The following document is a joke. I'm not (totally) serious
about this and I would never really submit this as part of my graduate
school application. Then again, there is a scary amount of truth to
it... =)
I entered the University of California, Riverside sometime in
1992 foolishly believing I was here to educate myself under the now
silly notion, ``Hey, if I get a degree, I'll be able to get a job!''
Of course, I quickly learned that the University lifestyle had
nothing to do with education and everything to do with getting a date.
Unfortunately, I found it difficult to acquire such a thing as a ``date''
in the Department of Computer Science and proceeded to explore my options
elsewhere, most notably the Department of Creative Writing. It was
there I believed I could try out the ``90's Guy'' thing and pick up
on chicks.
Reality hit sometime during my second writing course when I
came to the conclusion that every woman in the program was either a
grandmother or violently neurotic. This was obviously unacceptable.
The lack of success in finding a date in the Dept. of Creative
Writing did not deter me, however. I continued forth in other areas of
the University whilst learning the wondrous details of Computer Science
in the background. But then something drastic happened...
At first, I was confused. Then I was excited. Then I was
confused again. However I felt about it, I knew what it was and
what it meant. The World Wide Web.
Suddenly, it was cool to be a Web-Geek.
And I was successfully duped.
I designed my first homepage thinking, ``Hey, when all the
chicks see this, they'll come running after me! I might even have
two dates!'' I was so enthralled with the idea I invested a substantial
amount of time and effort into my homepage's design. I made it possible
for every visitor to leave with something new and exciting. Something
they would cherish for the remainder of their Netscape cache. And
most importantly, chicks would think is really cool.
The first month my page was up, I received a few sporadic
e-mails from people commenting on my homepage's design. To my
dissapointment, none of them were female. It was then I realized
my page lacked something every woman desired...
CGI scripts.
And so my quest began...
At first, they were simple creations which did little things
such as update the current date and time, or make it possible to see
if I was logged in. But those scripts were trivial and too many other
schmoes on the net them as well. I had to be original if I ever planned
on acquiring a chick this way.
My next two book purchases had nothing to do with Star Trek to
my book club's surprise. They were O'Reilly and Associate's powerhouse
programming texts on Perl and AWK. I devoured them like a frat-boy and
his first keg of beer.
Little by little, my scripts added the kind of functionality
that everyone would envy. Search engines indexing my life story.
Rotating pictures of me doing everything from installing an electrical
outlet to compiling the latest release of the Apache Web Server. Buttons
which would automatically appear at the end of every page making it
easy for the chicks to contact me and arrange a date on-line. Short
of balacing the Federal Budget, my scripts did everything...
And I still wasn't getting e-mail from chicks.
This, suffice it to say, was leaving me worried.
I decided to contract a graphic artist to redo my site and
make it more appealing to women. I used clickable images to make
navigation a snap. I rewrote my autobiography and indexed it over
10,310 keywords. Suddenly, it was trivial to learn everything about
me, from the color of my favorite underwear to my preferred speaker
wire. And, I managed to keep response time to under 1 second.
Still, no women.
It then occurred to me while muching on twinkies and watching
Baywatch that there was one notable element that women seemed to
desire (aside from personality and a well built body). MONEY. But how
was a college student trying to pass Ordinary Differential Equations
supposed to find a job that pays a decent salary?
Then I got the e-mail.
And, no, it wasn't from a chick.
A corporate type saw my site and thought it was the neatest
thing since Playboy went online. The scripts, the graphics, the layout,
everything. The next thing I knew I was working for his company designing
a web page at $40/hr. After all, money equated to chicks. How could I
refuse?
This company didn't want anything fancy, but by the time I was
done with them they not only had a Pointcast Top 5% of the Web kind of
site, they had chicks calling their headquarters day and night. I knew
I had something going there and even left a link from their site to
mine so the chicks knew who the real man was behind the work.
Never got an e-mail from that.
Thinking about it, I realized that one-time jobs wasn't all
that great. I needed something more reliable, something which kept the
funds coming in so I could impress women by buying things such as my
own domain. I bit the bullet and went into business doing Web
design. $60/hr and I'd design anything under the sun. Cool
scripts, cute widgets, everything. I'd design sites that other sites
would use as a basis for their site.
And I made some pretty stylish bucks doing it.
Still didn't get a date.
Now I was going all out. I was making the bucks. I had
a Bad-Ass(tm) homepage. I had it all... Yet, something felt wrong about
it. My education in Computer Science, my web programming, something
seemed to conflict. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first, but
it slowly came to be after having done several sites -- I didn't like
web programming.
The truth of the matter started to come out of me, and it
wasn't very pleasant. I was doing it for the money and showing ``it''
to the world. I was a programming prostitute, selling my coding soul
for cheap pleasures.
And I never got a chick in the process...
I'm almost at the point of graduating. I don't know what
I'm going to do. I can't stop the web programming because its the
thing I know best. It's what will pay me, and allow me the opportunity
to meet chicks in Public Relations. But I'm not that big of a fool
either -- I can see my future in this. For the day will come that
the Web and Web Programmers will become the old-hat and undesired by
the new generation. I will be left in the cold, hungry for attention,
and writing COBOL applications for accountants who think Disco is the
rage. I will die a has-been, left sitting behind a Wyse terminal at
a VMS prompt...
Salvation from this hell, you see, is why I want to go to
Graduate School.