Daynotes on a budget

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Welcome to my big bit of weirdness on the web.  This page will give you an introduction to me and this, and hopefully answer the following questions;

Who are you?
Why do you do this?
Are you the John Dominik who writes those books about St. Cloud?
Where'd you grow up?
Do I know you?
Are you nuts?
How do you do this?

Away we go...

Introduction

Hello there!  Welcome to my madness.  It's a fun little jaunt through the daily whirl that is life with myself, a self-confessed alpha-geek, my wife, Ann, otherwise known as She Who Must Be Obeyed (thanks for that, Rumpole), who regrettably at times has married a "technologist", and our two children,  She Who Must Be Obeyed In Training, and His Royal Highness, Monkey Boy, the Kamikaze Kid, King of the Mucus People extraordinaire.  Also, our two feline owners, Tish (the boy who was identified as a girl and then turned out to be a boy just in time to get neutered, thus my several weeks cross-dressing experiment there for a while in attempt to keep those family jewels), and Gilligan, otherwise known as Jabba the Cat.  It's a full ride around here, typically at a high rate of speed, and we're enjoying it - most of the time.  

My first name for these pages was "Computing Behind Enemy Lines" - my first inclination to just go ballistic and extract a pound of flesh from whomever could spare it.  Former employers, enemies, and various others whom I felt deserved a chopping down to size.  Then, fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Took a couple days, though... For the whys and wherefores, check outthis link.

This set of pages has a number of purposes.  I had been reading the "Daynoter" ranks regularly.  As a long-time reader (not just of the daynoters, but of anything printed, whether on paper or on-screen), I knew that I really wanted to write, but hadn't really found a voice or topic.  I do have a style, which is probably affected by too much time spent reading as a youth, and being the oldest in a family of five kids - my sentences are too long, according to the various grammar checkers I'd played with, and, well, that's just for starters.  I think the long sentences come from the desire to get it all out in one shot while I've still got your attention.

Lately, it's become a sort of on-line diary of sorts for me.  Initially, I maintained it on my hard drive, and didn't do it all that well.  I started a first run of this on my old company's intranet, but it was far more technical than here - a what did I do to whom, so I could do it again later.  When I left there, I started maintaining this site and did it for my own enjoyment.

Then, like a bolt out of the blue as the cliché goes, I got an e-mail from Chris Ward-Johnson, otherwise known as Doctor Keyboard.  He'd managed to waste a significant portion of his day in a non-work pursuit - reading me!  Uh, wow.  Then, I got e-mails from Bo Leuf and Tom Syroid - Tom welcoming me to the Daynoter ranks.  GULP!  I'd been blathering along for about two months at that point, and had figured that in about a year I'd check with Master Syroid and see what the entry requirements are for Daynoter membership.  As one of my former managers used to tell me, I need to tune my "Scotty Factor" (From Star Trek's original chief engineer, Montgomery Scott - when he guest-starred on the Next Generation episode Relics he told Geordi La Forge "Captains always want it now - never tell them the actual time, that way you've got a chance to get it done right." - in my years in IT, I've learned that many project estimates suffer from a complete and total lack of understanding of this principle).

After being added to the Daynoters, I started getting a bit larger audience.  To those of you who've been here, thank you very much.  It keeps me writing, almost as much as my desire to. 

But in getting ready to do this, I realized that this tiny, niggling little voice in my head had a point. I've always liked to write. I've also liked to putz with web design, and play with Legos, but reading and writing have been my unholy addictions since I first learned how to do both. I've fallen into the occasional addiction ever since, but none last long. Well, chocolate, but that's not an addiction, it's a food group. You remember the good old basic four food groups? Cookies, Candy, Cake, and Chocolate.  Screw vegetables, I want chocolate.

Who Am I?

Good question, there.  Not one for a short answer, regrettably.  But you asked.

Let's see.  I was born in St. Cloud back in 1963, and grew up north of the small town of Sartell, Minnesota. I have four younger sisters.  I remember asking just about every time I could verbalize for a little brother.  When mom and dad left for the hospital the last time, I said "Forget the little brother.  I can't get one of those, so can I have a puppy instead?"

No joy there either.

Anyway, I grew up and went to kindergarten and grade school in Sartell.  My parents sacrificed a lot to send all of us kids to Catholic school, and so we went to St. Francis Xavier in Sartell.  It didn't take long for me to get bored with all of those shenanigans.  I remember the first day of school blowing off the teacher's lecture on how to organize your desk; I was fascinated by the eraser - a tool I could use to remove writing.  Never had one of those before.  Wow, talk about cool.  What was that again?  Put the books where?  Yeah, whatever.

