MY LIFE - JUNE 1999

Wednesday, June 23, 1999

Today it became official. On this day in 1997, a lowly little web page was created, worked on, and uploaded to the America Online. On this day in 1997, Dave's World was born, only under the alias of "Dave's Home Page." It was nothing like it is today, but it is the forerunner to my site in its current form and was the first time that I put up a more personal page. On this day, this web site was officially born.

It doesn't seem like such a long time though. It still feels like it was just yesterday that I sat down and created a simple little page that would soon become the focus of the entire site. It seems only yesterday that I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted with the site, and only yesterday that my ambitions came alive. The site was very primitive in nature, and while that hasn't really changed, the size of the site has nearly tripled since that fateful day.

Now Dave's World is a large site with much of the focus on me, Dave, and what I see and feel in the world. When I look back at what this site used to be, I can't help but feel amazed that I've come this far without abandoning it or getting overly bored. Sure, it took a year for the site to really click with other people, but now I'm getting a steady stream of visitors, many of them return-visitors, making trips back to this site repeatedly to see what's new with me. Several have shown incredible interest in what I've done and what I've been through, and compliments have not been in short supply.

Just think. I've learned so much about building web sites in just two years, almost all of it learned by reading books and by trial and error, seeing what works and what doesn't. I didn't take a class on HTML, nor do I really intend to right away. Everything done in this site is done from scratch, without the aid of templates or programs that hide the code. That's what I think helps make this site something else. Not only are you all taking a look into my life, you're watching someone learn what it takes to make a good site from the bottom up. You see my learning process in the form of new pages, new ideas, and new formats.

This site isn't here just for your entertainment and for me to learn by, it's here more so for me to have a way of releasing stress, to get off my chest what's bugging me, and to just plain let things out. That's the main reason for this site, and as long as things remain interesting in my life, it will remain the focus.

It's been two years for Dave's World, and I'm hoping for many more years in the future.

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Two of our cats are doing really bad right now. Skunky, my younger sister's cat, has had three seizures over the past three or four weeks and is just in bad shape. Vamp, my older sister's cat, has been having great difficulty breathing due to asthma and general problems with her respiratory system. In both cases, it's very sad and tough for all of us to take, but something has to be done for their sake.

Skunky concerns me the most though. We've had him for several years and he's probably the nicest of all the cats, almost incapable of being nasty to the other cats and to us. Yet he's been living tough since he got really sick a few years ago. Ever since that illness, he has been plagued by obeseness and an inability to clean himself effectively. He is terribly overweight and eats constantly.

The seizures have been the scariest thing though. He had his first seizure earlier this month, which was followed by another not too long after. Then last week, I witnessed a seizure after I heard something fall off the couch. I made the stunning realization that it was Skunky who was causing all that noise due to a very violent seizure. It took him halfway across the living room towards the kitchen, but it was the look on his face afterwards that made me realize that something needed to be done. He looked confused, bewildered, as if he had been just completely overwhelmed by what had just happened. You could tell that he was scared to death and just not sure of what to do.

It scared me and really got me to thinking that he needs to be put to sleep. I told my mom of this as well as my sister, and both agreed with me, even if it wasn't what they wanted to do. As for Vamp, she's just not going to make it with her troubles, which have been going on since last summer and have only gotten worse.

It's sad, but it just has to be done. Neither one deserves to suffer like they have.

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