense, and here I always found my fix. The only thing remotely like it at the time was Dilbert; there was no comparison. Of course, the lads eventually grew up and got real jobs (though Lore is still out there blogging). But my sense of humor was irreversibly perverted: Engrish.com, Internet Bumper Stickers, The Onion.

On the serious side, now.

I took a job with the government sixteen years ago. I worked as a grants project officer at first. This was nothing like what I had studied to do. J'étais censée devenir professeur de français. All those years of studying French and I wasn't a French professor after all? Kinda neat, once you get past the distress.

Well, after a couple of years someone said, "Hey, you don't seem to be afraid of computers. There's this new thing called a Web site-- it's sort of like a Gopher site-- would you like to build one? We'll show you how." I accepted, and I think it was Halloween 1994 when the
SEAHOME Web site first went live. (I can't find any screenshots from back then, but the Wayback Machine has a few archived from later years.)

This really did change my life. It headed me in a new direction in my career. Heck, it gave me a career. I've moved on to be the lead web person for our region, and I really enjoy what I do.

Hope this is what you were looking for. Can't wait to read the other posts for Fun Monday.

6 comments:

Alison said...

Great sites..welcome to Fun Monday!!

Pamela said...

Some of you really DID have life changing web sites.

Sorry about the French business, tho

;)

Sandy said...

Welcome to Fun Monday! Great sites one and all. Porn Star or My Little Pony? Snorted coffe, I did.

laurie said...

ah, Gopher! i'd forgotten about that. the early prehistoric web, invented by U of Minnesota professors.

and here al gore gets all the credit...

welcome to fun monday. i'm glad you joined. i found your gaelic site quite some time ago, but since the only gaelic i know is dia dhuit, it did me no good.

-Ann said...

That is excellent - I love it all. I also got into computers in 1994.

And speaking of My Little Pony - this is the best MLP-related thing I've ever seen!

Cynthia said...

Wow, I am feeling kind of small. You can write websites and I still struggle with compose mode!