03/09/99
Man, it's hard to believe that I got this up in less than 24 hours. There are some benefits to having a 8 1/2 month old son, when he's up, so are you.Never the less, it seems that the &*$%^ formatting isn't working properly, especially on the StarCraft page, despite my best efforts. It looks fine in my Browser preview, but when I look at it over the web.... I HATE MICROSOFT!!!
Oh well, to hell with it, I'm just going to leave it alone. It least the EMU and StarCraft sections are up, and hopefully, I can find the time to start searching for more Arcade links...Day 2 tomorrow, where hopefully I find the time to tackle the dreaded Advertising Banners. :)

03/10/99
Day 2 starts off with a bang. It seems I might have overdid it with some of the features I will be adding to this site. I got my advertising stuff at 5 this morning (damn kid) but I also picked up stuff for another submission or contact page, as well as a newsletter program!  :D
I'm just hoping that I have someone to send it to....
You may have noticed that I am no longer using the bullets that much...seems that was what is causing the formatting problems. Easiest web editor to use my ass.
Any way, better go, gonna take the wife and kid out, so I will be back to do the StarCraft section, and continue work on this site. Hopefully, I can find out how to change the wallpaper on "themes" in Frontpage98.

Well the new "bulletless format seems to work a hell of a lot better than using bullets, though it may not be as nice to look at, at least it works. I spent another 2 hours trying to fix the formatting, and I decided to give up on it. If my server lets me, I will upload this, then start on including all the "good" stuff in, including a newsletter? Hehe.
Just joined The Blizzard WebRing! Glad to be aboard.
Added the Advertising as well,though I don't get any credit unless someone buys from them... sucks  :D

03/11/99
Damn, its 6:30 in the morning, and it's already been a long day. First up I had some problems getting the banners up, then I joined the Blizzard ring, only to find out that I couldn't upload. So I continued on the work on the site till I could upload (around 4) So what happens next you ask? Seems my Email is dead. I can get messages, but can't send any out. So I had to download another Email client, and then spend 3 hours on tech support to try and get it back up. You know, it's kind of funny, I have no problems with anything BUT Microsoft....
So I am going to replace every MS program but Windows and FP98 that I have left. There, problem solved.  :)
Oh yeah, working on the pinball links right now.
Slow day for news... Looks like my Email is working, but I keep getting error messages, so bear with me. Made yet more changes. The answering machine and the newsletter both are up and working, I added some more to the sponsor's page, and just tidied up a bit. I got hold of the RingMaster, I am now official! :)

03/12/99
1:36 am: Well, that was fun... only took me a solid 5 hours just to get the theme changes, and I still have all the child pages to do. It was quite a pain in the ass to say the least, but hopefully everything is set properly. It was especially time consuming to say the least working out which text colors work out with which Backgrounds without causing people to melt their eye-balls.
Ruefully though, I am not fixed on the backgrounds, so don't be surprised if  you see more changes as the weeks go by...
As you may have noticed, the bullet formatting got screwed up again, after all that time I put in as well to try and fix it. I just decided to leave it, it wasn't worth the Jail time after I killed Bill Gates. :)

7:00 am: Damn, forgot to sleep! Holy cow, did I make some major changes to the site or what! Redid the entire left side, updated my news, made changes all over the place. I've settled on all the theme colors and everything, so tell me what you think. Time to post the page up and get some sleep.
Oh, by the way, tomorrows big job is to tackle the rest of the StarCraft pages, and maybe something else...

3:14: Just updated the news, and started getting the proper backgrounds in each section. The wife and Kid are STILL asleep... must be nice

9:34: Good thing I have an understanding wife! Just an update,  plus I changed all the section pages to their proper new themes. Time to go and play my first game of SC in a week!

03/13/99
No games for me, I got a email that told me search engines would have problems when searching my site, so I spent all morning putting in META Tags. Now that was fun...

4:11: Damn, must have been really tired....

