Further Dabbling with HTML

I'm playing around with a few of the self-taught HTML technigues I've recently learned. This is, perhaps, the birth of a future website I hope to manage some day.

WELLS TECHCOMM

Joel A. Wells •
CEO

Who are we?

Wells TechComm is a technical communications company that is committed to handling the document needs of any business and organization. Wells TechComm is prepared and ready to take on any size documentation project. We can quickly produce the following documents:

HTML Experiment

Below, I copy and pasted a web page I designed using html.

Who the hell am I?

Welcome to Dave's Devil Sticks, owned and operated by David Vinet. If you're looking for juggling balls, hacky sacks, pins, unicycles, or magic hats, you've come to the wrong place; but if you're looking for high-quality, hand-crafted devil
sticks...then this it the site for you. I've been designing and building sticks during the last 20 years. I know my sticks are the best of their kind. Don't take my word for it. Read the following testimonial:

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"Dave's products are the best. I would gladly walk a thousand miles through an Antarctic blizzard to get one of his sticks!"

— Freddie Farkle-dude

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Every set is checked and tested before being shipped out to assure perfect quality. I take pride in every one of my sticks and I want my customers to feel that same pride.

My products

• Basic Stick
  
  The easiest stick to learn with, but "grippy" enough for the most demanding tricks. Comes in red, green and blue.


• Flower Stick
  
  A graceful stick with colored tassels. The Flower Stick floats more slowly, giving you the ideal chance to practice new moves.


• Master Stick
  
  My most popular stick is shorter and heavier for fast play and more advanced tricks. Each master set is available in custom colors.


• Glow Stick
  
  The Glow Stick shines brightly at night (without the danger of a fire stick). It combines the fun and versatility of the Master Stick, adding the fun tricks unique to a glow-in-the-dark stick.

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Dave's Devil Sticks •
4180 East Hall Avenue •
Terre Haute, IN USA 47805 •
(812)208-5985

OWS and Why Hippie Punching Won't Work

"Get a job!" "Take a bath!" This is quickly becoming the theme of the right-wing attack machine against the #Occupy Wall Street movement, which is now more than two months old. Even the leading candidates seeking next year's GOP presidential nomination are adopting this talking point technique, which many pundits call, 'hippie punching'.



Many conservative politicians owe their living to 'hippie punching'. The last time the left really took to the streets was during the 1960s...when many protesters held public demonstrations to promote civil rights or end our military involvement in Vietnam. Richard Nixon capitalized on the anxieties of the so-called 'silent majority' by promising to bring 'law and order' to the cities and college campuses. Nixon and the right's appeal struck a chord with America's working class, who saw the protesters as nothing more than spoiled rich kids who've never worked a day in their lives. Even my father, while supportive of their causes, often referred to hippies as 'middle-class brats'.

The right continued to use this paradigm successfully ever since. Every progressive movement during the last 40 years has been labelled with the lazy hippy tag. This includes the nuclear freeze movement of the 80s, the WTO protests of 90s and the anti-Iraq War movement (what there was of it!) during the last decade.

Now comes Occupy Wall Street...and the right has, once again, begun punching hippies. However, today's dynamic is quite different. This isn't 1969 when long hair and radical politics were something found only in a few urban neighborhoods and campus towns. The growing support for Occupy Wall Street suggests that the American people are more interested in substance and real economic issues than with cheap shots about drum circles, long hair and hygiene.

The issues of the late 60s pitted labor unions and veterans against the protesters. Now the protesters have the vast support of members from both groups. This is a crucial difference that will make all the difference in the world. Hippy punching may work in the short term (the Republican primaries) but eventually, it will fall flat.

Ten Years Later: My Memories of that Awful Day

Forget September 11, 2001? I know I never will. Personally, I don't think too many people over the age 13 will. (Anyone younger than 13 today was either a small toddler, an infant or not born yet. I base this assumption on my own memory recall ability as I cannot remember anything in my life before the age of three.)

First, I believe I should begin my recollection with this disclaimer: My memories of 9/11 don't even come close to the tragedy of the people who had to experience it first hand...or even second-hand. I'm fortunate that I was thousands miles away from all three of the attacks.

Nevertheless, like the whole world, Terre Haute, Indiana, my home, wasn't completely immune. I, too, remember that awful day.

