1. Download a piece of Web authoring software - 20 minutes.
   
2. Think about what you want to write on your Web page - 6 weeks.
   
3. Download the same piece of Web authoring software, because they have released 3 new versions since the first time you downloaded it - 20 minutes.
   
4. Decide to just steal some images and awards to put on your site - 1 minute.
   
5. Visit sites to find images and awards, find 5 of them that you like - 4 days.
   
6. Run setup of your Web authoring software. After it fails, download it again - 25 minutes.
   
7. Run setup again, boot the software, click all toolbar buttons to see what they do - 15 minutes.
   
8. View the source of others' pages, steal some, change a few words here and there - 4 hours.
   
9. Preview your Web page using the Web Authoring software - 1 minute.
   
10. Try to horizontally line up two related images - 6 hours.
    
11. Remove one of the images - 10 seconds.
    
12. Set the text's font color to the same color as your background, wonder why all your text is gone - 4 hours.
    
13. Download a counter from your ISP - 4 minutes.
    
14. Try to figure out why your counter reads "You are visitor number "-16.3 E10" - 3 hours.
    
15. Put 4 blank lines between two lines of text - 8 hours.
    
16. Fine-tune the text, then prepare to load your Web page on your ISP - 40 minutes.
    
17. Accidentally delete your complete web page - 1 second.
    
18. Recreate your web page - 2 days.
    
19. Try to figure out how to load your Web page onto your ISP's server - 3 weeks.
    
20. Call a patient friend to find out about FTP - 30 minutes.
    
21. Download FTP software - 10 minutes.
    
22. Call your friend again - 15 minutes.
    
23. Upload your web page to your ISP's server - 10 minutes.
    
24. Connect to your site on the web - 1 minute.
    
25. Repeat any and all of the previous steps - eternity.

    
    
    

    Did I leave anything out?

    Apparently, I did:

    
    
    
    

26. Increase vocabulary development as things don't work - 2 hours.
    
27. Decide to put a counter on your page - 5 minutes.
    
28. Try to connect to the server to create one - 4 days.
    
29. Try to get the code just right for the stupid counter - 4 hours.
    
30. Upload your new page with counter - 2 minutes.
    
31. See the stupid broken image graphic where your counter should be - 1 week.
    
32. Dump the counter and put one of those fake ones on your page instead - 5 minutes.
    
33. Sign up with Lpage Guestbooks, put links to your guestbook on your page - 2 hours.
    
34. Play reciprocal guestbook signing with others, and actually meet some nice people through the guestbooks - 3 weeks.
    
35. Lose your complete Lpage guestbook when their server crashes - 1 second.
    
36. Sign up with Pergatory Guestbooks, put links to your guestbook on your page - 1 hour (it's getting easier).
    
37. Contact people who signed your old guestbook to ask them to revisit your page, meet new people via your new guestbook - 1 day.
    
38. Lose your complete Pergatory guestbook when it goes belly up without warning - 1 second.
    
39. Two weeks after completing your page, find three glaring spelling mistakes - 20 seconds.

    
    

    
    Erika Holmsten © 1998
    http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-10535