Requests

More money. More sleep. Less work. More free time. I, I, I. Me, me, me. That’s what this post is all about. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what every post is all about. This entire site included. I’m not talking about more money for myself necessarily, although that would be nice, but more money for the Marine Bar Fund. Send monetary donations to:

Marine Bar Fund
Unit 3500
APO AA 34030-3500

If you think I’m kidding, I’m not. Please make checks payable to “United States Embassy Brasilia.” That way we pay them and they wire our account. It’s great living in the electronic age.

With Guard school tomorrow at 0800, I almost went to sleep because I’ve been dragging ass all day. I figure if I can get a solid eight hours of rack time in I’ll be alright. I think. More work on the website though. It demands it. I opened a virtual Pandora’s box, I tell you. Suddenly I’m inundated with terms like validation, compliance, W3C, WaSP, and numerous others I don’t want to waste my remaining brain cells on. I’ve learned more about CSS in the last few days than I think I’ve learned about three different subjects in one summer combined.

Speaking of school, two of my three classes have posted grades for the term. Drum roll please… I only ended up with a B+ in Foundations of World Language (I think about an 88% actually) due mainly to four text assignments I missed at the beginning of the term worth a total of 400 points. Ouch. But in my own defense, there was a time when I doubted if I’d even pass. There were so many zeros scattered all over my assignments sheet I felt like I was in the Matrix. I managed to receive full credit for all my assignments that I actually turned in thanks to my superb debating skills. I also thank my world class bullshitting skills which helped significantly in my debating prowess. Is that the right word? It sounds like I should be on the South African high velde running with the lions or something. Oh wait. I did that.

Microcomputer applications hasn’t posted a grade yet. Our teacher looked pretty old in his bio. I hope he didn’t die before he gave me my “A.” That’s the score I predict. I never figured out why it was called microcomputer applications (or “micro apps” for us salty dogs). It was simply a course on Microsoft Office, Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. It was an introductory course to boot. I learned a few tricks here and there, but I really am that damn good. If I reached a quarter of my actual potential I may be a valuable member of society.

So let me take a moment’s diversion from the back patting and continue on with my grades. My Web Design class was the real kicker this term. I figured I’d be soaking in all this good info that I could apply to this very website, but to no avail.

WYSIWYG and common HTML editors are just so limited. I’m not sure what made me consider CSS, but the world is now my oyster. Whoa, diversion again. My final grade for my Web Design class was… 102%. That’s right. I missed a grand total of three points the whole class ad even picked up 20 extra credit points at the end for my final web design project. I used my Brasilia Hash House Harriers site for this purpose, and just tweaked stuff around to meet a few requirements. Now that I’m learning so much about the real guts of web design, I look back and see what a mess I’ve made of my corner of the web until this point. Like I said to Adrienne, navigating my site was like looking for your cleanest dirty shirt in a pile of laundry on the floor. I choking back bile just thinking about it.

Things are getting better.

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