19 january 01

So for two weeks now I've been working on a fantastic short story I was given to post on graphomanic. It's been visually designed for a good while, but there's a sort of navigational issue that was brought to my attention by a couple of people and I keep coming up with increasingly complicated solutions that have left me searching through books and online tutorials but I can't seem to get it right. As soon as one part comes together an existing part immediately ceases to function and I just don't understand some of the code well enough to successfully troubleshoot. My few victories are probably the sorts of fixes that other people consider trivial. I think I may have given up for now...I might as well go ahead and post it as is, scrolling issues be damned. I was thinking last night that this feels a lot like math class did in high school. I know that the problem here isn't a lack of intelligence or ability on my part, but that I don't have anyone to come over and show me how it's done in a way that makes sense. (Most of my high school math teachers might as well have been nonexistant for all they cared about teaching their students, except for Mrs. Gleicher who was wonderful). Books are only going to take me so far since I can't exactly ask the book questions (or I can ask but can't really expect the book to answer me). I am extraordinarily frustrated and pissed off. Maybe if I leave my questions on slips of paper under my pillow the dhtml fairy will come during the night and leave some answers for me.

Speaking of my high school, I heard on the radio this morning that a 17-year-old student stabbed a 14-year-old student twice in the back for making fun of his english pronunciation. What the hell? The most serious violence I can remember as a student there was the sort the students inflicted on themselves, whether intentionally or not. There was that guy a few years ahead of me who looked like Christian Slater and got stuck with some bad acid. There was David, who would have graduated with me if his car hadn't been in an intersection at the precise wrong moment leaving him with substantial brain damage. And there was Joe Morris, who I remember at the oddest moments. He had a nickname for me—made me sound like a superhero—but I've never been able to remember what it was.