Night
in
Tucson

Flower
of the
Month

Phase
of the
Moon

about

• about gradiance
• about diane
• my training
• special interests

The framers of the U.S. Constitution expressed their motivations as a desire "to form a more perfect Union." Likewise, I can express my personal motivations as a desire to grow towards a more perfect convergence -- a point in time-space where my skills, talents, experience, interests, ethics and values all flow together harmoniously to create something meaningful. And no harm done if it puts a little food on the table, too!

If you had told me when I was young that I'd grow up to be a web developer, the concept would have had no meaning. Computers were the stuff of science fiction, and the web was the spider weaving under the couch just to the left of the dust bunny. No, back then it was the artist's life for me. I planned to travel the world, seeing strange and wonderful sights, capturing them with paintbrush in hand. Later, while in college, I discovered that in addition to a modest aptitude for art, I possessed an equally modest aptitude for writing, logic, and languages and filed that data away for later consideration. I happened to do typesetting to earn my way through college, and one of my jobs was to set an early computer programming textbook. As Spock would say, "Fascinating!" So fascinating that I considered dropping everything to take up programming. IBM was hiring willy-nilly and providing all training from the ground up, and a friend encouraged me to apply. But, foolish child, I was too intimidated by the prospect. If I had only understood that programming was more about logic and language than esoteric math, how different life would have been. Shoulda, coulda, didn't. Oh, well.

It wasn't until the mid 1980's that computers re-entered my life, first in the form of a Radio Shack Color Computer. Within days, I'd exhausted its limited applications and instead glommed onto the little programming manual that accompanied it. My husband also became hooked, and within a few weeks, we upgraded to what is still one of my favorite machines: the Radio Shack Tandy 1000-A. Babies on lap, I taught myself to program the wee beastie, first in BASIC, then QuickBasic, then Pascal, a little C, and Assembler. Some moms crochet. Some moms write code.

Not one to follow a conventional path, I began homeschooling my children. With massive over-exposure to children's literature came a desire to write for children. After indulging in a correspondence course from the Institute for Children's Literature, I did indeed manage to have half a dozen or so short stories published.

By the early 1990's, the necessary skills of web development — programming, art, writing — were all active in my life. The only problem was the nonexistence of the Web — at least for ordinary mortals. A temporary bump in the road, that was.

I have experienced progressive hearing loss since childhood, but in 1996, I awoke one morning unable to hear my own voice. There had been a dramatic drop, literally overnight, from which I have never recovered. Realizing the extent of my new vulnerability and given my lack of appreciation for starvation, it made sense to seek formal training that built on my lifelong collection of interests and didn't require ears. Thus, by 2002, I had a degree in Web Technologies and by 2005, was fairly steadily employed.

So, there it is. Life experiences, interests, skills, and talents have converged in web development. If I could move towards a yet more perfect convergence, the sites I create would also reflect my values and promote issues I care about (see Special Interests page) — perhaps the site you have in mind but lack the technical expertise to create. Please tell me about it!