Of course, this lecture came back to haunt me later.  Five and a half years later, as the calendar went - my fifth grade teacher did the usual desk inspection (I guess it was supposed to occur monthly, but I think this was our third - it occured in perhaps March).  She looked inside my desk, where things were inserted and removed with great force, only.  This nice, gentle woman flipped my desk, open-side down, onto the floor - typical teacher-speak for "clean it out, boy".  And nothing moved.  

She looked, and did a double take.  She picked up the desk, and banged it on the floor again.  No joy.  "Clean it out" was her direction, and she walked away.  Since it was Art class, which was a bit of a reward for us, I spent my time cleaning out my desk.  I, personally, think that it's fairly obvious why I have no idea now about a color wheel and all of the rest.  That's why my wife doesn't let me dress the kids without a veto on her part.

That fifth-grade teacher was also a mother.  And one of her boys I'd met in second grade, and he and I are still great friends today.  His mother, I suspect, is a bit appalled by the whole thing, but she's adaptable. 

I joined Boy Scout Troop 11 in St. Cloud about half-way through my fifth-grade year, and began to enjoy that sort of thing - camping and other outdoor-type activity was something that allowed a kid with four sisters to get away from them.  That was the important part.  At least two weekends, and one week a year I was able to get away and CAMP.

After grade school, I moved on.  Most of my grade school class stayed in Sartell to go to Sartell High School.  I, and about eight of my classmates, headed into St. Cloud to attend Cathedral High School.

I found a real spot after a few weeks at Cathedral.  In fifth grade, I started playing the drums.  I'd first wanted to play the accordian (and believe me, there isn't a week that goes by that I don't thank my parents for saying no to that little slice of hell.  I will never forget Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon - "Welcome to heaven, here's your harp/Welcome to hell, here's your accordian."  Yeow.  

I'd also played the Cello for a year or so - but the woman who taught the stringed instruments really frightened me, quite a bit.  Dropped that like a stone after I learned "Twinkle twinkle little star."  

Then, I found the drums.  In fifth grade we started weekly band classes during the school year - Wednesdays after school we'd head into St. Cloud (one of the mothers would pick us up after school, dash into St. Cloud, where we'd get to Cathedral High School at about 3:30 or so, and we'd practice until 4:30.  Then, we'd head back home, where my folks would pick me up either at the car pooler's house or school, whichever was more convenient.  

I banged away on those drums for a couple of years, and then, in the summer between my eighth grade year and freshman in high school, I ran into a friend of mine at church.  He mentioned that they had marching band practice, and were always looking for drummers.  I went to the next practice, and the band director verified that I was an enrolled student, and they strapped the small bass drum to my chest, and away I went.  

I'd found a real place in the school - after walking alongside the band for the first parade (unfortunately the only one my parents would come to, Sauk Rapids' old "Indian Days" parade, which is no longer due to Political Correctness), I went on to march in the final two parades of the season - Detroit Lakes and Glenwood.  

I'll never forget that first parade.  I'd put on the black wool pants, the t-shirt, the black wool suit coat, the heavy wool overlay with the high collar, and the high plastic and fake fur hat, and felt something pretty impressive.

I turned left, with the rest of the band, and marched southbound towards the lake.  Then I realized just what the heck I'd done to myself.  You see, the bass drum I carried was a wooden shell, covered by highly polished aluminum.  Here I was, pointed south, for a straight line of about a mile, traveling at a speed I later figured was something in the range of about one and a half miles an hour, and the sun was beating down upon me.  And more critically, up at me from the polished aluminum surface of the drum.

I had the most wretched sunburn on the bottom of my jaw and neck - I turned bright red and blistered, and had only two weeks to recover for the Glenwood parade later.  Which I did.

So music played a huge part in my high-school years.  We made two band trips while I was there - one trip was to Edmonton, took eight days, and was fun (with the sad exception of our band mis-reading the signs and starting our routine half a block early - this meant that the judges recorded our musical scores on our drumming cadence, instead of the song we were playing.  The second trip, to Winnipeg, was more successful; that occurred after my senior year in high school.  We rode up to Winnipeg on a couple of charter buses, stayed in a hotel for three or four days, and managed to win the street marching competition.  That was a blast.