03/14/99
Damn, did I ever have some major problems. First my page kept giving script errors, followed by FrontPage crashing. Those were the highpoints in the day... sigh

So here's what I did today...
Fixed up all the formatting on the SC page, then changed the layout (again!) and deleted a whole bunch of stuff. Then I redid the entire links page, so it looks a little barren, but I have a lot more to add later
Redid the entire main page... First off FrontPage insisted on making everything tables, which really screws up the formatting, the bullets were a pain in the ass, so I just ripped the whole thing and started over. I then found all the script errors( I hope ), added a new sponsor, fixed the WebRing box,corrected all the links, and then made the main descriptions neater and briefer. Hopefully, the page will load in much faster now.

Now the emu section is next.... so that means my news will be at the most, very brief  if not at all till I get everything to my satisfaction. So to the 2 people who actually visit this site, sorry
CDnow page is down... decided it was easier to delete it than try and fix it.

03/15/99
6:30: It suddenly occurred to me that after uploading this site for the sixth time this morning that I must be the most stubborn person ever (my wife calls it "anal", but that's another story...) Here I thought that everything was starting to look good, and that goddamn FP98 goes right back to it's multi-color script crap. That, and the fact I can't seem to make up my mind on how to present the site appearance, meant constant uploading, redoing the mistakes, uploading, finding more mistakes... You get the picture.
So in the end, I've settled on the format, theme, and the colors. I could have gone with white text like everyone else, but to be quite truthful, all it did was hurt my eyes.
Maybe I should also mention a couple of things. I made choice that  it's more important to have a faster loading site than a "pretty" one. Some of these sites (especially the StarCraft ones) are real nice to say the least, but true fully, I get real pissed at having to wait a couple of minutes for even their banner to load. I'm trying to get my pages loaded at under 30 seconds, and though I'm not making it, I'm getting pretty close.

The other thing is I want to mention what I plan to do in the near future. With any luck, I will have a forum soon, and hopefully a subject to go with it. I also intend to greatly expand my Links section and start reporting on the "company" side of the business. This will all take time, and with the limited amount of ISP hours that I have, may take a long time. Since there is no compassion in my area, there's no unlimited access hours to the Internet, and there doesn't seem to be one coming soon. So I will do the best that a one man operation can do.

Back to doing updates at least 3 times a day. :(  I will try to do my "repairs" to this site in my non-internet time. Damn, think it's time to go to bed... If you are still getting the multi-colored text, all I can say is sorry, This is my 3rd attempt at fixing it, and I am to damn tired to try a 4th.  :P

8:30 PM: Still haven't got the new color text changes in, but there's always hope... Off to the X-Force server  :)

03/17/99
Well, I'm at it again... Here I go changing everything around once more. The surprising thing was I thought it was going to be easy, damn I'm a dummy sometimes. Sigh. This all started when I went on the X-Force server and was talking to Cardinal X, who made some suggestions on how I could improve this site. Well, I kind of figured that it would be a hell of a lot easier if I just redid it. He He
First off, it took a hell of a long time just to do the Banner. I had loaded in a program, only to find after spending 5 hours getting it "just right" that the damn thing was crippleware and I wouldn't be able to use it.

Then I started messing with the formatting, and took almost a full day before I settled on something. Then I had to reconstruct a new site from scratch, since it seems FrontPage has some problems importing files from my other site. And then I decided, boy, time to change the Background! he he he
Anyway, hope you like it.

03/19/99
Well I'm back. Found a whole bunch of problems and stuff that had to be fixed, starting with the I.E.5 Download, Netscape throwing a fit, my server refusing uploads, and it worked from there. On the other hand, I got PinGuide up and running, though in need of serious changes, but I figured to put it up at least. (It only took 6 hours!)

Personally, I think my copy of FrontPage98 is processed by Satan.

So now it's back to doing regular updates, and to make my life even more miserable, I joined the World of Pinball WebRing as well...
Talking about that, I think I will upload this and start updating the arcade section.

03/20/99
1:30 am: Sigh, first major update to  the Arcade/Pinball section, hopefully I will get some more done soon. Had my usual battle with FrontPage, and now Netscape is completely gone. sigh. Oh well, back to work...

2:30 am: damn, more updates to the other sections as well. I've decided to rethink the PinGuide, so I don't do all this work only to find someone else has done it! Still, it all depends on Lotus Smart Suite and how easy it is to use (which it's not) Well, I will have a go at it and we will see.

