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@ -185,109 +185,62 @@ If you want to donate financial support for the creation of this zine (and all t
\section{Yesterday}
My early experiences with computers were on TRS-80s (aka, ``Trash-80s'') and Commodore machines, and in those days if you wanted a computer to do something you had to write that program yourself or copy it laboriously line-by-line out of a magazine like \textit{Byte}. If you were lucky, a friend might have a program on a floppy disk and could make a copy for you—if you had a blank floppy disk. A 5\nicefrac{1}{4} inch floppy disk cost around \$1.50 in 1980, which is roughly \$6.00 today. While I might have been able to scrape together \$1.50 once or twice back then, I couldn't do it on a regular basis. As a result, I type really fast.
A long time ago my stepdad had created a successful business screen-printing t-shirts. He had been in the music business (there is a long story here, but it doesn't fit in with this zine) and he realized he could make more money if he printed and sold his own band shirts.
By the time I got to college, the computer labs were mainly just terminals that would allow you to access the mainframes that may as well been in Narnia for all we knew. The concept of a computer was still fairly abstract to a lot of people back then. Families that actually had a computer were still quite rare, and as the potential uses for them were still quite limited in those days, few people saw value in owning one. They were not the absolute necessity that they are now. They were more like a toy, a plaything, something that you used two or three times a week and then went back to your normal life.
At some point, my parents decided to try to replicate this success. As, at the time, the sure key to success was to have a website (thanks Oprah!), I got roped in, because a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I had uploaded some HTML files to a free web server and told them "look, I made a web page!" They immediately assumed I was an expert and knew everything about putting a business online, and could build a web page that would have us making millions of dollars in mere weeks.
Before I went back to college in 2008, I had been working on an ancient Macintosh. I had managed to inherit a series of used Macintoshes or purchase some that had been deacquisitioned by our local university.\footnote{If you like bargains, your local college's or university's suplus sales are your new best friend.} Thanks to a billing error, my parents came into a small amount of money and bought me a Mac Mini.
This was not the case, of course. What I learned was this:
Anyway, I went back to college with that Mac Mini, a dial-up internet connection, and Microsoft Word. Oddly, that was enough in 2008.
\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
\item Dial-up internet sucks.
\item Clarke's Third Law normally applies, but in the case of your parents, even doubly so.
\item Oprah is a great disseminator of false information.
\item Never go into business with your family, especially your parents.
\end{itemize}
Well, not quite. I lived in the boondocks and things were well enough along at that point that the internet was an absolute necessity. The lack of high-speed internet (and of a laptop) meant that I either spent ridiculous amount of time at home trying to do research, or that I spent of bunch of time on campus in the computer lab doing research and putting a bunch of downloaded pdfs on a jump drive.
The useful things I learned from that experience were how to be really good at HTML (and without CSS, you had to be really good at copy and paste\footnote{i.e., copypasta}, how an FTP client works (in this case, Transmit\footnote{\kref{https://panic.com/transmit/}{https://panic.com/transmit/}} on a Mac), and that cPanel really sucks. (If your webhost uses cPanel, \textit{you} can do better, and they \textit{should} do better.)
But made it work. I managed to get my English degree, pick up some honors along the way, pick up a scholarship that allowed me to take just one more class, and I did it. It could be done then. I'm not so sure about now.
That business died after three or four orders, which was probably a good thing. (Did I mention you should never go into business with your family, especially your parents? I f you make that mistake, get out while the getting is good, or at least before irreparable harm is done.)
It was a lot more work than it should have been, though. Computers were supposed to be the great equalizer, and when they failed to achieve that, then the Internet (which was always spelled with a capital letter for a while) was supposed to be the great equalizer. But it was not. As Wiliam Gibson said, ``The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.''
But it did set me up with some usable skills when I went back to college. I started substitute teaching once I had enough credits to qualify for that, and so decided to create a website as soon as I could as a marketing tool. And thus, \texttt{mrodle.net} was born.