Ironically, it started out as a picture-perfect day. I recall the sky, which was cloudless, having an unusually brilliant shade of blue. I remember thinking to myself that I should call in for my scheduled 12-hour shift at Sony DADC, which is where I was gainfully employed as a temp at the time.

Anyway, I reported to work and clocked in 6 a.m. Soon, I began working on my assigned packaging line. There are no clocks in Sony's packaging plant, so I'm guessing around 8 a.m, about an hour or so before my first break, I overheard my line leader saying that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I asked her if anyone was hurt thinking it was only an accident. She said she didn't know.

A little later, I overheard her saying a plane had crashed into the Pentagon.

"I thought you said it was the World Trade Center.", I said.

She said, "This is another one."

I thought to myself,"What are the odds of two plane crashes into national landmarks on the same day?"

She must have seen my look of puzzlement and said, "We're under attack!".

"No frickin'way", I thought. "She must have her facts wrong".

When break time finally arrived, I knew something definitely up. Instead of the usual, boring Sony closed-circuit broadcast, the break room TV monitors had live news coverage of it showing the awful image of smoke billowing out from the WTC. No one was saying a word. My boss soon came by and told me that DADC was closing down for the day, and that I could go home.

Later that day, I remember that that some of the Terre Haute schools had bomb scares, and that certain gas stations decided to raise their gas prices. One station on Wabash decided to spike their prices up to $6 dollars-a-gallon, which is high even by today's standards. That gas station went out of business when calmer heads began to prevail again in the days afterward.

Priorities: People and Numbers

No written record exists of the exact time when human beings began to demonstrate the abstract ability to think of things in terms of numbers. Carbon dating has revealed that prehistoric humans were able to count things some 37 thousand years ago when scientists recently used it to determine the age of what is believed to be the oldest evidence of counting—an African baboon bone with 29 distinct and deliberately cut notches.

Now, our very modern experience is flooded with numbers. Don’t get me wrong. Our unique fascination with numbers has more often than not has made life much less arduous in many more ways than we can readily imagine. What's more, one could consider that that previous sentence the understatement of all time.

However, many politicians and a complicit media collaboratively working for corporate interests seem to have manipulated our seemingly instinctive attraction to numbers in the recent ‘debate’ over the federal deficit. Somehow, many people are convinced that it’s more important for our government to balance its books with abstract numbers than it is to serve the unemployment, health care and infrastructure needs of tangible and real PEOPLE.

Folks, this debt deal ranks as one of the harshest pieces of legislation Congress has passed in my lifetime. (I’m 54.) It does nothing to address the country's immediate problem that has a direct impact on the quality of life for PEOPLE—joblessness. Shouldn’t the plight of PEOPLE be the government’s first priority? Abstract numbers reflecting a massive debt, while important,could have waited a year of two.

3M and the Golf Market

It seems 3M has hit the jackpot, once again, with another innovative and well-marketed product. Since initiating the Greptile Grip golf glove in 2004, 3M has earned millions of dollars from tapping into what was to them a new market. But, perhaps, some dark clouds lie ahead for 3M as the lucrative golf market may become a threat to future profits.

According to an article in the New York Times, fewer Americans are playing golf these days. The total number of people who play has declined or remained flat each year since 2000, dropping to about 26 million from 30 million, according to the National Golf Foundation and the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. The Times says one golf club owner blames the decline on the sport taking up too much time. Men, the owner says, don't won't to spend an entire day away from home anymore, especially when there are so many ways to be entertained there.

3M is lucky because this decline is offset by huge increases of golf's popularity internationally, especially in Asia. But 3M marketers, I'm sure, are keenly aware of this trend, and are working on ways to mitigate it.

Forbidding In-line Skating (Marketing 101)

Many parks and community laws forbid anyone from skating either on skateboards, in-line skates and kid’s scooters. This circumstance is an example that requires marketers to consider regulatory forces before making a business decision about skates. Because many governments have associated the use of in-line skates with skateboards and scooters, skaters are fighting for the very legality of their sport.

Many legislators wrote these laws forbidding skating before Rollerblades basically reinvented in-line skates during the 80s. It appears that lawmakers regard in-line skaters as nothing more than children playing with an unsafe toy.

Rollerblades has responded by teaming up with schools and initiating an exercise program called "Skate in School". It’s a program helps schools win much needed funding designated for physical fitness. Rollerblades reports that more than a thousand schools nationwide are using it.