After high school, and the ability to be involved in plenty of activities (I'd helped to plan the field show for Junior year homecoming - I'd worked in the theater department as a member of our "Light and Sound Department" (we loved the LSD initials), participated in the last play in the old North Building Auditorium, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown", helped set up the staging for variety shows in gyms, worked with Bobby Vee when he came to school to do a fundraiser with us, and was the AV Geek for the best singing group in school, the Minnesingers.

Then I stumbled into college, and that was a bit of a disappointment.  You see, my father had worked for the Liturgical Press, which is the publishing arm of the giant combine Order of St. Benedict, Inc., for nearly thirty years.  In the compensation agreement, he had a deal where he got free tuition for all of his kids at the school.  

So I applied to and was accepted at St. John's University.  I went into Business because that seemed to be the most profitable direction to go in.  And I ran into a bit of a problem.  You see, when you work for one arm of a large company, and that large company needs to transfer funds from one arm to another, that large company tends to wait until the last day to do it.  

Which is a problem when you're one student of two thousand, over half of which are attempting a business or business-related degree (initially, at any rate), and you've got to be paid current in order to register for class.  In the first-come-first-serve world of class registration, you are fundamentally and profoundly screwed.

So I tried and failed to get that process changed, and while trying, and failing, I managed to take a few computer classes.  And was hooked.

After the funding ran out, and I was still looking for my degree, I went to work at a fast-food place.  I'd been my own boss in previous years; as a student, I could run a business on campus, so I sold lofts to other kids who came from far away, or worse yet, didn't know which end of the hammer was appropriate.  I'd made a moderate profit at it, when I found suddenly that as a non-student, I was not allowed to advertise on-campus without a half a hundred forms, regulations, filing fees, and the like.  Ouch.  There went my grand business schemes based on a national loft business.

So I worked at Wendy's as a grill monkey, then moved into management, and later moved from St. Cloud to the Twin Cities - you see, I'd managed to work a compromise with a lovely young woman I'd met in college - she'd come in one fall day just after returning from the east coast, where she'd worked all summer, and had a loft design which would have, at best, fallen flat had it been built as designed.  

I helped her rebuild it, and we started hanging out together.  After a month of such foolishness, we gave up the pretense and started dating.  We'd been a part of a larger group of friends who'd hung around, so I'd known her pretty well from a distance.  This wonderful woman later agreed, on the day after Valentine's day, 1989, to marry me.  I suppose, to be fair, I should note that in the weeks leading up to that event, we'd been alternately daring one another about going into jewelry stores.  First one, then the other, would shy off.  We were in Crossroads Center in St. Cloud, and I veered her towards Gordon's, where they had an emerald surrounded by channel-set diamonds.  

Neither of us waved off the other, and so we did the paperwork for financing, etc., and the ring would be ours in a couple of days.  Later, as we sat in my car as the parking lot getting ready to drive away, she said "You do know what this means, don't you?"  and I said "You did want to marry me, didn't you?"

Not the most romantic proposal you've ever heard.

Anyway, she agreed, we got married, and through a series of twists and turns which I'm sure are fairly boring, managed to arrive here, which is with two kids, two cats, and a whole lot of knowledge about a whole lot of different things.

How's that?  'Nuff for ya?

Why Do This?

One of the earliest vices I had as a child was reading.  I call it a vice because, frankly, it was worse than an addiction, and an addiction is something you wish to give up.  Reading, now, is something I can't give up.  I enjoyed reading, and still do - I get itchy for books.

My father was a bibliophile.  Among other things.  If you look the word up in a good big dictionary, you'll find that it means someone who enjoys books.  For my dad, I think it went a little deeper than that.  When we moved into the house my parents live in now, we put five large bookshelves up in the basement.  We also had one wall of the living room covered in built-in bookshelves.  We thought that would work.  Nope.

Last time I was up there, the fruit cellar, bookshelves, and half the basement were full of books.  We also have piles of books in front of the bookshelf.  And my father's read all of them.  At least once.  At one time he'd started a listing of his books.  This was, of course, back when we still had the old XT without a hard drive - I think he stopped when the spreadsheet filled a whole 360 K Floppy.  Ah, yes, the good old days when an OS fit on something less than a one-gig hard drive...

So, as a child, I read a lot.  A whole lot.  Started with what we had around the house, and then began checking out books from the library, buying books with my own money, and that sort of thing.  