Could have I have done better or done more with high-speed internet and a laptop. I have no doubt that I could have.
Unfortunately, it did not live long. I had seriously underestimated how much money was required just to exist and when it came to putting gas in the tank \textit{or} paying webhosting fees, it was an easy decision. One of those things was helping me make money and the other was not. Something had to go, and so the website went. (Fortunately, it was so short-lived that \texttt{archive.org} never caught wind of it.)
But this not the question that haunts my days and nights. I'm fairly good in the classroom, but I'm a fair to middlin' scholar. No doubt there are far better scholars than myself. But while I made due with dial-up internet, they may not have had internet at all, or even a computer.
As it turns out, the education community is not as progressive as some people would lead you to believe. Once they find something that works, they are loathe to switch to something new. Having a website wouldn't help me find a substitute gigs. Only being a good substitute teacher would help me do that. Who knew?
I always think that the person may have discovered a cure for cancer could quite possibly have shit their guts out and died at the age of five in some third-world country simply because some first-world millionaire couldn't figure out how to make a profit out of feeding them or providing them with health care. But had this person grown old enough to develop this cure, there is no doubt that a hell of a lot of first world companies would have been lining up at the door to exploit that cure for profit.
Anyway, I did keep trying. The educational-industrial complex was pushing ``Web 2.0''\footnote{which was basically social media, but also included blogs} really hard. I tried making another website (\kref{https://kjodle.net/}{kjodle.net}, which survives to this day) and my webhost at the time offered a one-click install of WordPress which at that time was pretty much a blogging platform and little else. So I clicked on the ``install'' button, wondered for a moment what I had done, and thus, \textit{The Big Bad Book Blog} was born.\footnote{\kref{https://bookblog.kjodle.net/}{bookblog.kjodle.net}}
There is a philosophical word for this position: hypocrisy.
As a newly minted English teacher, I enjoyed having a place where I could talk about all the books I'd been reading. But as a nerdy computer person, having a WordPress blog made me really reach.
There is also a biological word for this position: parasitism.
It wasn't just html and css, for a start, which were the only two technologies I knew how to use to create a website. Rather, it was PHP and JavaScript, with MySQL database attached. And while I was happy with the theme I had chosen, I was not 100\% happy with its appearance. I began tinkering under the hood, which WordPress requires that you do in a rather particular way, meaning I had to level up, so that is what I did. I threw myself into the world of PHP, JavaScript, and WordPress child themes.
But there is also the philosophical position that this person who may have started WWII could also have shit their guts out and died at the age of five in some backwater central European village and nobody bothered to provide them with food or healthcare, and so the greed of capitalism has averted a massive disaster. \textit{Qué será, será} and all that.
It was tough work, but I enjoyed it. At this point, I was pretty much substitute teaching full time (and being good at it meant my calendar was full), but while it filled my days, it left my nights free to work on this.
But all of that is hypothetical. It's all what might have been. It's an interesting intellectual experiment (which I hesitate to describe as ``fun to think about'' but that's the English language for you. The denotations are the same, but the connotations could not be more different. It's kind of the difference between ``have a nice day'' and ``enjoy the next 24 hours as much as you can.'')
I eventually got to a point where I could create not just a child theme, but also fully blown themes for WordPress, and plugins to boot. Again, tough work, but very, very satisfying.
So let's talk about what's not hypothetical, but about what's actually possible. But wait, that's not a yesterday thought—that's a tomorrow thought.
And because I was having problems finding work as a teacher (so many other people decided to get into teaching at the same time, so the market was saturated), I thought that maybe I could become a developer. Why not? After all, I knew that I could learn whatever I needed to, as long as I set my mind to it.
