HTM-Hell

When I received Dr. Gibbs' email this past Saturday, I immediately started panicking. His directions of "by Wednesday that you'll be able to have installed a web server on your computer according to the instructions linked to on the syllabus. ideally, you'll be able to create an extremely simple html page on your own and see it rendered in your browser to make sure everything is working" were far more terrifying than I'm sure he expected/intended them to be, or maybe not (ponderings for another day). Anyway, once I convinced myself there were no satisfactorily good reasons to hit the "drop class" button, I went about following the directions. It was as if the programming gods sensed a hint of confidence in me and went about their sabotage.

I tried to download the WAMP server and hit problems from the beginning. I uninstalled/reinstalled twice before deciding to turn to Google. I realized that I needed to update the Visual C++ Redistributable on my computer before I could actually go further with the server. I was hoping this would solve the problem, so I reinstalled again. Know what happened? Yep, I got another error message! I have a feeling that I will be seeing a lot of those in the coming months.

Turning to social media, I was able to vent my frustration on Facebook (sometimes you just need more than 140 characters). Thankfully, my level-headed friends who didn't want to, at that point, ignite their computers provided me with some troubleshooting techniques. The simple fix: I didn't update the Visual C++ thing enough. After another round of updating/downloading/praying, I finally got everything to load successfully. However, WAMP was still not cooperating. Does this count as productive failure?

I got really tired of seeing this.

 
Time works in mysterious, glorious ways.

After a few hours' break, I returned to the scene of the programming crime and was astonished to find that WAMP did download successfully and was ready to operate. How did it happen? I have no idea. I'm just glad it did. Now, on to the html stuff. It's truly amazing what an at-home crash course in programming can do. Google is helpful, and I've discovered W3 Schools Online Tutorials in the process. It took about 4 hours, but I finally have a very basic html page to call my own! There was definitely a high that came from figuring out how a bunch of tags and symbols and random words work together to actually create something. I introduced myself to the world. Do I feel super confident now that I've made this first step? Not really. Am I ready to use this information and keep going with it? Of course, but that also scares me quite a bit. I'm glad to be in a class with individuals possessing a vast array of experience levels who are more than willing to share resources and commiserate with triumphs and failures.