I gravitated towards fantasy and science fiction.  I read a lot of history, as that was my father enjoyed, and lots of books about World War II.  I read a lot about airplanes, being that what boys are interested in, and about space, as that was what was going on when I was a child (I remember Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon, and watching it on Television - I was allowed to stay up to see it).  I read about dragons, knights, trolls, elves, dwarves, and anything, really, that moved.

I read like a fiend.  I also wrote lots of stories as a child.  Most, well, actually, nearly all of them sucked.  Those that didn't suck also didn't go anywhere, either.  Actually, that's not true.  Nearly every single one of them went into the trash can at one time or another.

But I digress (which is the point of this, right?).  When I was in college, I ran across "The Star Beast" by Robert A. Heinlein.  I found the book rather tame and childish, but I liked the author's work.  I started reading other books of his, and other books by the other authors who appeared in the back of the Heinlein books.  I learned that Heinlein had two distinct groups of books - his juveniles and his more adult works.  And I read all of them, and started to spread out into books by other authors who appeared in the back of Heinlein books, reasoning that these authors were probably pretty good if they were in the same publishing group.

About the third book I found of Heinlein's was "Starship Troopers".  If all you know of that title is the recent movie, please, move to the back and read and learn.  In Starship Troopers I got my first exposure to the Heinlein philosophy of how things should work.  A little like trying to spread a thick, adhesive peanut butter on flimsy white bread - it rips and tears and leaves a whole lot of gaps behind.  He gives you a fundamental view of his philosophy, but you can't dip your toes in and enter slowly - you're shoved into the pool head-first.  And held there by the book's action sequences.  Or at least I was.

Heinlein's world of Starship Troopers grabbed me and held me.  I kept buying Heinlein books.  Anything with his name on it went into my library.  I read, re-read, re-re-read, and so on, every Heinlein book.  The man was, as far as I was concerned for about three years, it when it came to sci-fi.  While I don't agree 100% with Heinlein (he was less than thrilled with organized religion, while I'm a little more involved with it), I found him gripping and interesting and, well, just plain fun.  He provoked a reaction with every book, sometimes different emotions in one page; that was why I read him.

One of those authors I found in the back of the Heinlein books was a fellow by the name of Jerry Pournelle.  He'd originally come into my life as a columnist for Byte magazine, which I started reading just after Zeke was moved out of his primary position in Chaos Manor.  Dr. Pournelle came into my life from two different directions.  And THAT'S how I got into computers.  Many many moons ago, I was reading Dr. Pournelle in the morning, going to class in the middle of the day, and working in the computing center in the afternoons.  Ah, college.  

Some of my attraction to computers was probably genetic, though - Dad was, and is, a complete gadget freak.  He had the first pocket calculator I'd ever seen, back when they were LEDs rather than LCDs, and they cost over $100 each (for a four-function calculator you can pick up these days for about 0.99 cents each).   Dr. Pournelle made this computer stuff sound interesting, exciting, and fun - just what a college kid who couldn't get into his business classes needed.  So I got into it.

After getting married and having two kids, my reading level slacked off quite a bit.  More to do, and less time to do it in.  And, of course, the Internet got in the way.  I started playing with web sites, building, decomposing, and all the rest, and then, in the weirdest way, I found Dr. Pournelle again.

It was the night I heard that Robert Heinlein died.  I didn't know at the time that Dr. Pournelle knew Mr. Heinlein, but the loss of Mr. Heinlein was both painful, and a relief.  He had been in poor health, and it was something of a relief that he was finally at peace and I knew I could someday finish my Heinlein collection.  The pain part was that I would someday read all he'd written, and that would be the end of that.

But I thought to myself that I should do something about letting the authors I knew and respected and had received so much enjoyment from that I had appreciated their work.  Not to make the personal connection with the author, which was certainly nice, but more to specifically let that individual know I appreciated their work, not only with folding cash, but with a thank you.

So, I found and wrote, well, e-mailed to Dr. Pournelle, thanking him.  Within a few minutes,  I got a reply, thanking me for writing.  Huh?  Me?  Thanked by such a fellow?  Go on.  Really now.  You're the one working.  I'm just the one who reads your books in the bed, living room, and bathroom.  If I could find a truly waterproof method for turning pages, I'd read in the shower.  Okay, I'll stop - Too Much Information - I've done it again.  Sorry.

And then, much to my surprise, I found his web site.  After wandering it, and rewandering it, I found a piece he'd written saying "So you want my job?"