At any rate, I emerged from college with an English degree and a newly refreshed teaching certificate. My grades were good enough that I managed to earn a place in Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society.\footnote{\kref{https://www.english.org/}{https://www.english.org/}} I had a website, and had recently installed a Wordpress blog to talk about books.\footnote{\kref{https://bookblog.kjodle.net/}{https://bookblog.kjodle.net/}} ``Web 2.0'' was a buzzword and we still thought that social media could transform the world for the better.
It was a happier, sunnier time, after all, despite the recession—at least if you knew something about ``coding''. I put that in quotation marks because it is a fuzzy word with fairly nebulous meaning. After all, I learned ``coding'' at the age of 12 by programming a TRS-80 in BASIC.\footnote{TRS-BASIC, to be precise} I doubt that anybody now or in 2010 would hire me on the basis of \textit{that} particular skillset.
We were wrong. Social media is a great way to make the world better. It's also a great way for nut jobs and conspiracy theorists and racists and fascists to connect with each other and increase their levels of hate and ignorance exponentially. What have we done?
But I did try. I did do some freelance development work for WordPress. I had learned how to make child themes fairly easily, and got a fiar amount of work from people who wanted to customize their blogs, but had neither the time nor the skill nor the inclination to learn the skills required for this. Was I making enough money to pay the bills? No. Was I making enough money for a cheap, greasy pizza and a six-pack on the odd weekend? Yep!
I have previously mentioned the educational-industrial complex and its very aggressive embrace of what was then called ``Web 2.0'' and how just devolved into little more than social media.
I was happy with that level of success and wanted more, but there are only so many hours in a day. I didn't have the time to learn everything I needed to know (I admit that JavaScript still eludes me) and I certainly didn't have any more money for coursework or marketing at that point.
Because I wanted to be seen as someone who could ride this wave into the future, I decided to embrace it wholeheartedly. I decided to get a website first, so I looked around, found a webhost (who was also a domain registrar—convenient), plunked down \$30, and I was in business.
Plus, I had just graduated with an English degree with the goal of being a teacher. I was still substituting in the hopes of landing a teaching job, though, so I taught myself how to use Moodle (which is a terrible name really, and one of the main reasons why software development and software marketing should be completely separate circles in the Venn diagram).
This was my first real experience with a server and FTP. I had made websites before, usually as something free (that is, along the line of GeoCities) or something similar through my ISP (AOL used to give you a free website) but these were all web-based uploads. You had no control over anything, basically. They would put ads and the top and bottom of your web pages and hoped that your page would interesting enough and would attract enough eyeballs that it would not just cover the server costs but also feed the shareholders—oink, oink. (In point of fact, these usually covered the server costs and then some, but the shareholders are always hungry, no matter how much they are fed. So these things are doomed to failure by their very business model, as they are always based on ``growth''. In reality, creativity and genius ar unlimited, but the amount of time and energy we have to look at those things are. Capitalism is a snake that eats its own tail.)
And…it got me nowhere. Summer came, and I was out of substituting work, so I signed up with a temp agency, specifying that I was looking for second-shift work only. My thought was that if I could finagle a teaching interview, it would be during the day and so I wouldn't need to take time off from work. Also, assuming that I \textit{couldn't} find a teaching job, I could sub during the day and keep the second shift gig as a way to ensure I wouldn't starve.
I had to learn FTP, which meant that I needed an FTP \textit{client}. I had no idea what a client was, so I had to learn some new vocabularly. It was like being in elementary schools again, where new words were printed in boldface and then defined in the margin. But I eventually figured out (through learning JavaScript) the difference between client-side (your computer) and server-side (their computer).
That was the plan anyway, but it wasn't exactly how things worked out. The agency sent me to interview for a position at a small local manufacturing company that needed someone to operate equipment and keep an eye on inventory during the second shift.
With an FTP client in hand, I could now upload files to my web site far faster than i could via a web based file upload, perhaps because FTP clients don't need to wait for ads to load. I had no idea how to properly view these files locally before I uploaded them to the web, so the only way I could check that everything was correct was to upload them and then refresh my web browser.
