About This Place

I live on the crack in the knuckle of Wisconsin's thumb. My house was built in 1929 by one of my grandfather's uncles. Not all of its corners are perfectly square. Much of the lumber was recycled - I don't think they used that word then - including the hard maple floors. I love wood floors. Throw down some newspaper and let the cats hurl up all they want. No carpet to worry about.

Me? Well, I am an underemployed esthetic engineer, and a born-again geek. I like to say that I can make anything but money. I have an overactive mind in a body that gets tired too easily. Although I seem to have an affinity for computers, I haven't been able to express that side of me very much in the past, but look out now...

Wisconsin's Door County still has a few nice scenic spots where you can plug your ears and pretend that you are in an unspoiled land...if you don't look down and see the pigaret butts, pull-tabs, crapfood wrappers, etc.... I have a few pictures further on. Mostly around town and at home. There are some decent shots of the old bridge.

This is the third-or-fourth -or-so rewrite of the lil house documents. One nearly finished revision went poof in a sudden upgrade... I hope it is entertaining. If you find any parts of it offensive, you don't have to look. It's that simple. It's not as if I were making your windows rattle with pignoise. I have some interesting links whereby you can escape to some new virtual place.

Otherwise, I have tried to make your visit comfortable by putting my cutesie-poo animations where you can scroll them out of sight before they drive you bonkers. I've also stayed away from light-on-dark text, which was not hard because I hate it, and restrained my desire to show off all my gorgeous textured backgrounds. Hey, I got 'em - but I know about slow loading. Sometimes I'm thankful I learned to crochet before I got my own web connection. I don't want to make this a two-potholder site. I'm sure it's bad enough as it is.

I use a little javascript , but no java. All images that are at all meaningful have alternate text, or whack my knuckles. I like to keep my work accessible. If my pages are not up to your wall-size monitor, that's your tuff luck.;)

New in the AUG (After UpGrade) version - a page of reviewlets and links to programs - mainly freeware - that I use. My very own tips-n-tricks page. Gosh, I feel like a real grown-up now. I had to throw the photo album(s) into my Angelfire site to save space. Only 10 megs on the local server, can't go too heavy on the graffix. Sorry about all the ucky ads there. Artsy junk is all going to have to that way though. This thing keeps growing. Coming soon (?) - the true story of Microsnot, the booger in Billion Gots' left nostril.

Also getting style sheets going here, smooth some things out I hope. But I'll be working on another site soon, and my own will be a little more on the back burner - except for experimentation. Haha, and there's a lot of that going on here. If you're into getting your giggles from peeping other folks code, go ahead and laugh at some of mine. It may be very different next week.

If you have any constuctive comments or meaningful questions, you may * * me... I don't promise prompt answers... if any... I do promise NEVER to answer spam. It gives me an itchy delete finger. As my imaginary Aunt Hildy used to say, "It's your karma. a**h***". She was very outspoken for her time... You wouldn't get any money out of me anyhow - I haven't got any. Note - if you didn't see an e-mail address a few sentences back, that's because it is camouflaged in javascript to foil spambots. You can translate this - aruwyrd(at)doorpi.net. ("'at"', the @ character, is SHIFT+2 on the keyboard My alternate is aruwyrd2(at)hotmail.com You might want to check out my - he he he - mail list. It's not very up-to-date, too tedious. :p

My twin brother, Larry, ca. 1970

Some day I'll get around to putting some of my original crochet patterns on line. I recommend crocheting as a constructive nervous habit, a very useful distraction for long, slow downloads. There are no ill effects on health, and it keeps your hands off food. Can't hardly ask for more than that.

Feb. 13, 2002 - re-doing some pages with narrower space for text, for easier reading (your eyes can snap back to the next line without getting lost). Of course, with all these changes in progress, somebody's gonna throw a computer at me.
...And it happened, too, but I fielded it without dropping too much this time...LOL
...so far...
...well, then (April) there was the new drive... gained a lot of gigs, but lost one heck of a fractal collection (sob, sob, sob)

3-24 Spring has come, and lo, more changes. My first style sheet , very modestly suggesting a few things. Less complicated, the table experiments are over. Go ahead, breathe.

Back to the TOP- or just cut to the chase and go to the BOTTOM

Arual's lil glossary (Going to have its own page soon? :)

Consumer: a crap-tube

The internet: whatever you want it to be

Corporation, large: an entity devoted to turning human beings into consumers (q.v.)

Pigwhistle: what politicians, corporate fatcats, and many others are full of

Economic Recovery: the rich get richer while the poor grow in number

Economic Growth: 1.population growth + increase in economic inequality
2. pigwhistle

Earth-abortion: causing the death or mutilation of future genrations of all life through stupid, self-centered, narrow-visioned, pignorant abuse of resources

Pignorance: the art of remaining oblivious to reality by refusing to look outside of one's beliefs and preconceptions

Esthetic engineer: one who communicates through the senses

Windows: a problem common to many PC owners

ISP - stands for I'm So Prissy

Frankenware: a computer that is cobbled together from used parts, some of which may be surprised to be where they are

Proctalgia: a common Windows user's symptom

Windwoes: what Microsnot would sue me for naming something

Crash: primary function of Windows

Bug: basic component of most programs, and a primary constituent of Windwoes

Divine Intervention: My finger on the switch on the back

Snareware is software that you thought was free until you started installing it and it started talking license. (I've got nothing against asking for money, I like doing that myself - but I like it up front, not sneaking up after download)

eXcetera: The word, or rather phrase, dear people, is ET CETERA. It is Latin for "and the rest". There is no "X" in it, nor any Excedrin^TM. Try it - say "Et", and then say "Cetera.".

Nook-you-lar: I don't care who says it, the word is NUCLEAR. If you put clear glass in your bathroom window to replace the old frosted glass window that got broken, would you say that you had a "New clear window", or would you tell all your friends that you had a "NucUlar" window?

Beats the heck out of me how people whose native language is Ennglish (or what passes for it here in Americay) can have such a poor command of it. No wonder there are bugs, when a lot of programmers probably couldn't spell "feces" if they had four letters to do it with. ;-)

Which reminds me of another peeve - the dimbies who want to make English the Official Language of the USA. Gee, why not Spanish or Dutch? Come to think of it, how about Shoshonean?
Funny thing, but I seem to be able to get around the Internet pretty well on English...

Which reminds me - I gotta hand it to all you guys for whom english is a second (or third...) language. I admire your guts and appreciate your creativity. If I laugh when I read a "readme", help file, or webpage, I'm not laughing at you, but with you.

(MIS)Spelling and PUNKtuation:

Apostrophe's in plural's (sic) - just cut it out, OK? Apostrophes are for words that show posession, like "the cat's tail", or contractions (two words patched together) like "don't" (do + not), "that's" (that + is). If you are uncertain about whether or not to use one, DON'T - you have a better chance of being correct. Just stick the S on the word and be done with it.

(I'm hooked on this:)