03/21/99
Well, life's a bitch... even though I updated everything, my ISP crashed. sigh... It's in now I hope, and I will update when I get back from "daddy Duty". Been adding more stuff, including a special ICQ channel among others, but I will tell you about it later.Yikes, better get my butt in gear... sigh
Just updated everything. Time to play SimCity 3000! Can't be bothered to do anything else...

03/21/99
5:00 am: Well, it's now official, I have driven my wife crazy...I just did a quick update to see what was new (nothing) then I started adding in the bookmarks for more sites, and went a little overboard.

Needless to say, this site will get a whole lot bigger very shortly. I think you will notice the changes as they happen ;)
I must be nuts, it"s bad enough that no one ever comes to this site, so what do I do? I expand it even more, which means more work. Sigh. Oh well, that's life right?

Might do some small stuff after this, then a few hours sleep, then back at it. Because Tripod seems to have problems with uploading any file over 50K, I have to do this in spurts, so who knows when you are going to see this. By the way, I seem to have both a ICQ chat group, and a deja-view account set up... wonder how that happened?

Well, stayed up because of the kid, so started on some site additions, most notably PinGuide and the barnes and noble page.Still have tons to do, but at least I got off to a good start... The only problem is getting it into Tripod now.

03/25/99
As I write this, I'm still ticked off. In case you haven't noticed, I have not been able to update this site for a couple days, and won't be able to till the 1st. To put it bluntly, my ISP sucks.
I won't go into the gory details, but it just means that I can't get any thing done that results in using internet time. All I have left is the time to upload this if I can, and that's it for the moment. But as you can see, I've been busy  :)

This is still a work in progress, I've been experimenting with screen wipes and stuff, but I will retool anything that needs fixing once I'm back on-line. I should point out that the site will be a lot larger starting on the 1st, with more sections added.(Told you I've been busy, but that is what makes this so frustrating)
Any how, hopefully this is the last big delay in a long while, so see you soon.

03/26/99
Well once again into the breach... Or in this case wedged into the breach. I managed to get the new design up, only to discover that FrontPage decided to automatically assign pages as watermarks... sigh

Believe it or not, I have spent 3 hours on this and it still doesn't look like I did a damn thing, but trust me, I have. The most important thing was to fix the links on the side of the pages, it seems that they all got broken yesterday, but they are back up (?) as well as work on a couple of new pages and various other stuff. The nice thing about all of this, is at least I'm getting a normal family life. Though a 4 hour shopping trip was something I really would like to avoid in future. But at least I'm stockpiled for the month :)

Anyhow, my Email problems look solved, so that's good news, and my ICQ is working fine, but I still have to call it up from another computer. I can't wait for the 1st to get here!

03/28/99
7:30 AM: Heh, been so busy making changes to the site, that I forgot to update this. For those of you who read this, and are familiar with the previous incarnations, you can see a almost complete redo of the entire site (sigh) Those of you who are here for the first time, here's a brief recap... Added tables to the side, redid all the header banners, added several new sections- Computer Games, Home Console Games, a separate Pinball section, Redid all the links, changed the entire color scheme, Reformatted every scrap of text, decided on a new text color/appearance layout and changed everything, added Images, fixed all the little nagging problems (crossing my fingers on that) and even spell checked the entire site! Doesn't seem like a lot does it! :)

The really sad thing about this, is that I'm only halfway there.

03/30/99
4:15 AM: Been a little while since I last updated this, but to tell the truth it's been nothing but small very time consuming stuff, like making sure all the lines match, and checking the consistence of the color scheme from page to page. Hopefully, it's all done, so I can be ready for when the 1st hits. I still have to check it through a browser, because despite what Microsoft says, what is displayed through the FP Editor isn't usually what comes out when viewed through a browser. I believe that's where most of my format problems have been, because though it looks fine through my editor, it comes out all jumbled in my browser, so I had to " make a correction, check it in my browser, make a correction" on just about everything I did with this new site.

Needless to say, I will never buy a Microsoft program again. I do like I.E.5, in fact I like it better than Netscape. But to be honest, everytime I buy a Microsoft product, I have nothing but headaches. I personally would have deep-sixed FrontPage as soon as my ISP went down, But I'm poor and wouldn't have been able to afford the cost of a new program so I'm stuck with it for the moment. On the other hand, it has been a learning experience, and in fact, I've learned more because FrontPage kept screwing up than I would have if I had a normal working Web Editor.

