Many years ago the “world wide web” was something new and explosive. Back then it was cool simply putting up a website with the title “My First Website”. In fact you had to be a computer nerd to get a website setup. So for a while I felt a bit special to have my own website setup by myself. Then over the years things got more sophisticated and computer nerds way more intelligent and nerdier than I ever was created things like lycos, google, wordpress, myspace, facebook, twitter … which brought the internet to the masses so that anyone with a few clicks can make something much more polished, useful and fancy then I could have ever done investing many many hours of my time putting up a website the “old fashioned” way I did things with my first website.
In fact I suspect most people don’t think of putting a website as much more of an issue than creating a brochure, or business card. If you are a regular social media person using Facebook, Twitter, like to share photos on the web or whatever is in trend these days you by default already have you own website that is much more advanced than what I could have ever done with my first website. I am now just an obsolete dinosaur in the world of computers.
I mean even this blog, while it might have a sophisticated layout look to, was created by someone else. And all of the blogging functionality comes courtesy of an application called “Word Press” created by many other much smarter than me people many years ago. The means of installing and configuring “Word Press” is certainly well documented. There are probably tons on You Tube instructional videos one could follow. But alas for my tired old brain cells I will just call my tech support person and hang and ask them to do it for me … I am now too tech intimidated and tech tired to do things myself. My last claim to techno-hood probably ended when it was a useful skill to be able to program a VCR to record a TV. [How many of you out there remember what a VCR is?]
Recently I’ve been finding that when it comes to putting up a website, you can certainly put one up and walk away, but if you don’t bother to ever check on it say at least once a year don’t be surprised if it stops working either from the company hosting your website making a mistake or hackers vandalizing your website. My websites get attacked rather regularly by automated programs trying to guess my username and passwords. My websites also always get hit by a flood of SPAM comments trying to sell stuff on my websites or possibly to overload my websites.
Recently one of my websites seemed to be in bad enough shape that it took me several days with tech support to have them rebuild one of my websites from scratch. I had thought hackers had successfully managed to completely corrupt one of my websites causing me to lose all my entries forever! I breathed a bit of a sight of relief when tech support finally recovered my website from a back up file.
All this effort so that I can put up a blog, my online journal, so that I can share my thoughts with others — I’m starting to think blogging is an impractical idea unless you’re it’s just a momentary writing fling not intended to last more than a year or two. I’m starting to think if one really wants to journal your thoughts and want them to hang around for a long time maybe a blog on the internet is took risky. Maybe I should just stick to editing and saving my thoughts locally on my computer with a word processor. Or even better maybe I should go back to using a notebook and pencil.
Oh, excuse me I see an image of me grabbing my cane and rising out of my rickety rocking chair. Pardon me while I retire my old and tired bones. I can’t deal much with these new fangled computer techy gadgety things. Just give me a place to lie down and soak in the Sun, listen to a breeze wafting over a meadow, feel the sand on a beach scrunched in my toes. Just leave me here like a beached whale (yes I’ve gotten larger) on the shore, in the sunlight, to waste away in peace like the obsolete dinosaur, the tired middle aged man that I am.