Web Guy

A Web Guy Welcome!

I call myself  “Web Guy” because a tremendous amount of my time is invested in the design, development and overall creation of custom projects translated from vision to manifest on the world wide web.

Now, I might very well use this particular web site www.web-guy.biz as a blogging tool to interact with others about anything that comes to mind, or maybe I’ll just take the time to explain where I am right now -today in Delmar, near Albany, New York.

Its really nice to get away from my native home in Thousand Oaks / Newbury Park, California visiting my current girlfriend Debby, whom I’ve known now for about fifteen years. (We got re-acquainted at Andrea’s funeral). 

It’s late and we’re sitting on the couch with her two fun little daschunds, Moo-Moo and Peanut. Moo Moo is white with black spots, and Peanut is all brown -and she’s very pretty (for a dog). We had a very nice late dinner after Debby got off work from the emergency room at St. Mary’s Hospital in Troy (NY).

You still reading this bullony? Ok, then…  I pan fried some delicate talapia fish with tenderly steamed brussel sprouts, fresh zuccini, excellent whole grain bread and a fresh green vegetable salad featuring romaine lettuce, sweet cherry tomatoes, celery, green and red bell peppers, mushrooms, (we forgot the frozen peas -a favorite toss-in of mine) I also made my usual favorite homemade salad dressing -the ever so puckery fresh-squeezed-lemon salad dressing with olive oil, parmesan cheese, black pepper and salt (which I let sit overnight -covered in the fridge, so the salt permeates the lemon juice for maximum zestyness!).

Ok, so getting to the purpose of this web site. www.webguy.info or www.web-guy.biz ..

I want to start back at Newbury Park High School, algebra class, 10th grade. The back of the classroom had a brand new “Wang Computer” of which only the “academically smartest” kids in the school were allowed to “touch” (I passionately resented those kids because they touted their false superiority with snooty-like attitudes!).

I totally laughed outloud after lunch one afternoon before class, when I saw that a window had been broken and covered with a piece of plywood. I heard that the classroom had been broken into over the long-weekend and the Wang Computer had been stolen! So my seething disdain for those little mealy-worms got their just reward (I still get some sort of inner-bodily satisfaction when I reflect back on one student in particular -a tall, skinny, scientific-looking, black-rimmed dork glasses, talked with a nasal whine, walked with robot like strides, a real smash! -Something I actually aspire to be, myself -haha!).

That episode was around 1975 or 76… And next I remember I played with a brand new, out-of-the-box Radio Shack (Tandy Corp.) Trash 80 computer at my cousins house in Santa Paula, California. Copying somebodys instruction code from the manual for hours using that old line by line instruction method ie: goto line 10, 20, 30 etc. Nothing even happened after typing all that code. But I sensed no loss of time and rather enjoyed spending that time interacting with a computer.

On hiatus again, in January of 1990 while staying at my parents house in Coppel, Texas, I began playing with an IBM 8080, and I backwards engineered (hacked) a piano keyboard program that rolled out on-screen in steps, and the background began rapidly alternating in color from aqua to fuschia (the effect on me was almost like sniffing amyl nitrate*)

*Wikipedia -Amyl nitrite, in common with other alkyl nitrites, is a potent vasodilator, i.e. it expands blood vessels, resulting in lowering of the blood pressure. Alkyl nitrites function as a source of nitric oxide, which signals for relaxation of the involuntary muscles. Physical effects include decrease in blood pressure, headache, flushing of the face, increased heart rate, dizziness, and relaxation of involuntary muscles, especially the blood vessel walls and the anal sphincter. There are no withdrawal symptoms. Overdose symptoms include nausea, emesis (vomiting), hypotension, hypoventilation, dyspnea (shortness of breath), and syncope (fainting). The effects set in very quickly, typically within a few seconds and dissapearing soon after (within a minute).

Zoom ahead to 1996 at Pacific Bell in San Pedro, California, when I injured my right wrist on the job -and after the Workers Comp case was finally settled, I purchased my first computer from a brilliant computer genius, Craig Jones, at “Quality Time” computer store in Simi Valley, California. 

A Pentium Pro 200! What a giant processor that was! Imagine a 200Mhz Processor with 64MB of Ram which cost me $2700 (before tax).  I then purchased a Miro Video Capture Card from Fry’s in Northridge for $999 -but it didn’t work properly. Miro Tech Support (in Germany) guessed that my 3.2Gb hard drive wasn’t fast enough and that I needed to go with SCSI drives.

