• pepperjack cheese
• lettuce
• tomato
• onion
• green pepper
• banana pepper
• olive
• chipotle sauce

What’s your subway today?

You see, I’ve been making web pages since 1995, and had a personal home page (remember those?) since 1996.  My first page was rather minimalist, and in a sense, a rebellion against what I’m doing here–writing a dialog with you in typical “blog post” fashion.  Back then I felt that no one really went online to know more about a complete stranger.  I still think I was right about that at the time (although things have changed).  At least I sure never cared about what most people put on their home pages at that time.  My page was utilitarian:  find resources related to gaming, programming, music, or whatever else I happened to be interested in.  More accurately, it was useful to me, a place I could store and show off a few things, including a rather cool photo album for the times.

So I had web pages.  I knew HTML.  The web got more complicated.  Sites like fortunecity or geocities offered free web space, and had “web page builder” software.  The web got even more complicated.  Not only did the web page builders fall short of meeting expectations, but writing a web page by hand got more and more tedious as the HTML and CSS spec started to demand higher quality pages.  And then came blogs, or web logs.  I thought they were retarded.  It was a throwback to the old personal home page days (and actually I was kind of right about that too), where people would narcissistically post things about what they did in their everyday lives as if we were interested in reading their personal diary.  I really didn’t like the word “blog” either.

But eventually I started looking for ways to not have to write all that HTML, CSS, and PHP code anymore.  (Honestly, I guess with PHP included headers and footers, I probably spent less time creating websites back then than I do with upgrading WordPress and installing plugins now.)  WordPress was pretty nice, but I didn’t have any use for an online “diary.”  My first “blog” was just a simple web log that I kept as notes on Linux configuration that I had done to the server I was running.  So all the entries looked roughly like this:

New IMAP Certificate

Generated new IMAP certificate:

openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -out /etc/ssl/certs/imapd.pem -keyout /etc/ssl/certs/imapd.pem -days 365

Yeah, that’s it sparky.  But at least I had found some use for blog software.  And the great thing about it was, I could quickly post new content without having to fuss with making a web page.  And that is the secret about blogs. They reduce the complexity of making web pages that even the page builders couldn’t do because the page builders tried to let you do too much.  In other words:

Blog software provides the structure for your content, making it consistent and easy to both post and navigate.

Forget about diaries.  Your “blog” is just a web page, if you want it to be.  This is true especially with WordPress.

My next blog was “Angelo’s Notepad” and I appropriately selected the Rubrick Theme which had been pretty popular at that time and fit the blog title pretty well.  Angelo’s Notepad was really just a place for me to throw up things I didn’t have time to format and put up more “formally” on my websites.  But then, WordPress did the best thing it could have done for people like me:  it created wonderful support for “pages” as well as “posts” and allowed you to set a page to be the front page.  This is all you need to create a website.

So I use WordPress to build websites.  Does that make me a blogger?

I entered the hotel in the quiet residential area. I knocked on her room door and waited for her to come. I smiled when I saw her beautiful face. Melisa was happy to see me and surprised that I brought her breakfast. We lazily stayed in her hotel room and relaxed as we shared our breakfast. From her window of the hotel room we could see the lake that was next to the shopping and entertainment area near the hotel.

After breakfast when we were ready, we went downstairs and walked to the shopping area nearby. The day was still beautiful and comfortable, and it was a nice walk, as we proceeded to walk on the trail around the lake opposite of the more busy areas. We held hands as we walked through the geese that had gathered from the lake stretching across the trail. When we got to the other side of the lake, we went to the shopping areas nearby. We got some ice cream and walked around the different stores. In particular, I think Melisa enjoyed going into the bookstore.

After a while, we decided to have a late lunch. We went back and we drove to get sushi. The place was almost empty because it was after lunch. The sushi there is always good, fresh, and cut well. In addition to sushi I ordered a fried tofu with fish flakes, because I wanted Melisa to try it. When we were sitting there, I thought about how easy it is to get along with her and how lucky I am.

In the afternoon we decided to go back to the hotel and rest. While at the hotel, we looked at the movie schedule for the theater near the hotel, and also the one near the steakhouse that I was planning on taking her for lunch. I think the one near the hotel is a much nicer theater, so I decided we should go there, but it would mean that we need to eat dinner first. So Melisa took a nap.

We had to drive a little way to get to the steakhouse. It is a western, kind of cowboy, style place. It was nice to show Melisa some kind of native food here. I think she really liked it, but didn’t expect that we ate so much. The steaks are so big compared to what she is used to. “Maybe tomorrow we can order salad from a place near the hotel,” I told her.

When we left the restaurant, the night was cool and comfortable with the smell of rain in the air. We drove back to the hotel area for a movie. The movie was nice, but I really cared more about being with her. It was just good to have her here, and I was happy that this was a special day. I really hope she was having fun.

After the movie, we took a walk around the lake again that night. This time we walked more slowly, and we enjoyed our time together. As it grew darker, we could see the stars appear. On the far side of the lake from the buildings, we sat on one of the benches around the path. I gave Melisa a hug, and sat close to her. I could tell we were both feeling something. After a little bit I kissed her, and whispered, “it’s not illegal here”–about something only she would understand.

After that, we went back up to the hotel room. I could tell Melisa was tired. I gave her a little massage as she relaxed and watched some TV. We spent a little time together, and before I left, I made sure to tell her “happy birthday.”

* shaking Melisa to wake her up *