Isn't it beautiful?  Look at those two items up there.  An animated GIF that gives the effect of the website name flying towards you, and a Java navigation menu that has mouse-over dropdowns and color changing menus.  Those two pieces took an incredible amount of time to create and integrate into the web page.  The GIF I made when I still lived in the dorms at TC.  That was so long ago that I really can't even remember how long it took, but I remember that I could have probably grown my hair out in the time it took.  The Java menu, which is the piece of the Bus Stop puzzle that I have imagined since I first decided to redo my web page, is one of the trickiest bits of coding I've ever done.  It just reaffirmed my belief that programming stinks.

That is the general story of this entire project.  A piece I just made.  One from a few years ago.  Countless times that I started and stopped this project.  When I first got this computer and got online I wanted to get a page up ASAP.  I was still learning about the web, so to impress everyone I threw together everything I new about HTML, scripting, etc. and made what was basically just a display of bells and whistles.  If anyone besides me still remembers my first page they'll remember that there were silly Java applets all over the page, love testers, horoscope finders, just a plethora of crap.  I thought it was probably the coolest thing ever.  That was 1998...

What the hell was I thinking?

Well as soon as I was in college for a month I decided the site was crap.  Too flashy.  I would make a new web page that would be powerful, simple, easily navigateable, and would contain no objectionable language or material (or less of it) and would be something that I would want everyone I knew to see.  On my old page the statistics told the story:  people didn't give a rip about my opinions on stuff, or what websites I liked to visit, they basically came, looked at the pictures and left.  So I figured I'd include a bunch more photos on this new page and make them easily navigateable.  I still decided to keep the opinion material, and the websites that I like to visit because even if you don't care what I have to say, you should... because I am the man and I know what I'm talking about most of the time. (Patting myself on the back)  So I dreamed up The Bus Stop II.  It would be the best!  I set to work right away.  I figured I'd finish in a few weeks.  But I lost the "stay up nights, days, weekends, whatever it takes to finish" drive and the files I had started sat on my hard disk for a while.  I did not get back to them till just before Y2K.  I took down my old web page and replaced it with a short note saying that on January 1 of 2000 I would debut The Bus Stop II in all of it's splendor.  Well again I didn't finish.  So the new files were added to the old and once again stashed on the hard drive.  That year I accomplished nothing web related.  In January of 2001 I once again began the construction of the site, and this time I really thought I'd push it through to completion.  Every time I would start working on the site again I would decide that something I had done wasn't just perfect and I'd redo it.  Or I'd have some new piece of software that could do something better and I'd redo something.  Well, once again I failed to finish.  Over this period of stop and go web design I'd completed many big web projects for other people.  Bremerworld, The Jolly Elf homepage, a team intranet project, and Mom's Southwestern art page to name a few.  When I would finish one of these projects I'd put a banner that said "A Bus Stop Website" so I could link to my site when it was finished.  I'd do these pages for other people and always think, "Why am I not working on my own site?"  Well around comes summer of 2002, and guess what?

I finally finished!

I finally got everything looking and feeling good enough to satisfy my perfectionist tendencies when it comes to web design.  I'm so happy.  So now I'd just like you to take some time and enjoy the fruits of my labors.  Think where you were and what your life was like when this project began 3 1/2 years ago.  I am stunned when I think about it for myself.  I hope you have a good time here at The Bus Stop 2 and like the site the way it is, because it could be fifteen more years before The Bus Stop III gets finished...