Past Diatribes

OK, Aunt Cathy. Ok, Thea Marie. At long last, some wedding photos, news and views for you to enjoy….

First and foremost: the wedding was a blast!

Dawn of 8^th August, yer friend Mick was about the most nervous he's ever been in his life. Getting hitched is the biggest step a fella can make in his entire young life. A young, free life that will suddenly and publicly be snipped short---- no more kidding around with Nicole Kidman, no more cuddling Tia Carera. Just bills and laundry, looming high as eternity! Shaking like a death row inmate? Yep. I was.

Seriously-- heaps of credit are due to John Zuzek and Kevin O' Brien, my best man and groomsman. Though I have never been more certain about anything than I was about the decision to marry my lovely Carmel, no man can escape a case of the nerves and a ton of stress before the wedding. Better support could not have been given than it was by my mates, John and Kev.

In terms of friendship and support--- turning around to face the church, at the end of the ceremony when Fr. Lynch said "I now present Mr. and Mrs. Halpin"-! All we could do was be stunned by the dozens and dozens of friends, relatives, cohorts and accomplices who grinned up at us. I never realized how many people I had behind me, couldn't believe my luck.

And then, of course, when I turned to face my lovely Mrs.--! Absolutely stunning. The largest step- the luckiest leap- the most amazing thing possible. A picture's worth a thousand words, and I've rambled on enough. Let our photographer, Jim Sweeney, capture the rest of the story.

Italy was great: two of the best weeks of relaxation, sun, culture, and adventure in our lives. The first week we spent at a four-star resort in Sorrento. We toured the ancient streets of Pompeii, then climbed the mountain that buried them. Keeping ourselves in low gear, we gave Naples and Capri a skip. We did, however, have several near-death experiences driving the crest of the 500-foot cliffs along the Amalfi Coast. How Italian tour busses can overtake each other, head-on, at 50mph, on blind curves, and not kill us-! Those Padre Pio medals on the dashboard must do some good, I tell you.

The second week we cruised up north to Tuscany and Rome, where they drive marginally safer than the nutters in the south. Florence was amazing: medieval and friendly, yet clean enough to put fair Dublin to shame. Watched the Pisa tower lean. Bought some gelati in Orvieto. Down in Rome, we stayed a stone's throw away from the Vatican. Visited the Coliseum, Trevi Fountain, all the historic bits. I tell you, it's hard to turn around and walk a block in Italy without hitting something historic. Yet the gaff is modern enough that we could catch Mission Impossible 2 in English, when feeling a bit homesick. A great Honeymoon, all told.

For a wedding present, my beloved bought me a nice little piece of property-in cyberspace. The DFA Guide will no longer live in the shadow of buggy pop-up ads. Visitors will no longer be force-fed crap cookies by manipulative marketing bastards. Cheering and applause will resound from nation to nation, throughout the world---

Um, maybe not.

Anyway, in fairness, Geocities has been good enough to me for the last two years. Can't beat the price. (Free) It's a good place to start out--- and, as I have discovered, it's not really that difficult to move on up. Getting a domain name and site of one's own isn't that tricky.

First things first: find a name for yourself that's not taken. Check out www.easily.co.uk. On their site, they have a search engine to see if the name that you want is already taken. If it's not, go ahead and register the name! The cost, from certain good Registry Services, is as low as £15 per year. A lot of the Wed Design & Hosting companies that businesses turn to charge ten times that per year. So be careful, and take care of that end of the business yourself.

Next, and most important, is finding a place to host your site. "Hosting" basically means "having the physical server where your website's files are located, and making sure that people can view them." This can be quite pricey, as well. Even for a relatively modest site, charges can run to $500 per year or more. The moral of a story that I'll spare you from: shop around. You don't need to get your hosting from a local company, or even a company in your specific hemisphere. The crowd that I settled on is called ITB, located in Destin, Florida. It's as easy to upload new pages to Florida as it would be to a place in Dublin, and a helluva lot cheaper.

Finally, once you've got yer hosting service picked out, just slam the pages on up to their server. Uploading text, images and other gear is done by ftp: File Transfer Protocol. The hosting company will give you any details you need. And with that done, you're one click away from six billion websurfers!

So, this is the last diatribe to be seen at www.geocities.com/ SiliconValley/Haven/ 4598/index.html. www.dfaguide.com is a lot easier to type, don't you agree? Wha-hoo.