Heh, just occurred to me that I'm doing a lot of typing, and not really saying anything. I hope to continue to add to this site, I have been mulling over having a separate Contest page, since I seem to run across a lot in my travels. My problem with this is for some strange reason, I just don't like the idea of people coming to this site, bookmarking the contest page, and not bothering with the rest of the site. It just bugs me for some reason. Maybe it's because of the time and effort that I have put into this web site already in the last month, and especially in the last week, where I spent a lot of time and frustration "redoing it properly". We will see... I guess I will have to file it in the " I will sleep on it" section with all the other things I have, like the right hand side box. (Hey, I have nothing else to put there) Better go and do some more work.

03/31/99
Well, almost time. I did some last minute changes. After some though, I decided to remove the background and make it as a box at the top instead. Seems FrontPage had a lot of problems displaying it properly, plus it took forever to download. I updated my site as best I could, so I'm ready to start again in about a hour as I write this. Hopefully, everything works, I have my fingers (and Toes) crossed. See you in a few!

April

04/01/99
Wow, gone for a week, spend 6 hours just catching up with the site update. Wow! Thank goodness I have a Automatic Updater, or I would have run out of time the first shot. I will be basically be just updating everything as much as possible, while adding more sites to the list as I go along. Hopefully, I will start getting "contacts" that will feed me news instead of having to rely on other Web Sites, but I guess you have to start small...
I guess the first thing I should do is continue to add to my Computer Games list and get that up and running. I hope to add at least one a day, so we will see how successful I am. Well, time to put this puppy to bed :)

2:30 PM: Hmm, only took me 3 hours to do a 2nd update... I'm going to bed.

04/02/99
Well, despite the fact it was a slow news day, it still took over 2 hours to update this site. Sigh. As you can see, I've been busy with shivaStore, so that's what I will be working on tonight, getting it tidy and neat. Also updated the other sponsor pages as well with some new contests.

04/03/99
6:00 AM: Well, what can I say. I seem to suffer from that "just one more thing before I go to bed" syndrome. Oh well, at least the wife is asleep and doesn't know about it yet! Just updated everything, plus worked on the shivaStore page some more, added the barnes and noble and the CDnow stuff so it's all one page. I think it looks nice, but I may change the colors yet.

Pretty soon, it will be time to pare down some of the pages, the SC page has 90K IN TEXT!!! Yikes. Oh well, I will do it later...

04/04/99
Hmm, don't feel like saying much today, except it's day one of the "war" between Starcrafters and myself on who can promote each other better. Hehe

Started work on a conversions and campaigns page, plus clean up the sponsors page into one page, and added a New Release page to the computer game section. Anyway, time to play.

04/05/99
5:00 AM: Well, since this is my "diary" I better put this in, even though I will never forget this day. It all started with a "war" with starcrafters, on who can promote each others site, and ended with me posting a message on shivasite about how I need help. In between, I got mentioned on 2 different sites, plus a whole bunch of things to think about... All I can say is once I saw those two seperate posts, I sort of got choked up about it, especially with all the non website stuff that's happen to me lately. I guess I needed the encouragement more than I know, and it had occured to me to stop this several times in the last few days. But I've decided to continue as long as I am able, and I hope I get some help when I really need it down the road.

Now the Kid has a cold. Poor little guy. especially since I might double my hits to 300 in the next little while. Damn, I would have been happy with a 1000 within a year.

More with my ongoing struggle with FrontPage.This time it refuses to keep the same Font settings for each page, so I have to manually change the font everytime I type anything in. Grrr. One of these days, I can remove the Albatross around my neck, and get something decent.

This was also the First day I've seriously considered joining another server. I may have been nice in my post about Tripod, but it really is a pain in the ass sometimes. Maybe we will see, so maybe I better start looking around

Couldn't add to my conversion page, I really have to watch my ISP hours, to make sure I don't run out at the end of the month. Oh well, maybe I can bank some time for later. I keep telling myself that I have to use what I've got, but sometimes...

Hmm, seem to be on a little jagged tear here. Better stop before I reduce myself to a puddle of weeping Jello.

Note to myself: Get some sleep damnit, and stop updating at 5 in the morning