What I didn't know (and what the agency also didn't know) was that they also needed someone to completely rewrite all of their technical documentation\footnote{•}, and to create a training program out of whole cloth and then implement and manage that program. They also needed someone to handle their domestic and MRO\footnote{Maintenance, Repairs, Operations—that is, paint, duct tape, toilet paper} purchasing as the part-time person they had doing this currently spent most of her time buying furniture on eBay for her rental properties.\footnote{True story!}
FTP gave me a lot will have control over a website that I had never had before but if i've learned anything think from reading comic books it's that great power comes with great responsibility. Sure you can do more things now and rely less on your hosts for certain things (and learning neat .htaccess tricks is but the first of these) but that means that you must assume more responsibility for things. If you screw up a config file it's entirely possible that your web host has a backup copy somewhere and you can file a support ticket and they will eventually get around to replacing it. Even better is when you screw up a config file but you have a backup version of it and can just FTP it to your site. The ideal situation would be to understand that config file well enough that you never make a mistake with it but that's not going to happen we're all human we all make mistakes. To err is human, to have an uncorrupted back up is divine.
I've never had a job interview take such a dramatic turn before (which was the first of many red flags—in retrospect this place looked like a May Day parade in Leningrad) but the things they laid out—paid time off, a retirement plan, health insurance (including vision and dental)—were too much to resist. I pushed my tongue against a sore tooth and agreed to take the job. We all shook hands and I left, wondering what on earth I had gotten myself into.
But yeah let's talk about backups. If you're going to have a website than you need to seriously consider handling backups on your own. Sure, your web host might make weekly backups, but that is to cover their ass not yours. Their backups are there to cover their fuck ups not yours. The only way to recover from your own fuck ups is to manage your backups.
Quite a bit, actually, as it turned out. I thought I might stay a year get caught up on some things, and then try to get a teaching job again, but the educational-industrial complex is a jealous god who does not trust people who walk away, so that was not possible.
That's not always a simple thing. Because Web 2.0 included blogs I decided to start a blog where i could use my newly minted English degree to talk about books. My web hosts at the time had a one-click install for WordPress which was then considered to be a blogging platform and little else, so I clicked once and the Big Bad Book Blog was born.
I ended up staying with that company for almost six years, despite the fact that I gave notice on three separate occasions. In retrospect, it was a terrible experience (and the subject of an entirely different zine) but I learned a lot. (The main thing I learned was to never work for a small company with no HR department where the boss is also the owner, and who is a rich boy who was born on third base but walks around thinking he hit a triple. But I digress.)
Until then i had been fairly comfortable with everyday run of the mill HTML and CSS files. But nothing is perfect right out of the box and iIfound that my newly formed book bblog was less than satisfying to me. Changes were obviously needed.
The challenge/problem for me is that WordPress is a web application that uses PHP, CSS, and Javascript. I could handle CSS, but I needed to figure out PHP and Javascript.
So yep, Ihad to learn PHP at least in a rudimentary way, and I had to learn some Javascript in an even more rudimentary way.
These were not impossible tasks.
The problem for me was that while CSS and Javascript are client-side technologies, PHP is a server-side technology.
Let's back up a bit but to understand how this works. It's actually pretty complicated but I'm going to present a greatly simplified version of this.
When you visit a website, there are two computers involved (mainly)—yours and one that is actually hosting all the files that make up that website.
Your computer is called the client computer. When you view a website on your computer you are looking at it in a web browser which is a client-side technology. That is, it exists on your computer. If you don't like the web client you have now you can install a different one.
On the other hand all those files that your client is downloading and presenting to you as a web page must exist somewhere. And they do—on a server somewhere. When you sign up for a website what you are doing is agreeing to pay money for some space on a computer that has been can configured to serve those files to whomever asked for them. In other words, it is a server.
