It was so astoundingly simple where before it it seemed hard.
There are not many things in life like that. Fixing a car for example. You have a basic concept of the grease and tools and crawling above and under a car to repair it. Or, for example, if your home's water heater breaks, you generally understand that a plumber will disconnect it and drag it out to the street, drag a new one in, and somehow attach it with his tools and torchy thing.
But this thing before me . . . hmm . . . A lightbulb was going on. If everyone else still thought it was hard, and it was actually really, really as easy as this, I betcha I could make some big-time money here.
It was late 1995. Just months before, I had just separated from my wife and had moved back from the rain-splattered hell they call Eugene, Oregon, and back to my hometown of San Diego. My parents had gracefully allowed their peniless 33-year-old son the use of the trailer on their back driveway to serve as a flophouse. I was working temp jobs, and had somehow ended up at the corporate headquarters of Jack in the Box restaurant, working on technical manuals: basically diagrams of how to put sandwiches together for minimum wage working, often-E.S.L. fast-food workers.
Just two months before, an aquaintenance in Oregon, a former postal worker on permanent leave (due to some form of '60s-drug-induced agoraphobia), had invited me over to his "manufactured home" in the woods past Fern Ridge lake, to hang out. His wife, whom I worked with, could tell that I had been depressed at work, and so, after serving me salisbury steak in a foil tray, Jim got excited to show me something he had discovered on his computer. It was called"MOSAIC." He said it was called a "Web Browser" -- something that he promised would change my world.
He connected his Macintosh with his modem, complete with those all-familiar noises of buzzing and clicking that I had been familiar with from connecting to America Online. But then a small window appeared. And then the magic happened.
Using a large phonebook-sized tome, an "Internet Directory" that he had purchased at a bookstore in downtown Eugene, Jim proceeded to type in string of characters:
and pressed the key.
I then saw a page of information -- and it looked like a word-processed document. Big deal. However, Jim then explained to me that this information being sent to us from CERN, a university near Geneva. He told me that if someone changed the document at the other end and we clicked refresh we would get the new document uploaded near-instantaneously. He then proceeded to explain what all the blue underlined "links" meant and how they actually jumped us around to other "websites" -- and explained to me the concept of a "web."
It was hard stuff I assumed, though -- programming a website. I had no doubt it required a computer science degree -- and completing coursework to understand network/modem protocols and international telecommunications, special computer equipment. I had never been so wrong.
So that is why, a few months later, when I got a glimpse into what a website really was, the lightbulb went on. And it wasn't just glowing. It was beaming like one of those sky-high spotlights waving back and forth.
This one particular day, around November 1995, a flamboyant Mac consultant whom I'll call "T" had arrived to help some of the graphic artists in our wing with some software installs on the Mac 9600s (a now long-defunct model). "T" had been making the moves on one of our graphic artists, my friend Scott, for a long time, and he seemed eager to impress all of us in the office -- often hoping to extend his morning consulting visits to lunchtime so he could ask Scott to head out for "bite to eat." This particular day, though, I had a problem with my computer and "T" stopped by my desk. It was a quick fix -- done! -- and then the magic happened.
I'm not certain what started it, perhaps that he saw I had a "Netscape" icon loaded on my desktop -- but "T" was suddenly showing me how to create my own web page using a very simple language called HTML in a Text Editor. He said it was NOT a programming language -- just a markup language. (I still don't understand why the consultant didn't meet with our Creative Services director and offer to create a website for us. His oversight was my gain, though.)
It dawned on me at that very moment that Jack in the Box had no website. And maybe, if it were as simple as I thought, I could create one. That same day, I drove to a computer store across the I-15 and picked up a book called HTML For Dummies. That night, I read it nearly cover to cover. I began to realize that this was clearly something that people thought was difficult to do -- but was actually very, VERY simple.
Within 2 days I had created the very first JackintheBox.com website -- and worked with a friend in the M.I.S. (now "I.T.") department to launch the site. Of course, I touted my highly-specialized technology skills to our P.R. department and explained to them that they would need a "webmaster" (a term I had picked up from the Dummies book). Of course, I knew of just the person they needed: me. My position was expanded on the spot -- and I found myself as the first "Webmaster" of JackInTheBox.com.
I made daily changes to the site and expanded it with more and more photos and sections. I submitted the site to a pay-per-entry web-design "contest," and garnered an award for myself.
I was now an award-winning Webmaster for a Fortune 500 company's website -- all within a month's time and very little effort. Of course, I exaggerated my own importance to everyone who would listen, obscurely referring to the complexities of web programming and HTML.
The following week, I overheard a temp I hired, named Deb, talking about trying to get website-development work at Qualcomm -- an up-and-coming company not far away. She even mentioned the hiring manager's name. It was a cinch to call and get the hiring manager's fax number and start faxing my resume over. And the rest is history. After being hired by Qualcomm in September 1996, I have slowly built up my web development resume. I am now a Sr. Software Engineering specializing in web programming for a San Diego-area defense contractor.
Eventually, though, the magic at Qualcomm faded as everyone and their grandmother started creating their own webpages with WYSIWYG web-development tools such as FrontPage and DreamWeaver -- and the technical regard of webmastering died out. In true "Who Moved My Cheese" style, I had to learn to keep changing and growing into new areas of web technology (but that is for another post).
Before that fateful day at Jack In the Box, my career path had been aimed toward journalism and magazine editing (per my Journalism Degree, SDSU, 1992) -- a choice that would have certainly spelled low wages in a dying industry. I can't imagine how my life would have been different if I hadn't decided to get that HTML for Dummies book that first day I saw how easy it was to create a website "under the hood."
Now I keep thinking -- what is the next "hard thing" that is actually really, REALLY easy. Programming for the iPhone? Hmmm. I've got to look into that.
Thanks for readin! :)
