Rodent Regatta

In the two and a half years that I’ve been writing a weblog, I have never set one up from scratch by myself. I’ve always had help. Tonight, I faced the fact that in that same period of time there are quite a number of people who have had three or four (or more) weblogs and weblog designs running on different weblog tools.

I’m still trying to figure out what to put on a Notepad page to make a vertical line appear on a web page. I’m still not sure how the width of a weblog’s text is established. I couldn’t move a sidebar from the right side of a weblog to the left side if my life depended upon it.

It’s been terribly frustrating. I want to comply with standards, but I can’t figure out my RSS/Atom/RDF files. I want to use CSS, but I can’t determine how to right or left justify information. I’ve never edited a digital photograph. I’ve never used Photoshop to accomplish anything.

In spite of all the reading, all the books bought and all the sites visited, I’m no closer to figuring out why my comments show one domain while my weblog shows another. I’m no closer to understanding why a link inside a comment opens in a window that cannot be resized or navigated.

Sometimes it makes me wonder if I’ve learned anything at all. How is it that other people have mastered four or five weblog tools, developed complete designs and made all of it validate? My approach must be wrong, because I’m not getting anywhere.