At that point, all the old dreams came flooding back.  Grand battles of space pirates and the virtuous queen's victorious fleets, the majestic wizards in pointy hats, long staffs, and longer arms of wizardly powers, and stories of oceans deep, dark, cold space, and many other topics burbled to the surface again.

The one thing Dr. Pournelle said that stuck with me was "write.  Write every day.  Be prepared to throw away the first million words."  And I was.  The problem was that I had no way to discipline myself to write.  I'd sit down, plunk out about a half-page outline, or some pithy dialogue between two sketchy, unknown characters, or lay out the lines of the fleet, horsemen, or wizards, and drop the story right there.  No further movement on it, as I had nothing holding me to complete it.

Then, I stumbled across a link from Dr. Pournelle's site to Bob Thompson.  And from there to Tom Syroid.  And from there to Chris Ward-Johnson.  And from there to a group of crusty, gentle souls called "The Daynoters."

I'd found a way to commit myself to writing, I thought.  I'd use the company intranet.  I'd maintain a log of what I'd done, to whom I'd done it, and where I'd gotten the information, etc., to do that sort of thing.  Kind of an on-line logbook of things I'd done.

That grew, and grew, and grew.  I'd had a pretty complete listing of all that I'd done, and a few fun things besides, on our corporate intranet, and then ... well, let's get the story straight - I agreed to part with my employer as there was a change in technological direction.  When I joined them I was the "PC Expert in a Mac company" and all was well.  I learned Macs by the foreign-language method - total immersion.  I got comfortable with Macs in about three weeks.  I was very fluent in them by about six months.  After about two years, nothing surprised me any more.

Why I write is that I want to be a writer.  I'm sure some of my opinions are perhaps disturbing to some; some of my opinions aren't mine anymore, I've changed them.  That's the way it goes.  But part of the reason I write is to reason out these opinions.  Part of being me is that I spend a great deal of time working on technical issues - personal, philosophical issues, however, are a bit more difficult.  That's why I'm trying to work them out through writing about them.  They're not pretty - formulating coherent thought, as one college professor reminded me, is never pretty - you think sausage making is ugly, you should see philosophy.  Thus, the opposing sides of my mind that make up the circus that is me.  

In work settings I am a professional - I can, and have, worked with all manner of people; everyone's got an opinion and they've all got merit.  Everyone's entitled to their own.  I'm not expecting everyone to agree with mine - heck, sometimes after reading these things through, I don't agree with them either.  But that's the way it goes.  I'm a professional, I can discern and separate work from play - and this, believe it or not, is play for me.

Enjoy me in large or small doses, as may be.  I'd post my father's e-mail address so you could complain about his son's nutball ideas, but you'd probably get an odd look, and perhaps an e-mail filled with words that might help you with a crossword puzzle and might require a dictionary to understand it.

Enjoy, and thank you so much for visiting.

Are you the John Dominik who writes those books about St. Cloud?

Short answer?  Nope, never heard of them.

Okay, only kidding.  

My father grew up in St. Cloud, and somewhere got bitten by the history bug big-time.  He got pretty-well sucked in by local history, and started by researching and writing an 800 page (double-spaced single-sided, probably about a megabyte now) manuscript about the history of the local Pan Motor Company.  Back in the late teens and early twenties of the previous century, there were a great plenty of car manufacturers starting up.  St. Cloud boasted it's own, one Samuel C. Pandolfo, who designed and built a pretty forward-thinking vehicle.

I guess today it's probably a little more than quaint, but the car had seats that were designed to fold flat like a bed, and it had a traveling trunk/toolbox which was, I gather, the first of it's kind on any sort of vehicle.

Through my father's research of this topic, he became fairly well-known in local history circles.  Back in 1975, when one of his old bosses discovered that the fellow writing the Bicentennial history of St. Cloud was doing a less than spectacular job of it, he called Dad - and Dad took the job on, and got it done only a year later.  

A few years after that another local history book, this one a coffee-table book, came out with Dad's name and work in it.  A few years ago he finished the latest book, which was a history of their parish as it turned fifty.  This one was a bit harder, as he interspersed stories of the parish in the early years with announcements from the bulletins, etc., and did you know that despite being on the school board, putting five kids through the school, and all of that, he never mentioned us once?  Jeez, I can't even catch a break in the nepotism department, ya know?

He's done plenty more writing locally, for newsletters and the like.  He used to do a lot of speaking to local groups about history, but he doesn't do too much of that any more either.

