10. Jump
“Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master. – Christian Lange
I’ll talk more about the writers’ conference in the next chapter. On the way home from it, I decided that I needed to create a web site. I had never designed one before, but I found a two-day course at the University at Buffalo. It was two evenings and the instructor made a few assumptions. After leaving the last session, I was completely in the dark about the process, maybe because the teacher presented material on software called Dreamweaver. However, I had handouts and a manual so I figured I could create a site, which I did, bobcooks.com. This was over a dozen years ago and then the number of sites on the Internet was nothing compared to today, so the name I chose was available. I didn’t use the slumbering software since the company from which I bought my site name provided some.
For me, learning has continued past high school and college. This was only the beginning of my journey in being published. It continues today. I wrote about it in a 2008 book. During year-end holiday time at the Broadway Market a few years ago, a woman passed my table. She was wearing antler ears so I told her to watch for the guys with guns. It was that time of year. Later I met a guy whose friend wanted to write a children’s book. He brought her to the table and you can guess who she was – Rudy’s representative, of course. I gave her a copy of my first book with pirate in the title, which is intended to help and encourage writers, hoping she would benefit from it. Sadly, she called a few days after and said she wouldn’t write the book. By now I hope she changed her mind. Sometimes teachers fail.
The software I used is called, TopPage. I incorporated many of the features of it into my web site, but not all. IBM developed it two decades ago so some people would insist it’s out-of-date. As far as I’m concerned, it works fine. If developers use some new-fangled software, they were sold a bill of goods, as I see with so many web sites today. I’ll delve into web sites more in the next chapter. TopPage has a few flaws but I get around them fairly well. This is called the workaround, which I’ve mentioned a few times and will cover in chapter 18.
After using TopPage for over a decade, I’m almost used to the deficiencies. An issue that can’t be blamed on this software has to do with browsers. I must have done something wrong because at first I had spacing problems with a web page, which looked the way I wanted it on my PC. If I previewed it on my desktop, or checked how it appeared on the web after it was updated there, I noticed a spacing problem: in the former case it had four lines but on the Internet there were five. Blame it on the browser as well as for the background colors of my home page. On some computers the base color of my web site is more purple than maroon. Who said that men were colorblind?
At the end of February 2015, I moved a few things around on my home page, resulting in a line with three phrases not exactly lining up. Luckily that was fixed rather quickly. At one time I gave people an input screen so they could purchase my books. That way, I sold a few books – very few – but a side effect was that I had some individuals abusing the privilege with a bogus order. I think you know what I’m driving at. Since my books are all free downloads, the input screen is history. As with much computer technology, it would take some effort for me to recreate that screen.
There used to be a counter on my screen. The software to do that is free and you just need to incorporate it. Years ago, when I added the counter to my home page, the code available on the web was flawed. Maybe it’s been fixed. When I used it, the counter stayed the same, rather than getting larger with every visit to the site. I removed the counter, since what I had didn’t know how to count. Today I use another software, WebLog Expert Lite. Without a counter on the site at all, this software provides all kinds of information, such as total hits, visitor hits, spider hits, total bandwidth, total visitors and over a dozen other numbers that are quite boring and not worth explaining. As you can see, spiders come to my site, but they don’t byte. They’re nothing more than some computer or other entity that isn’t human, but still visits. I added a few lines of code to my web site to stop it, but that didn’t work either.
The counters on WebLog lets me know how many people visited any of my pages so I can see how many times people cooked the salmon pasta recipe. The software really isn’t that good, but it does give a count for the hits to that page. One thing that’s good is the recipe, but I’m partial. As far as hits go, thankfully the mob isn’t involved and the information is only minimal. If you have a great deal of free time, you can compile a log of activity and see a list of all IDs of visitors to a site with this software. It’s a group of mysterious numbers, which are tied to a computer that the visitor uses. People using different machines will mess up your investigations. I don’t have time to be a detective and figure this out.
When I first became published, all I did was write the book, edit, proofread it and a few other minor tasks required by the publisher. For the last book, I did all that plus formatting the interior and creating the cover, front, back and binding. There are a few ways to create a book cover. The software I use can also create the interior of the book, which I don’t utilize. I was told to use this cover design software because the company that prints my books requires it. You learn from your mistakes, as you’ll see. This software is familiar to a few people – my friend Mark mentioned that one or two designers were versed in it. I don’t think those who created it know what’s going on, something that is found in much computer technology today. I classify myself as somewhat knowledgeable because I’ve used it a few times. Linda, another writer, told me the best way to learn it is to work on it until you are ready to toss your PC out the window, but refrain from doing that. Return later with an antacid and try again. In 2008, I managed to create a few covers, but a year later, I wondered if I could repeat the process. Fortunately I did all right. Five years later I faced the same challenge, plus a few others, but I successfully created the cover for my second book on animals. It probably was a miracle. This cover came about because of a workaround.
A few years ago with the software on my PC, I created a flier, which my church group liked. One person suggested I add a light background image to the poster. I wasn’t familiar with how to do that, but with some instruction, the flier was finished. If I had to do it again, I couldn’t without relearning the technique. Performing a technological task and then accomplishing the same effort later, makes one wonder if the past can be easily duplicated. This happens too often with software because of its complexity.
The title of the chapter is what happens when I see emails on my former account. It’s only a small amount but my screen jumps up and down. Maybe there’s a kangaroo in my PC. If I wanted a pogo stick, I’d have bought one by now. I spent months trying to resolve this annoying issue and came up with a few thoughts. It’s related to some company because my ERD doesn’t have the same problem. I try not to use my ERD to check my email because of the sensitivity of the product. Too many times a difficulty arises and it hard to see what the problem is. Your guess is as good as some technicians.
As far as needing assistance, I’ve called help desks – even ones with the WOT chat feature, but on February 25, the problem was still haunting me. I called the appropriate company once again for the VCR problem I mentioned earlier and inquired about the email jumps. I did the right thing because the agent gave me a workaround. It works but has a bad side effect. This time I used a different browser and was rewarded with more cookies than I could eat or wanted, but the jumping beans were gone. I’ll stick to my browser for now – maybe contact that company about the problem. The horizontal movement of all those emails is no longer a problem for two reasons: it’s gone for some reason and so is that email account of mine.
I mentioned many flaws in the online assistance of the technology company I use. Calling them is a better option, but help there could still improve. After accepting living with the email jump feature, I wasn’t quite cautious enough and this revealed another email bug. I accidentally moved three junk mails to the draft folder, instead of the inbox. From there I didn’t have the option of moving those emails to the inbox. The designer could have included that option, which could have made the system easier to test.
About the same time in the 1980s, “Jump” was recorded by both the Pointer Sisters and Van Halen. The female release had the one word title but was changed so as to not be confused with the Van Halen release. “Jump For My Love” opens the Pointer Sisters’ 1983 album, Break Out. It was used in a video of theirs for the Olympics a year later. In July 2008, the song reached the number three spot on the Billboard Hot 100. The song by Van Halen is on the album, 1984, reaching the top spot – their only single to do so. It’s probably the most recognizable and popular of their songs.