Computers
| web sites | | I have been designing web sites since I was 18. I bought my first HTML book in 1996 and developed a web site for Phi Chi Theta, a co-ed professional business fraternity of which I was a member. I learned JavaScript in 1997 and added unprecedented inter-activity to all my pages. I began with ASP in 2000 for job-related reasons, but it became personal and the result is what you are viewing right now.
Most of the web work I have done has been for personal enjoyment, although each job I've had since I graduated in 2000 has had some web responsibilities. At Boxlight, I was responsible for maintaining the main e-commerce site and its database as well as the sites of the subsidiary companies. At MAST International, I was developing the pages to put the vendor database online when the company closed its doors. At CMU College of Extended Learning, I edited and validated the content on the course pages. I also worked with ASP.NET while developing ClubHub, which you can read all about in The Professional Section.
Nearly all of my web development has been in Notepad, although I am equally at home using a WSYWIG editor, such as MS FrontPage.
| | | | databases | | My first database class was BIS 221, a class I ended up teaching later in life. At first, databases were not all that exciting to me. I didn't have enough data in my life to organize it all into a database. My grandmother, on the other hand, did. She is an Avon lady, and more than once we discussed moving from her mental database to an electronic DBMS. With each class I took and each new technique or program I learned about, I had a new argument for her. We learned about Decision Support Systems and they seemed perfect for her. We learned about Executive Information Systems and I thought nothing could be better for her. We learned about Customer Relationship Management and I thought that was how she could reach the pinnacle of customer service.
As exciting as all these options were, none were satisfactory. She had been selling Avon for enough years that no DBMS would be able to give her the level of information necessary. The most valuable lesson I learned from all this was that although databases are really cool, they are merely a tool to add coolness to other things and not a way to force my grandmother into the twenty first century.
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