O Shenandoah! Webbed Woes

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." -- Article I, Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, enacted December 15, 1791.

A Few Good Tech Links:
Hexidecimal Color Codes for HTML on White or Black Background. . . . Stroud's Resource Center -- Find the shareware and freeware you need using their search engine. Stroud's rates the best and you can download safely what you need from their site. . . . Search Engine Tutorial for Web Designers -- information and assistance on designing pages for and dealing with the search engines. . . . Matt's Script Archive -- Impressive source of CGI script info, with numerous links to related websites, provided by a technical book author. . . . Microsoft Corporation -- You gotta have this one. . . . Ziff-Davis Magazines -- Not all of the best computer hardware and software magazines are published by Z-D. . . .

Excerpts from Taped Interviews:

March 28, 1997 --

Aren't you supposed to be making a mailing list?: Yeah, of internet e-zines.
You've only got three names.: Well, it takes awhile.
How long have you been working on it.: A coupla weeks.
Huh. What's the problem?: I have to check out each one to see if it's compatible with the Country Rag.
How do you do that?: Read some articles. Maybe a story or poem.
Shouldn't take long.: If they have a message board, I read that, maybe post a few things.
Oh, yeah? Sounds interesting. What name do you use on-line?: Oh, different ones different places.
How many have you got?: Mmm.... Dozens, I guess.
Isn't that confusing?: Yeah, but I'm used to it.
How long have you been using so many names?: All my life.
What?: It has to do with patriarchal naming conventions.
Huh?: Nevermind. Anyway, on the planet I have at least six last names and four or five first ones. It all depends on how you count.
One ... two ....: Plus the cyberspace "handles" and "nicknames".
Mmm. How do friends find you?: They gotta keep up.
Doesn't it make record-keeping complicated?: I dunno, sometimes it's nice to disappear.
How do you keep the names straight?: Don't lately. I'm thinking of using a symbol instead.
What symbol?: Well,... I like this one
Why?: It's REALLY hard to explain.
Give it a shot.: Ok. You know how I love words and meanings?
*sign* yeeeeessssss...: Ok, asterism means "a group or cluster of stars in astronomy, a starlike figure produced in some crystals by reflected or transmitted light in mineralogy, and, with the three star configuration, a means of calling special attention to a passage in printing."
[ . . .]: Get it?
[ . ..]: Ok. It's a gestalt.
[ .]: "Any of the integrated structures or patterns that make up all experience and have specific properties which can neither be derived from the elements of the whole nor considered simply as the sum of these elements."
[. . ]: Valley of the stars, the light of words and inspiration, publishing and promoting an e-zine, stuff like that, all mixed up.
[ ]: Are you still here?
What did you say your name was?
*poof*
Hey, aren't you sort of over the edge here?: Ledge?
Edge. Of sanity.: Uh-uh.
Okey-dokey.... Bye,: Difficult to pronounce, isn't it?
[ ]: I think I'll just use Jeannette from now on.
*whew* [... those names without consonants and vowels are rough ...]

February 14, 1997 --

What are you doing?: Writing a book.
Great! What's it called?: "Extraterrestrial Exploration: Missing Site Search and Rescue"
Uh-oh. What happened?: Search engines lose stuff. A couple lost my magazine.
Where?: I dunno.
How come they lost it?: Six months ago I moved it to Geocities' server.
So?: The search engines got confused.
Why? You just delete the old listing and add the new listing.: Yeah. In paradise.
Where is it now?: Well, it was in "Open Text" with the right address but now it's gone completely.
That's strange. Are you sure it was there?: Yeah, I checked. Yahoo lost it once, too, but they got it back. Excite's lost it again.
Black holes in the search engines?: I guess. Alta Vista has it under the old address.
Why don't you fix it?: Well, most of the entries I did. Two I can't.
Why?: The old files are still on the original server.
So what?: You can't delete the engine listing unless the server files are gone.
Well, delete 'em.: I can't. The server won't let me.
Huh?: Don't ask.
Come on. Tell me.: I can FTP files to the server, but only they can add the Unix extensions or delete the files.
So ask 'em to delete 'em.: I have. Many times.
They won't?: Nope.
Send in a file redirecting users to the new address.: I did. They wouldn't load it.
I give up.: Me, too.
What about the other search engines.: Well, Webcrawler has the zine with the right address.
Great!: And it has the zine with the old address.
Send in a correction.: Can't. The files still exist...
...on the old server.: Right.
Did you write to the engines?: Yeah, they said to delete the files.
Why didn't you tell them you couldn't?: I did.
Oh. I feel tired all of a sudden.: Yeah, I know the feeling.
See ya' later.: Right. Bye.
Hey, you're not going to move the zine again, are you?: Not in this lifetime. Don't tell Geocities, though.
Why?: They could charge $500/month. The zine's not budging.
What do Web experts say to do about search engines listings?: Check 'em every week forever.
Oh. Will you?: Sure. I'll just delete a couple of zine sections to make time for that...
Really?: Huh-uh. Tell some friends where it is, will ya'?
Sure.

More ^#!%(*$@ Links:

Electronic Frontier Foundation -- Get your copy here of the infamous telecommunications bill and of the three-judge opinion staying enforcement of the "decency" provisions.
Electronic Freedom March on Washington info site -- Volunteers, questions or suggestions, email: march@tico.com

blue-ribbon

Where the heck am I? -- Beam me back home