Firecracker 5 mile run-Granville, Oh

Today the Firecracker 5k took place in Granville, Ohio which was part of the many 4th of July Independence Day activities this year in Licking County. I am very proud of my brother Mike and his wife Nancy! To see them both actively compete as a couple in 5 mile runs and dedicate time daily together to their passion is inspirational & moving.

This morning I watched as Mike & Nancy prepared for the 5 mile run, and as they each later, crossed the finish line. You could tell from the looks on their face the race hadn't been easy, but they did it in good time, and I cheered them on as they each entered into the runners chute. I was grateful I could be there to witness each of their individual accomplishment of crossing the finish line.

Congratulations Mike & Nancy! You're both champions & athletes of the highest caliber!

Setup your website for little to nothing

I can still vividly remember the early days of my computing experience back in 1994.

I had a PC with Windows 3.1 Operating System and DOS 6.2. This new PC had an Intel 486DX2 CPU, and 14.4 kbps modem, which was one of the "faster" machines at that time. With this PC I soon learned about Bulletin Boards . I soon became an administrator of one board called "Insight " which one connected to via dial-up modem. The interface was strictly text based. This new technology opened up a whole new realm of computing and social networking which I would never fully understand or grasp, let alone realize how fast it would grow or how important it was until the last couple of years.

It was a very short time after that the Internet became the "buzz" which soon began to grow, expand, and now become the medium of choice today. Before long I was creating my own websites using a text editor (Windows notepad) and adding my own custom images using Windows Paint. Crude tools, but nevertheless, valuable tools in the growth of my experience in developing web content and setting up a complete website for free which I could share with friends and family.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, to share information on the internet you had to have a website. This required having a domain name, which required domain hosting, software to create the web pages, and tools to upload the content to the internet. This then created the need for knowledge on how to do all of the above, which resulted in a steep learning curve which could be rather intimidating to the average person.

Fast forward to today. Today the internet is actively used by young and old alike. It's in most homes via broadband. It's actively used for marketing, advertising, paying bills, reading up-to-the-minute news, share information, and more. Of all the different reasons people use the internet, social networking is the buzz today. Through social networking one can catch up on the latest news, share photos, share calender events, music, hobbies, and so much more.

Through the evolution of the Internet and it's growing importance in our daily lives, one can now have a blog, a website, a domain address, an online photo album, and advertise & market products for other websites for free thru social networks and web-based tools such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, Blogger, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and many others. With these readily available tools, one can setup a website, execute viral marketing & advertising for next to nothing.

Next up, I will discuss how to begin to setup your presence on the Internet.