HTML = How Terribly Math-Like

Today I'm back at work after four glorious days in Classroom 3 of my company's Education Center learning HTML and other, more-complicated aspects of Web publishing. I spent all last week (a short one, thanks to Labor Day) enjoying 9 to 4:30 workdays, free breakfasts, and hourly breaks. The class I took was super-informative and incredibly educational---especially for me, a definitive non-IT person.

The first day and a half or so, we learned the basics of HTML (that's hypertext markup language, for those of you who have better things to do than decipher silly technological acronyms), which was interesting, fun, and relatively easy, compared to what would come later in the week. I now understand tags and attributes and am comfortable working in TextPad. If you wanted me to, I could produce for you a simple little Web page with text, images, anchors (links to other pages and Web sites), tables, and frames. From scratch!

About halfway into Day 2, however, we moved from HTML to Web servers and how they work (i.e., "the server side"). I had to really, really concentrate to understand; and even then, I was barely getting it. I had specific questions, too---all pertaining to how I could get a Web site of my own uploaded to a Web server to share with the world. I tried not to reveal my intentions, though, since ostensibly I was attending this class to build the skills necessary to help my department create a Web site sometime in the future. (Yawn.) My questions were along the lines of, "Could a person turn her own home computer into a Web server?" (Answer: Yes, but it's a really, really bad idea.) "Are there companies that sell Web-server space to individuals?" (Answer: Yes, and some will do it for cheap.) "Once you've got access to a Web server for publishing your Web pages, how do you upload your HTML files?" (Answer: Using FTP software.) That type of thing. I just think I would really enjoy building a simple little Web site for myself, but I don't want to begin creating the pages without knowing what comes after that, you know?

By the third and fourth days of class, my head was reeling, and I honest to god had flashbacks of high-school calculus. I mean, the server-side scripts responsible for making Web content interactive? And the script languages themselves? Rough, I'm telling you. It's like when I took algebra in seventh grade with Mr. Tresselt: I was capable of understanding it and applying it, but only with many extra hours of one-on-one tutoring in the mornings before homeroom. It worked that way with SL, my HTML instructor last week: He'd instruct the class from the front of the room, I'd concentrate so hard my brain would buzz, he'd finish up, my eyes would glaze over, and I'd raise my hand for some extra one-on-one reinforcement of concepts he'd covered that my brain hadn't quite processed. Even then, I'd get the general gist, but not the nitty gritty of the individual script languages or their syntax. And when we had to create Web forms that sent information to a SQL Server database? Brutal. I barely, barely clung to the do-it-yourself exercise.

On Friday, our last day, the instructor lectured a bit on search engines, how they work, which are the best, etc. He also talked about the different browsers, and cookies, and other Internet-related subjects that are no sweat for IT people but that have always seemed sort of incomprehensible to me. One cool site he showed us was one in which you can type any operational Web address and find out how many other Web sites link to it in their pages. (I typed in www.waxingprosaic.blogspot.com and a big fat zero popped up. Hee.)

Also on our last day, SL, the instructor, entertained us by making animal shapes from balloons. (He's self-taught, if you're wondering.) He also distributed the exam, which I took and which caused me major anxiety---again taking me right back to my schooldays, when I'd study my bloomin' arse off for a test, only to find that none of the concepts I studied were part of the test whatsoever. Errgghh. After practically assaulting SL to get him to reveal some of the more-difficult answers after I'd turned my answer sheet in, I discovered that the guesses I'd made were good ones, so I don't think I failed the test after all, as I'd feared I might. I mean, really: How lame would it be to fail a test your very own company created? And that you once copyedited?! And whose answer key you've seen before?! Soooo lame.

So, yeah. Now I'm back at work, and frankly, it blows. Turns out that in my absence, a coworker I liked and was just getting to know better was suddenly fired one afternoon. Peculiar. And it's all very hush-hush, so I've no idea what happened. It's unsettling. Plus, I miss the free oatmeal and afternoon snacks in the Education Center. On the other hand, I've missed chatting and e-mailing with the other editors, so I guess it all evens out.

Well, there you have it. I've got no clever conclusion to tack onto the end here, so....that is all.