Whenever a door closes, a window opens

Although I am not happy about the Banner Ad situation here on our Journals, I have to admit that some good (at least for me!) has come out of all of this. I was e-mailing back and for the with Judith Heartsong, and it occurred to me that I have actually gotten a couple of positive things out of all of this hoopla. Bear with me here.

As I mentioned to Judith, in the early years of the Internet I learned a little thing called HTML. Back then all you needed was a text editor, a little knowledge of HTML, a bit of patience... and you could easily make your own web pages. Fast forward a few years and you find me traveling around the country with the circus. Being on the road I seldom had access to an Internet connection, and when I did I was only interested in getting a hold of my e-mail. Remember, I am very self-centered. Since I wasn't using the HTML anymore, I didn't pay any attention to the changes being made.

Time passes, HTML changes. Things like CSS are invented and put into use. My knowledge of simple HTML becomes archaic.

Last year, when I started this journal, I bought two books. One on HTML, and the other on CSS. Soon I learned that AOL journals didn't accept many HTML tags, and the ones that they did were well documented. Being the lazy person that I am, I just learned the codes I needed, and left well enough along.

Enter the Banner Ads! Looking around for options, I found myself over at Blogspot where I started a journal. And, lo and behold, Blogger allows quite extensive revamping of its templates! Using my admittedly limited knowledge I was able to cobble together something that will work for me. This was all well and good, but it incited in me the desire to re-establish my knowledge of web page construction. I will definitely be pulling those two (thick <g>) books out and setting myself off in pursuit of that illusive thing called knowledge.

And I was not the only person going out there and establishing secondary journals. Many other folks were doing it to! Soon my AOL alerts and folder of off-AOL blog links were just not cutting it. I had known about Bloglines for a while, but again remember the lazy part? It was so much easier to use AOL's occasionally wonky Alert systems than to learn another application. This was no longer true, and I found myself over at Bloglines signing up for an account and getting down to the business of putting ALL of those blog links into it.

Good News...... I actually prefer Bloglines! It is relatively simple to use, and doesn't fill up my inbox! After mentioning my use of Bloglines in comments, I received a couple of inquiries about how I did it. I quickly opened an e-mail and set about putting my new found knowledge to work helping others. If anyone else is trying Bloglines and having any problems I have written two 'help' files, feel free to comment, or drop me an e-mail and I would be happy to pass them on to you!

My conclusion to all of this is that no matter how horrible things are, it is possible to take something good away from it... Yeah, I know, Little Mary Sunshine aren't I???