It’s All Geek To Me

Have y’all ever been in a foreign country and didn’t speak the language? Perhaps you were surrounded by people who didn’t speak your language either. All of a sudden you have to go to the bathroom, but you don’t know the word to call it.

When you try express yourself to ask someone where the bathroom is, all you can do is scrunch your face in a pained expression (which probably isn’t too difficult), hold your knees together, and point at your crotch. And, since you don’t know the words to use, you yell very loudly, “WHERE IS THE BATHROOM? BATH. ROOM!” You holler the words, because we all know that if someone doesn’t understand our words … shouting the words magically translates them.

That’s what coding a blog feels like to me. I just don’t speak this language! I went over to that Babelfish translator to look up a word in “Geek,” but it was all “Greek.” What did I expect from an on-line dictionary that, in Spanish, translated “Shelly” into “Exfoliados?”

I’ve recently said “goodbye to a blog theme that I loved. It was designed by Leanne Wildermuth (click on the picture to see more of her work), and she intuitively knew would please me.
It’s a design that served me well for two years, and Leanne was always there to hold my hand when things broke I screwed up the code. I never have been able to thank her enough for that.

It was time to move on, because I needed more flexibility on my theme than I knew how to create. I just don’t know how to code css. When I saw the blog theme “Thesis,” I fell in love with the flexibility it offers.

All over the internet, people are talking about Thesis, and proclaiming how easy it is to use. I wanted “easy,” because I don’t want to code — I want to write. It seemed like just the ticket.

Once the theme is installed, there are two pages on my WordPress dashboard that allow me to instantly make changes to column placement, column width, fonts and many things I’ve not yet discovered. It’s amazing, and I love it.

But, as many options as Thesis offers, if you want to add splash to your blog, you still have to know how to code — at least a little bit! There are forums where you can ask questions, and dedicated volunteers try to help you figure out what you need.

That blog forum is my “foreign country” for these last few days. I could find how to do everything I want — if I knew the word for it. I’m not pointing at my crotch or anything, but I think that I’ve showed my ignorance, to the disdain of some of those techie types.

“Y’all know that little box thang that they put over on the right side of the page? How do I get one of them? How do I put one of them picture dohickies beside that bar over there?”

Fortunately, they are being very patient with me, but their replies sound vaguely like an old woman I heard in a Pentecostal Church once. They are speaking in tongues! I’m trying to communicate, but it means that I’m having to learn a new language. Does anyone know how to ask, “Where’s the bathroom” in geek-speak?

Other posts you might enjoy:

1. Now They’ve Done It. Blogger Made Me Want To “Change My Tone”
2. If It’s Not Fun, Don’t Do It
3. Thursday Thirteen Number Thirty-Seven. My Distractions.
4. An Idea for Alltop Categories
5. Don’t You Just Hate It When…

Tagged as: All Things "Blogging", humor