How I Became Cybersquibbs

It all began when number one daughter gave me a ‘doorstop’ i.e. a 386 computer, when she upgraded. "You can’t hurt it, Mum," she said. "Have fun!"

The monster crashed so many times I got blasé about shutting down and going to do some gardening - booting up next day and exploring the software installed for desktop publishing. Fascinating!

Number two daughter blasted off with a web site and she asked me to help get her venture listed on search engines. Off I went surfing the web, and listing On the Boards & In the Wings (www.ontheboards.com) in each individual engine and directory. Here’s where I adopted the name Webcrone and joined the prestigious on-line community of Webgrrls (www.webgrrls.com) now changed to DigitalEve (www.digitaleve.org).

OTB is a cool column on current happenings covering live theatre on Broadway, London’s West End and around the world. Topics include backstage gossip and productions waiting in the wings.

I never seemed to have much time for recreational surfing. I mean, every time I zeroed in on the theatre category, there were so many related sites to explore and check out. You never know when a site might be interested in exchanging a link.

I remember being somewhat frustrated with a theatre site based in London, England. Sent three requests before I got an answer from the webmaster. He was all apologies and said they would be delighted to include On the Boards & In the Wings in his list of links.

As luck would have it, my church, Central Westside United, needed a web site. We were looking for a new minister at the time and our search committee agreed that having a web site might give us the edge in the pursuit for best candidates. There were no less than four other churches in the area also looking for new ministers.

This, I thought, would be a perfect opportunity to plunge into design and it has paid off as our new minister said that one of the factors in his decision to respond to our call was the web site. Not that it was award winning, he said. But it showed that our congregation is moving and grooving.

Of course, I had lots of help in getting the site onto the web; thanks to our webguy, Bob Daniel (www.rgdaniel.com) my rough sketches became a practicality. And with his help and that of his wife, aforementioned number one daughter Lynda (www.chiotti.com) the site was recently revamped and relaunched under its own domain, www.centralwestside.ca.

HTML was and still is a bit of a mystery to me. Unfortunately, my effort at taking an on-line course through a local college while in Florida last year was a disappointment. The teacher was clueless when it came to the Mac platform. I’ve still got the book, however, and I plan to continue studying the web language.

When I finally decided it was time for me to have a domain - after two years of playing around - the only name I had used, apart from my own, was webcrone. Alas, it was taken. Sadly, it had been sold only three weeks previously.

I put a call out to my family for suggestions and among some weird suggestions, such as crazygardener, the name Squibbs arose. A safe manufacturer, of course, took it. Why Squibbs, you may ask. It was a fond nickname given to me by my father and it endured up until he died.

I think he may be getting a chuckle out of his daughter becoming Cybersquibbs at the age of 71!

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