Not New, But Back...

Name:
Dan

Age:
This should make some of you happy. Old enough to have kids as old or older than most of the people that post here (21,23 & 25) and know that Canadians do pronounce about "aboot". Now if I could just figure out how to spell Ey or is it Ay or Aa. Never mind, think I just found it in my Websters- Eh (pronounced a).

Occupation:
I used to be a Webmaster, but that suggests knowing everything. Then I started calling myself a Web Designer. But that turned into a fulltime job for one of my clients so now I call myself an IT Manager cause I manage everything related to computers for this client.

Website URL:
cds-computers.com (haven't updated for two years and only reason it is still active is cause of the email address I use. Main URL is in my signature.)

What are your webmastering specialities?
Know enough Javascript to get myself into trouble sometimes, have learned a lot about PHP & mySQL in last 6 months and still learning. Have discovered that the mySQL & PHP websites are my best friends.

Don't particularily care for Flash for use in commercial websites (so I haven't learned it yet, although I have played with Swish which does really good for Flash designs without the expense of the Flash program or the programming knowledge). OK for info sites or even an intro as long as it can be bypassed, but experience has shown me that Flash doesn't usually sell products, just creates one click visitors (Exit) if they don't have a broadband connection. Also, the more clicks a customer has to make to get to the products, the more chance you have of losing them and that bypass click is an unnecessary click.

I use Dreamweaver for my straight HTML work and Homesite for my PHP scripting.

Know a little ASP, but don't really like it. Guess cause I learned PHP first and have my own opinion on the use of NT servers as Web servers.

Address all hate email regarding my views on NT to: bgates@microsoft.com
Address all hate email regarding my views on Flash to: Bill can handle these also

How did you get started?
Anybody remember the Commodore 64? Or typing in hundreds of lines of Hex code into this same C64 only to find you typed a D instead of F and the stupid program didn't work or was it a 1 instead of a 0?

That was the real beginning, but the beginning for IT work: Where I used to work, I was the guy that everybody came to when they were having computer problems at home. This web stuff started when the "job" which I had for a real long time went South and in the process of learning a new trade, (needed to support 3 hungry teenagers) I started designing web sites. Before long, I discovered that I was making enough money doing the web stuff and kinda let what I was learning to do fall away. Actually not fall away, more of a sidestep.

What else do you like to do?
Working for a used video game store has it's perks. Just bought an Xbox really cheap and really enjoy playing Test Drive Offroad Wide Open when wife will let me have the TV. Can't play video games without Surround Sound can you? Also read when time permits. Fantasy Adventure & Westerns.

Work from a home office, so sometimes I find myself working too much, but I guess when you like what you are doing, the only person you have to convince you are not working too much is your:
[=A]

[*]Pick two from A, B & C
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