Like i said you can use an FTP client to move files over to your server but if you must make a mistake in one of those files and don't catch it before you upload it then it's there for all the world to see. Even worse you can upload a file with serious errors in it that causes your entire website to not be available. Uh-oh. that's not good.
The obvious solution is to do all your practice runs in a localhost environment.
I got myself a web site and got myself a blog but the educational-industrial complex said that web 2.0 was the next big thing. I thought that having those things would give me a leg up on to the (then) very tight job market.
Alas the educational industrial complex does not exist to do right by students. They largely exist to extract as much as profit as they possibly can. (Guess what---their lobbyists are also behind a lot of the legislation that requires these expenditures. Your tax dollars are not going toward making your child education better, but toward making rich men richer. Yay, capitalism!
Part of the problem with the educational system in the United States is that it's coupled to so many other things. For every teacher that loves their subject matter and once to change kids lives there is at least one (and often two or three teachers) that are there so they can have the summer off or coach the golf team.
In reality they are right—teaching as a profession a job it should not be a cause but as long as there are so many inequities and inequalities in our society teaching will always be a cause because young people are the most effective place to make a chain.
The irony here is that while a teaching profession appears to be very progressive and embracing of new technologies, that is only true on the surface. Under that surface it is deeply deeply conservative. Principals don't want to hire teachers who might rock the boat and teachers are deeply territorial. I suppose the latter is only to be expected when you work in a chronically under funded and under appreciated field.
An aside.
I saw a tweet a couple of years ago by someone in law enforcement who was responding to the ``defund the police''' initiative complaining about how hard it is to be a cop these days and that no other profession has ever been the victim of a defunding initiative. I'm sorry that simply is not true—Republican law makers have been trying to defend public education my entire light.
My web Host offered word press that a one-click installer which meant that you enter few details, click the install button and voila! You have a word press blog. You might know absolutely nothing about web technologies but suddenly here you are easy peazy mac and cheesey—with a blog.
I don't remember exactly when this was but it was before tablets and mobile phones were ubiquitous.
I like having a blog to review books as I thought it would put me head and shoulders over any other potential teaching candidate and getting things done on paper always helps me organize my thoughts.
Alas, I was not entirely happy with the appearance of my blog. At this point knew HTML and I knew CSS but I knew nothing about PHP which is what WordPress is built with. Nevertheless i jumped right into WordPress built-in file editor and started pressing buttons.
This is of course exactly what you are not suppposed to do. I made plenty of mistakes and bolloxed the whole thing up and had to start over from scratch more than once.
It was fun but it was also frustrating to have to start over so i did what i should have done in the first place and RTFM. I learned about the proper way to edit your themes, which is that you don't—you create a child theme and do your mischief there. I learned a lot more about HTML and CSS and delved into the world of PHP and Javascript enough that I was able to develop my own plugins and eventually themes from scratch.
I found a highly adaptable theme that I really loved (Graphene) and became an expert in it and started helping out in its support forums. The theme's developer appreciated my efforts and made me a moderator in those forums and also gave me free access to the mobile-friendly version of the theme. It was a great time and I was learning a lot.
This was back when mobile was just becoming a thing and a lot of websittes had two versions of their site—a desktop version first and a mobile version second but at some point people began accessing websites more on their mobile devices than on a desktop so that process is now reversed—we develop first for mobile and then usually later for desktop, sometimes poorly. If you've ever been to a website that looked fine on your phone but looked like an utter shit show on your computer this is why.
I was not, however, getting a teaching job. I was getting lots of opportunities as a substitute teacher but that was because I could follow a lesson plan, I could manage a class room and keep kids in line, and I would actually teach and then wander around the classroom and make sure kids were learning.
The main thing I learned is to never underestimate yourself. When a former student told me that his current employer had openings and that I should apply, I did. Six weeks later, I was sitting in the training room of my current employer, which brings us to today.
\section{Today}