Happy Thanksgiving

Yes it’s Happy Thanksgiving to all who read this blog. I have much to be thankful for, including a compassionate Savior, a lovely and supportive wife, and 4 wonderful kids and their families.

The site, http://www.vietnam-air-rescues.com/ has been completely redone (again). David found films of two of my rescues I had forgotten about. Soon they will be up for viewing on the site.

‘Meanwhile, back at the ranch’, as they used to say, my problems with the web page were mounting. Sometimes the page would appear as I wanted, sometimes not. David wanted me to design the page using ftp, but out of Word, not Excel. Mark wanted me to use a commercial web preparation program.

Both would mean essentially starting all over from scratch, which I was reluctant to do. After much agony, I decided to follow David’s advice, primarily because I was (semi) comfortable with ftp by now and I feared learning a web preparation program might consume several weeks before I was ready to tackle my own stuff.

My reservations concerning Word revolved around my previous experience with having extreme difficulty keeping pictures in a particular spot on the page. They just seemed to jump around for no apparent reason and I was unable to bring them back where I wanted them.

So, I gave Word a try. Sure enough, the pictures would not stay in place. Worse yet, I could not get a three column layout to work. I knew there must be a way, but it wasn’t working for me. The solution to this problem, Mark told me, was text boxes.

Aha! Text boxes appeared to work. Now, it seemed, I was in business. So, I began the laborious task of laying out both web pages (Main and Sample) once again, this time in Word. Alas, when I transferred them to the web site, a whole new crop of problems appeared.

Now, in addition to truncated words, my three columns began to jump up to cover the title. Sometimes they would drop back down, often as not, they wouldn’t. I was ready to tear my hair. I wanted to get this project over. I had used up my two weeks estimate and spent a lot of money, but nothing would work reliably.

And, the program had grown. In addition to the ‘Main’ and ‘Sample’ pages, I now had ‘Tell a Friend’, ‘Unlock’ and ‘Gift’ pages. Worse yet, the ‘Gift’ page ran to four pages itself. It soon became apparent that I had overused the text box idea, so I went back and eliminated text boxes from all pages except the ‘Main’ page, which needed them to keep the columns straight.
All through this, David and Mark keep me going with ideas and corrections which vastly improved the looks of the whole thing.

More to come. See you at http://www.vietnam-air-rescues.com/

Dave

The Slacker Returns

Uh oh, a long break between scribblings. Kaye and I made a fast and unplanned trip to Indiana to visit Eric, then down to Branson, MO for our 47th wedding anniversary, back to Kansas City, then home so I could fulfill a speaking engagement and attend the Gideons meeting. The next morning we dashed out the door to Wichita for some meetings there. Back home Saturday night. At any rate, that is my excuse.

Back to the story…I tried everything I could think of over the next few days, badgering David and Mark mercilessly to the point I feared that they would quit answering my increasingly anguished phone calls at odd hours of the day…

While all this was going on, Kaye heard about something called ‘Tell a Friend’—a program that allows visitors to recommend the site to their friends, usually in exchange for a ‘gift’ of some sort. Kaye’s friend mentioned a particular company that she had heard did good things.

I looked at their web page and decided to purchase from them. After paying for the product, and while in the throes mentioned above, I decided to use their demo to check out the ‘gift’. Imagine my surprise when the ‘gift’ turned out to be a very thinly disguised ad for their services!

I had naively assumed I would be able to supply my own ‘gift’, but now I wasn’t sure. What I was sure of was that I did not want to send people an ad for this company! I tried calling customer support with two questions: “Could I supply my own ‘gift’ or did I have to use theirs?” and, “Assuming I had to use theirs, could they give me assurances the ‘gift’ would not be an ad?”

The person I talked to either could not, or would not, answer my questions. Instead, I was advised I would have to wait a few days for an answer. I waited an entire week to get some ridiculous answer that was not even remotely related to what I had inquired about. Needless to say, I had entirely lost confidence in these people.

While I was waiting, I ran across another program which offered the same features (for the same price), but also offered the opportunity to run a contest along with the free ‘gift’. So, I spent another $97.00 to purchase Tell a Friend Pro, www.tafpro.com , from Paul Galloway.

If you are in the market for this type of program, this is the guy to see. He didn’t mind taking a hopeless novice like me and patiently walking me through the steps necessary to get set up.
I was so disgusted with the other company’s lack of assistance or anything even resembling customer support that I didn’t even bother asking for a refund because I did not want to have to jump through all the hoops they had set up.

More in a few days. Visit the site! www.vietnam-air-rescues.com