Happy New Year!!!

I got to watch the ball drop at Times Square live via EarthCam.com. It was tripendicular! I now understand why people want to go to Times Square and celebrate the New Year there. The event creates an atmosphere. It's not a crowd of people standing around acting the fool. There's live entertainment, music, and concessions. This is something that is overshadowed on shows like Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve where there's always chatty commentary on the event. With the live cam, people around the world were able to watch the camera pan over the crowd and listen to the music and the people. It was nice. It was almost like being there ... well, except I could sit down or quickly go to the bathroom ;-)

Shortly before the ball started descending, the song "God Bless the USA" played for the crowd to hear. Hearing the song and watching the cam, I honestly got into the moment, emotional enough to shed a tear as I quietly sang along. You must understand that I'm a military brat who grew up loving and believing in this country. I'm very patriotic ... always have been and always will be. Our country is not perfect, but there is no other place I'd rather be. We've been through a lot in 2003. I pray for peaceful resolutions in 2004.


Moving Websites

I finished moving the GSIDIOT web site to a new server yesterday, and I finished deleting the old site from Tripod. Now, I know Tripod needs to make money to stay in business, but their ads are getting more annoying. On the sites I have with Tripod, I agreed to have pop up ads instead of embedded ads. I found out not too long ago that there are now embedded ads as well as pop up ads on the sites. Free or not, that's too much for me. Soul Sister's site is on Tripod as well as my Christian site, but not for long. Soul Sister's site will be moved to another server, and my Christian site will be merged with The Mundling Zone.

As I'm sitting here writing this, I've come to the realization that it isn't just Tripod that's changed; I've changed, too. Perhaps my skills have evolved to the point that I've outgrown Tripod. It can happen. I no longer want to use Tripod's "File Manager" to upload pictures and pages. I no longer want my websites to have pop up or embedded advertisements (they take away from the look of the pages). I guess what I'm trying to say is that Tripod is a great service for beginners and those who wish to have simpler web designs. It's just not for me anymore.