The Red and Black

I've learned a few interesting lessons this week. Most of what I've learned is useless trivia, mind you, but some of it was worthwhile.

For instance, did you know that a few centuries ago in England, honor was slang for chastity? So, when Robin Hood was fighting for Maid Marion's honor, he was not only fighting to save her reputation, but he also wanted the right to go to bed with her? Wow. I had no idea. No wonder that movie was rated PG-13.

I also learned that the Princess Diana Beanie Babies are selling for $350 in some circles. This was pretty interesting to me, because I have one (I got it for free). Now, no one in their right mind would sell this priceless purple stuffed animal, but it's interesting to know that something so small could be worth so much.

These two facts were pretty easy to come by. I learned the honor thing in one of my English classes, and one of my friends told me about the beanie baby.

I did, however, learn something important this week. An entire language. In two hours. This was not by choice, but by necessity. No, it's not like Starvin' Marvin from "South Park" came to my door and I had to learn his language of clicking and smacking so that I could communicate with him. No, it was nothing as exciting as that.

I learned HTML, the language for Web pages.

Why in the world would I want to learn that? you may ask. Heck, I asked myself the very same question Tuesday night as I was sitting in the computer lab.

Well, I was trying to write a Web page about "The Faerie Queene" for my Elizabethan literature class. This would have been easy if I was at a lab that had Netscape Composer. Of course, all of those labs are either restricted to graduate students or they close at some crazy time like five o'clock.

So, I was playing around on the computers at Creswell, and I decided that I would download the Composer program. I thought it would make my project much easier, since it's like writing a Web page on a word processor. I also didn't think it would take very long.

Boy, was I wrong. A mere 45 minutes later, the program was installed. A little message came up on the screen that said I needed to reboot the computer before I could run the program.

No problem. I may not be a computer whiz, but I do know that reboot means turn the computer off and then turn it back on. So, that's what I did. Then, the inevitable happened. (Imagine horrifying music playing in the background.)

The computer deleted the program because it was not licensed software or something like that. Arghhhhhhh! Forty-five minutes of time, wasted.

So, I decided that instead of whining about it, I would just get my computer-whiz boyfriend to teach me HTML. It couldn't be too hard. It only took me five years to learn French. Why should it take more than a few minutes to learn HTML?

Chris came over, and a few hours later, I was (sort of) adept at writing Web text. Of course, I needed a lot of help at first, but he only missed a few hours of paid work so that he could help me out for free. (Don't worry, I'm taking him out to dinner to repay him.)

So, over the past week, I have spent over 15 hours in the computer lab writing a page in HTML that would probably take only three or four hours using Netscape Composer. But that's OK. I've got a beautiful web page. If you don't believe me, check it out at (www.arches.uga.edu/~lisalisa/faerie).

You may think I'm crazy, but I get a kick out of doing things the hard way. I guess the best way to describe myself would be to think of those Martha Stewart-ish types who, instead of making lemonade when life gives me lemons, I go to the trouble to make "mile high lemon meringue pie." And to tell you the truth, I usually wind up pretty proud of myself.

– Lisa Hunt is a junior in English.

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