Caught in a web

Today a colleague asked me if I could design a web page.

WTF?

If there is one thing I thought I had made clear – through indifference, tears, and sheer unmasked terror – it was that I can barely use Microsoft word 2007 (RIP 2003). In addition to incredible typing, I can open email, write email, send email; all other applications within email might as well go to Namibia (except that I am going to Namibia, and surely don’t want to meet them there.) And every now and again, when I plug my laptop into the wall with the five million cables, the picture does translate to the big screen. But most of the time it doesn’t.

Cue the tears.

And now I have to design a web page? Again, WTF??

I think I need a valium.

I’m putting it out there once again that when it comes to computers, I cannot do anything!! When printers break (as they always seem to do) I buy a new one. When computers break, I give them back. Or smash them. Sometimes they break because I smash them. When iPods break straight out of the packet, I never buy them again and go back to listening to the radio because itunes wiped most of my songs anyway when the c-drive crashed EVEN though I did back them up, oh yes I did.

Stupid c-drive. C stands for something that I’m not allowed to say because it’s punishable by death in Namibia.

I don’t even know where to start with this web business. For a laugh – ironic, I know - I opened the thingamybob that I thought might set me on the right path to failure (don’t say I never try!) and the very first question had me stumped: what’s the URL for your page?

I don’t know. I haven’t made a page yet; as if I’ve thought about the URL! And it’s the school’s URL, obviously – I’m hardly going to buy one. I say go jam your URL and ask me an easier question like: what colour do I want the font to be? or, is this your first time making a web page; would you like that creepy little paper-clip guy from Word 2003 to come hang out and annoy the crumbs out of you with really inane conversation and extremely unhelpful suggestions?

Ok, I know the paper-clip guy doesn’t really have conversations. But I talk back, so it kinda becomes one.

Can I please just teach and not design web pages? Because when I went to teacher’s college I so did not sign up for web design. I failed that unit in two separate degrees, actually.

I hope the paper-clip man did not retire to Namibia.