Geez! -Looking back… I had to get the Adaptec 2940UW’s… and all of those cumbersome technicalities -assigning different IRQ’s (interupt requests) to the various devices on the SCSI chain… my first scanner (Microtek from Fry’s which cost $799 -but also came bundled with the awesome Photoshop 4.0)  After easily mastering audio editing with the help of Sonic Foundry’s Sound Forge 4.0 & the Noise Reduction 2 plugin, (all this software is now available from Sony who bought out Sonic Foundry and they’ve improved the usability and are now selling Sound Forge Version 9).

I had wanted so much to start editing video but the darn technology wasn’t reliable enough back then… -I had to convert the dang Hi-8 analog video into digital using the almost useless MiroVideo Card.

The horrific synch problem between audio and video -Echhh!! It was soooooooooo painful watching Brian’s hand strum his guitar and to the damn audio being totally out of sync late by several seconds, Arghh!  I spent tons of money helping the necessary “technilogical unfoldment” to happen. 

Shopping online, looking for a deal, I found a SCSI 9.1GB Micropolis 1991WAV Harddrive for $799 which (when operational), had the same glitchy artifacts that the original 3.2 IDE Hard drive had!!! Miro’s Tech Support next explained that the original drivers that shiped with the video capture card “version 1.0″ were inadequate and that I needed to use an updated driver version 1.23. Shortly after installing the new drivers and attempting to teach myself how to use the Adobe After Effects (version 3) Software or Adobe Premiere (version 4.0) which came with the MiroVideo Card the darn Micropoils Hard Drive went south (broke mechanically / lost chunks of data -Oh yeah, this was when I was using Windows 95 -what a pain having to re-install that OS!!! Arghhhh!!). Back then in order to load Windows 95, we first had to load the drivers for a CD ROM from a floppy drive… (thank goodness for Craig and Collin Jones) Geez, the hassle just to load the operating system on the hard drive… It’s sooooooo much easier these days, thank goodness, again.

Having a broken computer hard drive and looking for a solution, I discovered that there wasgood old CDS (Computer Disc Service) that could recover data in Newbury Park, California, and before I drove there was told they could repair my broken hard drive and when I arrived to speak with someone, a salesman talked me into buying two new Micropolis 1991WAV Hard Drives to replace my defective one (My choices were, fix my old drive for $259 or purchase a new one for $269 -I opted to buy two)(what a dork).

Shortly thereafter, I learned that Micropolis had gone BK and that CDS had just recently bought all their old (defective) drives. The drives must have had a   s h i t t y  design where the heads dragged on the platters or something.. So when one of the new drives began failing, I’d call CDS and the salesman would always tell me that he was successfully using these exact drives on his Macintosh with no problems whatsoever and it must be due to the fact that I was using a PC.

Geez, I still sometimes fret about having chosen a PC over a Mac. Guess I never will become a Hollywood esoteric. My only experience using a Mac was when I used a G2 for some video editing for the Progressive Recovery project of Winkelstein, Wineburgerville(or whatever his name was).

Those early days of my computer-ing experience was most painful, and I often conceeded that god was not happy with my persuing this damn computer thing at all! And that god was purposely preventing my very ability to make a living using a computer as the means. I seriously had major doubts during some phases of the unfolding -using this shit.

But, always by asking for help from some really very smart people.. I would accomplish what I set out to create .. (The Director of Predictive Technology; Ray Rubenstein at www.homestore.com and the Chinese programmer; Zack, the creative owner of www.geometry.net, Collin Jones and his awesome brother Craig, Jeff Carlson who singlehandedly built an extreemly reliable network using four Red Hat Linux computers which did my web hosting from home using a DSL connection and static IP addresses from Verizon at 768 up and down.., -Lastly the help of my father, Ron Lombard who has a very capable, focused engineering-type mind.  

The result is that evidentially I have carved out a niche for myself using my inate creativeness and weird insight allowing for the invention of several “useful” pieces of software that assist users to better manage 12 Step Program Service Offices, the continually evolving development of geographicly specific search engine, using a “hub” concept long before the boring “yourhub.com” bullshit that McDonalds regulars frequent. I developed an awesome dining guide for Ventura County, which can be replicated anywhere. And a recent real estate endeavour www.homeconnection.tv that began with talks when my money-greedy past sixth grade elementary school teacher from Manzanita Elementary School in Newbury Park who wouldn’t pay me for services rendered after he’d invested in some bum real estate in Florida where Walmart pushed his bad investment choice into loserville. And this site for my own gloating. Enough.