So, to answer your question, yup, he's my dad.

Where'd you grow up?

You're assuming I have?  Gee, thanks.

Actually, I was born in St. Cloud, Stearns county, state of Minnesota, United Stated of America.

My parents owned a house north of Sartell in a place called Kutzman's Addition.  We were one of the first houses built in that area, and were the first one you saw back off the main road.

In March of 1975, we moved from that house to another about a half-mile away - My grandmother had been living in a house that had started out as a converted cabin, and was remodeled and added to over the years - when she died in 1971, my father started plans for a large addition to the house, and he purchased it from his sisters.  We moved from our home, with it's small yard (probably a quarter-acre or less) to a two acre yard right on the Mississippi.

My parents still live there today, but I've moved from there to Lauderdale (small inner-ring Twin Cities suburb), Edina, Richfield, and now Burnsville.

But I'm still not admitting to the grown-up parts yet.

Do I know you?

Let's see how much trouble I can get into for that one...  Are we talking metaphysical, Biblical, or otherwise?  <SEG>

Oh, all right.  Don't know.  I could give you a long list of what I've done, where I've gone, and to whom I've done it, but that would make it too easy.  Then again, isn't that the point?

All right - I've been a Boy Scout, I've been involved with a group called "Teens Encounter Christ" or "TEC" (this is long before they changed it to "Together").  I went to St. Francis Xavier grade school in Sartell, Cathedral High School in St. Cloud, St. John's University in Collegeville, all in Minnesota.  I've done a lot of other fun and or foolish things, but that should help you out with the young life portion.

Oh, yeah, former employers - St. John's Liturgical Press, Paulson Drywall, Shopko Stores, St. Cloud.  Hickory Farms, a grocery store I can't remember the name of that later turned into a pet food store, Wendy's, Software Etc., Ban-Koe Systems, Great Clips, Inc. - that should bring us up to the present, just about.

Other than that, I can't help you, but if you send me an e-mail, I might remember.

Are you nuts?

It's a distinct possibility.

Phil Hough and I were discussing the other day the potential for insanity in the technology field.  While Jonathan Sturm believes that computers hate being anthropomorphized, I'm a great believer in calling them names when they misbehave.  You have to remember that I live in Minnesota, where on an average year we can measure our highest high temperature and lowest low temperature (including windchill) using a gap of about one hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit.  So I'm used to anthropomorphizing inanimate objects, such as cars.  I say things like "come on, you're a good boy, you can start."  And then degrade, if I have to, to various unprintable expletives.  Doesn't help the vehicle any, but it lowers my blood pressure.

Phil's admission that he often sees people talking to themselves and inanimate objects has me wondering if I've not gone a fair piece down that road.  

Then again, I've heard that doubting one's sanity is the surest way to determine if one is in fact sane - if you're sure you're sane, then the screws have definitely shaken right out of your carriage.  Likewise, if you're sure you're wacko, you're probably wrong.

Although one of the funniest things I ever remember seeing is a Far Side cartoon.  This man in a clown costume and makeup, with a mallet, an inflatable pool toy around his waste, and springs on his clown shoes.  He was facing two officers in the midst of a large number of bodies - toes up, of course.  The one policeman was saying to the other "I guess he does have a license to do that."

I guess if you can apply for the license, you're certainly a few steps on this side of sanity.  Mind you, I make no claims as to which side of the line I'm on, but welcome.

HOW I DO THIS

This site is organized with weekly pages, starting always on Mondays, running through the following Sunday.  There's a central calendar page, which will link to each week and provide an update. I started this site on Tripod, which was a huge mistake, because while they've got neat tools, their site stability leaves much to be desired.  I moved over to Spaceports with little to no trouble, and away we go.  I now use FrontPage 2000 to update these pages on my computer, then publish to SpacePorts at least daily. 

Each weekly page has a link noting when it was updated; FrontPage handles that.  However, at the end of the week, what I do is I copy the previous week's page to the next week, and change dates - it's a heck of a lot easier than maintaining multiple multiple templates - and deleting FrontPage templates is pretty easy to do, if you have the eleventy-six steps required.  I forget most of them. 

Anyway, that's more than you wanted to know, I'm sure.  Enjoy...

Copyright © 2000, 2001 John P. Dominik.  All rights reserved.
Opinions expressed herein are my own, and my fault.
For further information, check out my other home page.