I recently realized that I haven’t told this story to anyone close to me. Not even my wife knew. That’s why when I tell people who have known me for years, they are blown away by this story and I thought I would share it with you.
About 13 years ago I had some time on my hands and I needed to find a job that I would like and make lot of money doing. I needed a trade if you will. I had access to a library and I would get the paper and I would read the classifieds each day and analyze the ads for a job that I thought would be the right fit. At that time the dotCom industry was booming and the largest section of the classifieds was related to IT and specifically the Internet. So I started looking at those ads and determining what the number one skill was that they wanted. That skill was to be able to write HTML code.
HTML code it the backbone of the Internet. If you don’t know HTML.. Well, if you didn’t know HTML then, you couldn’t build a website. These days you can get away with it without using HTML but you aren’t really getting the full use of the Internet. On top of that you need to learn CSS and JavaScript at a minimum plus learn a server sided language. Anyway, HTML was that skill.
I looked in the library for a book on HTML and because of the location of this library it wasn’t really a place that would have books on this subject. The library had a new librarian who wanted to introduce inter-library loan. I was the first person to start using it. They had these big indexes of books that had been published recently (We didn’t have access to the Internet) and so I went through these indexes and looked for books about HTML. I found one called HTML for Dummies and I requested it.
The book came in the mail and I quickly started to teach myself HTML.
I had been fascinated with computers since I started using them in 1985. I lived in Germany and our school had funding from the Department of Defense. So we had a computer lab furnished with Apples. I think back on how funny it was that they had the new Macintosh computer and how it was this idol that no one touched.
In middle school, I wanted to get into the computer class so I signed up for keyboarding because that’s what class I thought it was. I ended up learning how to use a typewriter for a whole year… Argh. The next year I figured it out and was learning some BASIC computer languages. I learned right away that you could do more than the stupid little things they had us doing. I wanted to learn how to write a program to password protect something. So while everyone else was playing Carmen San Diego, I figured out how to write this code and execute it. (Also, without the Internet.)
In high school, in my combined Geometry honors class, we got to participate in a Pilot program funded by Apple once again. They had a fancy new computer lab and our class was broken up into teams. Each team was to take a chapter of the textbook and create a learning tutorial of the chapter. I don’t know what model these computer were, but I marveled at the fact that these things only took one minute to start up and be functional. We used a program called Hyperstudio and we had to create an awesome user interface.
My team was very creative. I remember one member was Daniel Duff who was this art wizard. I don’t remember who the other member was. So we built this thing, and while everyone else was just doing the bare minimum to make it through we created a multimedia experience with music, pictures, and colors. The teachers were so impressed they sent the guidance counselors and principal to check it out. I remember them telling me that they knew of people that were giving away big money in California to people who could do things like this.
So here I was with my HTML for Dummies book in hand with only two weeks to borrow it. I had to teach myself HTML and I did. About that same time I got a brochure in the mail for a place that I wanted to go live at and I designed my first website around that brochure. I gained access to a computer with Notepad on it and made my first website, without access to the Internet. Without any help because no one where I was at knew what websites were or how they worked.
I ended up moving to that place and I was ready to get a job and right when I did, the dotCom bubble burst and there were no jobs in that industry. I ended up working in the manufacturing plants in the industrial parks where I met my beautiful wife. I learned more about processes and procedures than anyone in the Internet industry would care to learn. And finally four years later I went back to school to learn more than just HTML and shortly after that I made my jump into the industry.
