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Welcome to BenWoods.com
Those of you who have mastered the art of building a Web site have probably encountered the most important tool known to designers: the protractor.
Coming in second would have to be tables, the backbone to many pages you have visited in your lifetime, or at least within the last three weeks. Tables are the most primitive of the HTML tags because people like to have things in nice readable fashion, excluding tabloid magazines. Most people prefer tabloids that look similar to newspapers more than 40 years ago, which contained at least 343 headlines on each page.
I have one simple request for Christmas -- that someone, ANYONE, will finally be named president. Yes, we have George W. and Al, but if they name Al W. George out of Minot, N.D., instead, that would be fine.
What caused this whole problem? The people of the United States, of course, always trying to stir up trouble, whether it's at the local moose lodge or bingo hall. Can't people fill in the correct circles? Can't people count votes right? Can't people use turning signals when changing lanes?
Is this what the world is coming to? People sitting 6 inches away from each other will not talk to each other but instead, write short e-mails?
An example:
From: Someone
Sent: November, Wednesday 1, 2000 11:41 AM
To: Someone else
Subject: Outside
Did you see that?
Maybe you are one of those people who are completely terrified of computers, the Internet and lemon-flavored cough drops. If so, you probably are no where near being able to read this column, and if I had to guess, you are most likely hiding in a basement in Turkey. That is, if they have basements in Turkey. So if you know someone like this, please print this column immediately and send it to them because it could save their life.
I bet you $100 you've visited an online gambling site.
Ha! What a trick. See, if you said no, but I had to pay you, then it would be gambling.
Online gambling, much like the beginning of this column, seems to be frustrating and silly. For the sake of every potential column reader, I've looked at a few online gambling sites and come to a simple conclusion -- I am sick of blinking Web sites.
From the Archive
I haven't quite made it as far as M.C. Hammer, from London to the Bay, but I have made it to Evansville in Indiana and Owensboro and Brandenburg in Kentucky the past two weekends. I've seen a lot of friends I haven't seen in awhile, and I've also made a few new ones.
Thanks to everyone for coming out to support "The Developers" ... and if I haven't made it to your town yet, hopefully I'll be there soon!
(This column was originally published in the Crawfordsville Journal Review on July 9, 1999)
Nomads have wandered through cities during the last two weeks, sold their goods and departed for lands of milk and honey.
They don't leave a trail, but their wares do - usually ashes, perhaps a foul-smelling odor but always a glowing experience.
Fireworks salespeople have rigorous lives. I recently caught up with one such seller, Smokin' Joe Romancandle. What follows is his normal day:
I finally discovered something I could not easily find on the Internet: tickets for the newest Star Wars movie.
Sure, it is still a few days before "Attack of the Clones" opens in the United States, but I should already have tickets in my hand. I'm not claiming to be the biggest Star Wars fan in history. I've never dressed up as Darth Vader in public or dated a girl named Yoda. True, she was from Dagobah. But I do have a lot of Star Wars memorabilia hanging on my walls at home, and all of my action figures are stashed away in places I can get to easily.
I met a guy yesterday who claimed to be Jesus. I asked him how he knew that he was indeed Jesus. He said, "How do you know that I'm not?" I looked at him with a puzzled look on my face. He then said, "How do you know that you're not Him?"
I started to walk away, but I noticed the man speaking to other individuals, pointing in my direction. I could not hear what he was saying. Finally, he shouted, "It takes only one person to have faith!" I wasn't sure what this meant, and I really didn't want to ask him about it.
There was a bit of a buzz recently when America Online changed its instant messenging Terms of Service. The change seems to state that AOL is allowed to use anything posted by users whenever it sees fit. Which, of course, means that if you told a buddy "AOL sucks!" while on AIM, you could be in big trouble and possibly be forced to sit in the back row of a Village People concert.